From the Barack Obama campaign Flickr photostream.
Dear USAians:
Wow. Well look at you. All growed up and everything. We're impressed. Really impressed. Massively, overwhelmingly and profoundly impressed. A lot of us really didn't think you had it in you.
There's something about the USA that you almost certainly don't know--how the rest of the world sees you. You think you're the cat's pajamas, the bee's knees, the dogs bollocks--the best country ever. Sometimes this blind self-congratulation shades into a sort of global megalomania--like when you call your national sports champions "world champions".
That really, really sets our teeth on edge.
That said, we love you. How could we not? How could anyone not love a nation that has the pursuit of happiness enshrined in its founding documents?
And then there's democracy and liberty and freedom of speech (none of which you have a monopoly on, but all of which you excel at) and rock'n'roll and Miles Davis and Scott Joplin and Tin Pan Alley and Nirvana and the Village People and high school football marching bands and 30 Rock and The Wire and Deadwood and tons of really cool movies. You guys rock.
But there's the other stuff.
You know, overthrowing democratically elected governments, supporting fascists, supporting the Khmer Rouge, supporting Islamic fundamentalists, torture, Cheney, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Rush Limbaugh, Nixon, Joe McCarthy, Ronald Reagan.
All that stuff. And electing Bush. And then--astoundingly, mindblowingly, jawdroppingly--re-electing Bush. When you guys suck, you really suck.
Then there's the racism thing. A lot of us grew up with TV images of cops beating civil rights demonstrators, the genocide in Vietnam, the persecution of MuhammadAli, the murders of the black panthers, Dr. King and Malcolm X.
We know that modern white America thinks its shit don't stink, that racism is in the past and anyway, things are much worse in Europe, and that American kids are color-blind (despite the fact that they cluster in blacks-only and whites-only groups in college cafeterias).
There's an article in the latest GQ that describes modern America as suffering from "segregation without the racists". Meaning, presumably, that non-white Americans choose the low-paid jobs and choose to live in the shit parts of town. Because if America isn't profoundly racist, what other possible explanation could there be?
Rightly or wrongly this is how the rest of the world sees America--as a nation utterly obsessed with race and profoundly poisoned by racism.
The rest of the world looks at a US school system that is more segregated now than it was before the start of the civil rights movement. They look at the major US cities, most of which--like most of Philadelphia--are segregated with a totality that would bring joy to the architects of apartheid South Africa.
And then we read articles in USAian magazines and newspapers that talk of racism in the past tense. And we scratch our heads in wonder.
In the run-up to this election, some Eastern Europeans I spoke to were absolutely certain that the USA is so racist that Obama will simply not be allowed to be president. Others--mostly Western Europeans--have been almost giddy with excitement. But it's an excitement tempered with disbelief. Is the America of Jim Crow, the KKK, Birth of a Nation, ghettoes, race riots, lynchings and beatings--where, in vast swathes of the country, blacks and whites are expected to vote for different parties, as if they were entirely separate and distinct tribes--did this America really elect Barack Obama?
All week my in-box has been filled with mail from friends and family back in England, all pretty much asking that same question. All desperately hoping that Barack would win and that America would be reborn.
"Here's hoping!" wrote a friend in London. "Dancing in the streets!! This is the USA's chance to finally put an end to a poisonous regime. If they fail, I've had it with USA. They deserve to rot in hell. Feelings are running high today."
We know that Al Qaeda were praying for a McCain/Palin victory. It's a pretty safe bet that every enlightenment-loathing conservative, religiously primitive zealot; every hard core Euro-racist, and every anti-democratic despot on the planet also had their fingers crossed for "Bush in a skirt" to be one knackered old heartbeat away from the Oval Office. But the rest of us--the people, on every continent-- we are massively, overwhelmingly, excitedly proBama.
Article:
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Article:
Waiting for Godot
Article:
'Public Service' at Bean Café
Article:
The Calendar: November 18 - November 24
Article:
'The Long Christmas Ride Home
Article:
New American Voices
Article:
The Calendar: November 11 - November 17
Article:
Hunter Gatherers
1. george said... on Nov 5, 2008 at 06:00AM
“Y'know I could barely sleep last night. I was thinking about my great-grandmother who, if she were still alive, would be 110 years old. I remember just before she died when I told her that all Major League Baseball teams retired Jackie Robinson's number, not just the Dodgers. It took a moment to sink in, but she got it: America wasn't the piece-o-shit place she'd been taught during her 100 years to believe it was. I loved being the one to give her the news. I wondered all night what she'd say about Obama if she were still here. This can be a truly uplifting, inspiring and magical place, if you persevere. And what a magical time to be a black journalist. All those civil rights leaders and the ordinary people who fought along with them and got sprayed with pepper spray and beaten back with hoses and German shepherds, they all just won the World Series! Thank you so much for this, Steven. You rock too!”
