Nation building and Obama

“In countries such as Sri Lanka multiculturalism was used in a different sense to mean that there was not even a significant culture let alone a dominant culture. Thus in Sri Lanka under multiculturalism the significance of the Sinhala Buddhist culture was not recognized though in the United States, multiculturalism meant the dominance of the American English Christian culture with the other cultures playing secondary and tertiary roles.”

by Nalin de Silva

(November 19, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The United States of America is also in the process of nation building. In fact one could say that the USA is in the process of including the so called African Americans in the nation of Americans. There are other categories besides African Americans such as Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans that have to be incorporated into the American nation, which is nothing but a nation of Caucasian Americans at best.

When George Washington became the President of the United States of America there was no question of what was meant by the USA and the Americans. The white skinned people with European origin, and mainly from United Kingdom constituted the nation. The so called Red Indians did not belong to the American nation and at that time not even lip service was paid to people such as Seattle, now famous leader of the so called Aborigines. In fact the original people of the country had been massacred and there were no contenders from that community to become members of the nation formed by their annihilators.

The culture of the "new" nation had been defined and that was the Western European Christian culture and in particular it could be identified as the Anglo Saxon Christian culture. The so called Nigers were still slaves when Washington became the President and nobody was concerned of their culture though some whites crossed the cultural gap when it came to sleeping with the blacks. The blacks had no choice but to speak the language of their masters, English though with a different accent.

Then came Abraham Lincoln and the slaves were given the freedom of selecting the masters of their choice from among the whites. However, the blacks or the Nigers were kept out of the nation just as much the "Aborigines" who managed to survive and there was no talk of even multiculturalism. There was only one culture and that was what could then be called the American Christian culture. The other communities who had different cultures were simply ignored though the blacks continued to speak English with a different accent.

The blacks were denied most of the liberties that the whites enjoyed and gradually the former struggled to win those rights they did not enjoy. However, the white supremacy was not to be defeated and many blacks had to give their lives while fighting for even minimal rights within the American nation. The whites, as in the other parts of the empires that they had established managed to bring up a class of imitators who would acquire the culture of the masters and be part of what I would call a pseudo nation. The blacks who became members of the pseudo nation soon learnt ways and means of dissociating themselves from the rest of the blacks. This class that is called Brown Sahibs or Kalu Suddas in this part of the world consisted of gate mudliars, mudliars munhandirams and other "minor employees". In the USA also this class (not in a Marxian sense) could be found and they became the peace loving pacific freedom fighters. In Sri Lanka we had the petitioners of the Ceylon Congress who wanted to demonstrate that they were more British than the British themselves.

Between the time of Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. the so called multiculturalism had been introduced without stating that there was always a dominant culture that was the culture of the nation as a whole. The other cultures were subordinate cultures and very often they were nothing more than "also rans". Not only that there were dominant cultures in different countries, there has been a dominant world culture since the fifteenth century. The dominant world culture had changed from Spanish to English in a matter of about three centuries and today it is the American English Christian culture that dominates the world as well as the United States of America.

In countries such as Sri Lanka multiculturalism was used in a different sense to mean that there was not even a significant culture let alone a dominant culture. Thus in Sri Lanka under multiculturalism the significance of the Sinhala Buddhist culture was not recognized though in the United States, multiculturalism meant the dominance of the American English Christian culture with the other cultures playing secondary and tertiary roles. As it was the western, mainly the American Sociologists who coined these terms and concepts, and who dominated the world intellectual scene it was a typical case of "Naduth Hamuduruwange Baduth Hamuduruwange".

Martin Luther King Jr. was in more than one way the predecessor of Barack Hussein Obama Jr. While many black leaders before Martin Luther King had fought against the white supremacy and dominance of that culture, King wanted to become a white supremacist and gain admission to the American Christian nation and the culture. He had a dream and that dream was not been dreamt by any of the other black leaders who were basically black. Martin Luther King had realized like Chittaraja during Pandukabhaya era in Sri Lanka long before him, nation building is very often a process of inclusion rather than fighting against a dominant or significant culture.

It was Obama who realized the dream of King. In order to do that Obama who had become a Christian first gave up his membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago of the black Christians and severed connections with the radical black priest Jeremiah Wright. Obama "distanced" himself from the politics of the black church and also from black politics. He identified himself with so called American values which are none other than white American Christian values. The shrewd politician that Obama is he killed two birds with one stone. Though he dissociated officially from black politics of Malcolm X and others, in the eyes of the African Americans unofficially he was a black. However, at the same time he was officially with a large section of the white Americans trying to realize the dream of Martin Luther King.

Though Obama has become a complete Kalu Sudda and won the votes of the white Americans as well he is still far from having built the American nation. There may be few African Americans who have been able to cross the cultural gap and become white Christian Americans in culture though not in skin colour and who are prepared to stand for and defend the American white culture thus gaining recognition by the white Christian Americans, a large number of African Americans are still on the other side of the cultural divide. In fact just a few days ago a black priest by the name of Stallings in Washington has established a black Catholic congregation and named it as Imani going by the Swahili word for faith. For a single Obama there are many non Obamas and we have to see how the nation building process proceeds from now onwards. Obama may have accepted the supremacy of the white culture but there are many blacks in the USA who are not prepared to dream the dream of Martin Luther King. Obama has no choice but to work within the white supremacy frame and many blacks will get disillusioned as time passes. It would be very unfortunate if Obama were to end his life at the hands of a black American assassin. - Sri Lanka Guardian