2. The Guardian Sucks said... on Nov 6, 2008 at 07:41PM
“The funny thing is, England wouldn't appoint/elect/whatever you guys do/ a black PM in 1000 years. No, you're much too racist, with your dinner party snickers, class hatred and wink-wink/nudge-nudge to open racists like Bernard Manning. But you do quite a job of congratulating yourselves on your progressive politics. I especially love it when the English start discussion threads that begin, "I don't want to sound like a racist, but..." And then they morph into David Duke. Well, if that isn't English racism in a nutshell, what is? Acting like you're apologizing, offering a disclaimer...and then diving right into the pissoir of bigotry. No, I don't think we should take any lessons on race from a country that's around 92% white. And even that demographic mix isn't vanilla enough for many English, who flee the country's borders by the thousands rather than (heaven forbid) live near black people. As for our checkered history, yeah, we've had problems. And yet I find it rather disheartening that an Englishman references our past without mentioning England's race problems and its own disgusting racism. Enoch Powell. Brixton. Seventy thousand Kenyans slaughtered in the 1950s by your imperialist butchers. Thousands more in South Africa. Your pivotal role in the slave trade; the fact that it was primarily you, not us, who brought Africans here originally. The fact that you've never paid reparations or offered an apology for any of your actions. No, for the English, it's all about Malcolm X, Selma and American transgressions. No self-analysis for the English. That just won't do. Well, many of us hate you and your self-righteousness and your bigotry and pretty much want you to fuck off back to your point of origination.”
3. obamafan said... on Nov 5, 2008 at 08:19AM
“We know how the rest of the world sees us. Some of us just don't realize that it's all true. Excellent article...”
4. steven Wells said... on Nov 6, 2008 at 08:26PM
“Touchy!”
5. Jac said... on Nov 5, 2008 at 08:59AM
“I've been crying with joy and relief since I heard; I stayed up all night to make sure I saw the results come in. I'm a white woman living in England. Yes we can.”
6. Limeys_are_Cunts said... on Nov 6, 2008 at 09:09PM
“The English are far and away the worst thing to happen to planet Earth. I'll say one thing, they sure have some awesome fucking public relations team! Shit, If you've never opened a history book in your life, like the Euro-Whining bitch who wrote this crap piece, you'd think the Limeys are God's gift to humanity. I'm going to contact whomever is in charge of this rag and find out why they employ this Euro-CUNT (probably sponsoring him for an H1-B visa) to spew his anti-American views, all the time enjoying living in America. Wells is your garden variety Limey scumbag, who'll be more than happy to point out all of America's shortcomings, just don't ask him to move his ass back to England, he worked too hard to get out of that shit-hole. I bet you Wells is the type of coward that is all chummy with Americans when he's out drinking, looking for someone to sponsor his ass to stay in America so he doesn't have to return to God awful Eurabia - Yet he trashes us every chance he gets in this rag (that no one reads), but more importantly in his shit articles he writes in that waste of paper known as the Guardian. Old Stevie has to score points with the Limeys back home and make them think his life is SO terrible in racist, dangerous, America, let them think he's still one of them.....as he looks for some American girl to dupe into marrying him so he can remain in the U.S. I got that right Stevie???? YEP!”
7. Rose said... on Nov 5, 2008 at 10:20AM
“Simply good stuff.....couldn't have summed it up better”
8. Henry Grady said... on Nov 5, 2008 at 10:24AM
“I voted for Obama and worked tirelessly for his campaign. But I never saw this country as a "hideous cocoon" nor did this type of thinking have anything to do with Obama's campaign or victory. Your unspeakably cheesy joy at Obama's victory is as woefully unsophisticated as your excessive and tone-deaf interpretation of the American electorate. To be frank, Obama won this election despite the support of people like you, with your condescending and offensive regard for the American voter, and your inflammatory characterization of America as a "country of the KKK, lynchings and racist pigs." I'm thrilled that Obama has a nimbler mind and subtler way with words and has moved us past the divisive rhetoric of our extremes, people like G.W. Bush, J. Wright -- and Steven Wells.”
9. C. Davis said... on Nov 5, 2008 at 12:21PM
“Henry, Well put. The entire tone of this article has "this author is a condescending prick" written all over it. Perhaps Mr. Wells, with your contempt for most things American, you could remind me of where young unemployed Arabs were rioting in the streets? Or where the government forbade the wearing of headscarves, and considered putting a restriction on immigration? Or where neo-Nazi natives attack Turkish immigrants who had the nerve to try and start a new life in a different country? Or where soccer (excuse me, "football" hooligans) routinely shout racial epithets and death threats at black players? These things couldn't possibly happen in oh-so-enlightened Western Europe, could it? By the way, has even one of these progressive utopias elected a ethnic minority leader yet? Even South Africa's had a black president already! But yes, please go on about how we're all quite backwards on this side of the pond.”
10. JP said... on Nov 5, 2008 at 12:21PM
“Next, we'll get them to stop calling it soccer and call it by it's real name "FOOTBALL". But for now, baby steps.”
11. steven Wells said... on Nov 7, 2008 at 06:00AM
“Coward! Good to have you back, mate.”
12. Faux Latina said... on Nov 7, 2008 at 09:23AM
“�Si Se Puede! Thanks for this article. When I first got to college 7 years ago, I thought that racism didn't exist anymore. But after a few weeks on that campus I came realize that it really does still exist. However, my 50 y.o. mother is not as enlightened as I am. A die-hard christian and minister, her and her church support Bushy and all his madness. I hope that one day she wakes up and realizes that despite Obama, there is still alot of work to do. Thanks again for this article, if my mother actually read something other than the Bible, I would recommend this to her, but that would be like trying to convince dear old Bushy that he was wrong.”
13. kiyoshi kanai said... on Nov 8, 2008 at 08:21AM
“Let us take the high road as Obama did so sucessfully and totally ignore "the hideous, twisted, stuffed monkey waving, quasi-fascist, Rush Limbaugh-led 'real American' rump". Onward, new America!!”
14. your mum said... on Nov 10, 2008 at 11:40AM
“I can vouch for S Wells - he always called Britain (and Europe) a racist shithole full of dumbfucks when it was necessary - and he still does...”