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It's racist to suggest Obama didn't deserve Nobel Prize
BOB ELLIS
October 15, 2009
In the first edition of Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone With The Wind Rhett Butler boasts of having shot dead a young black man for looking at a white woman 'the wrong way'. The presumptuous young pup was getting above himself, Rhett explained, 'so I shot him then and there'. Much the same thing happened in US public life last week when Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, and white America howled him down.
Too soon, white America said, the presumptuous young pup. He's getting above himself.
It was a classic repressed-racist reaction. He's got the presidency, God damn it, what else does he want? An Oscar? An Emmy? A Pulitzer Prize? There was no such response when Al Gore won the Nobel for a single travelling slide show. No one said he hadn't done enough yet, he hadn't saved the world yet. It was sufficient that he wanted to, and spoke well in that cause.
The racism attendant on the American response was blatantly evident because nobody mentioned who else should have got it. They emphasised only that he didn't deserve it. He hadn't done anything yet. Nobody said who deserved it more. Partly because it was hard to think of anybody who did. He should just give it back, that's all.
>snip<
A curious thing to say. The presumption was that he wasn't born before he was president, that he had no life before then. That he hadn't addressed massed crowds in Berlin, promising a better world. That he hadn't electrified America with his oration at the 2004 Convention in Boston, thought by many to be as good as the Gettysburg Address. That he hadn't written a book that changed lives. That he hadn't enthused black America by winning the nomination. That he hadn't astonished the world by being elected President and by the speech he gave that night, a speech some thought as good as 'I Have A Dream'.
It was hard to see how Morgan Tsvangarai had done more for world peace by then, or ever; or Hu Jia had. So their names weren't mentioned by Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Alexander Downer. Nor was anybody else's. Give it back, they said, give it back.
They also seemed to suggest he got the prize 11 days into his presidency, not that he was merely nominated for it that day, along with 200 others. And what he did after that – the ending of torture in US military prisons, the unshackling of travel to Cuba, the abolition of the rockets pointed at Russia, the call for universal nuclear disarmament – had nothing to do with it, nothing to do with his winning it 252 days later. Some would say his speech in Cairo, which did much to pacify a billion Muslims, and win many thousands of angry young men back from jihad and confrontation – was worth a peace prize on its own.
But no, he didn't deserve it for all these things, or for any of them. Somebody else did. It was just never established who that was.
Never before had being president been thought a precondition for the Nobel Peace Prize. Mother Theresa never held that office, nor Muhammad Yunus, nor Martin Luther King, nor (though he came close) Al Gore. Nelson Mandela got his prize before he was president, and so did Jose Ramos Horta. They got it for inspiring hope, for the audacity of hope they stirred up in their people. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama, it could be said, in their long pilgrimages of eloquent protest and stifled leadership, achieved almost nothing for their people. But they got the peace prize anyway for trying hard, and for speaking wonderfully and for winning foreign hearts to their cause.
Barack Obama in the past five years, in the 1872 days of his fame, his candidacy and his presidency, has achieved more for the general good (I draw a deep breath here) than all of them put together. And yet he is being told to give it back, it's such an embarrassment, it devalues the currency, it's corrupt, it's unpleasant, it's a joke, by those media commentators whose trade is encoded racism.
He's getting above himself, the uppity mulatto.
Or is there some other explanation?
Just asking.
It's racist to suggest Obama didn't deserve Nobel Prize
I wanted to post this in its near-entirety, because I think it's thought-provoking.
Sorry if it's in the wrong forum or breaking some rule or other.
Feel free to move it, edit it, or whatever you need to do.
I rarely post articles anymore because i'm not very clear on the protocol.
But anyway... thoughts on this piece?
BOB ELLIS
October 15, 2009
In the first edition of Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone With The Wind Rhett Butler boasts of having shot dead a young black man for looking at a white woman 'the wrong way'. The presumptuous young pup was getting above himself, Rhett explained, 'so I shot him then and there'. Much the same thing happened in US public life last week when Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, and white America howled him down.
Too soon, white America said, the presumptuous young pup. He's getting above himself.
It was a classic repressed-racist reaction. He's got the presidency, God damn it, what else does he want? An Oscar? An Emmy? A Pulitzer Prize? There was no such response when Al Gore won the Nobel for a single travelling slide show. No one said he hadn't done enough yet, he hadn't saved the world yet. It was sufficient that he wanted to, and spoke well in that cause.
The racism attendant on the American response was blatantly evident because nobody mentioned who else should have got it. They emphasised only that he didn't deserve it. He hadn't done anything yet. Nobody said who deserved it more. Partly because it was hard to think of anybody who did. He should just give it back, that's all.
>snip<
A curious thing to say. The presumption was that he wasn't born before he was president, that he had no life before then. That he hadn't addressed massed crowds in Berlin, promising a better world. That he hadn't electrified America with his oration at the 2004 Convention in Boston, thought by many to be as good as the Gettysburg Address. That he hadn't written a book that changed lives. That he hadn't enthused black America by winning the nomination. That he hadn't astonished the world by being elected President and by the speech he gave that night, a speech some thought as good as 'I Have A Dream'.
It was hard to see how Morgan Tsvangarai had done more for world peace by then, or ever; or Hu Jia had. So their names weren't mentioned by Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Alexander Downer. Nor was anybody else's. Give it back, they said, give it back.
They also seemed to suggest he got the prize 11 days into his presidency, not that he was merely nominated for it that day, along with 200 others. And what he did after that – the ending of torture in US military prisons, the unshackling of travel to Cuba, the abolition of the rockets pointed at Russia, the call for universal nuclear disarmament – had nothing to do with it, nothing to do with his winning it 252 days later. Some would say his speech in Cairo, which did much to pacify a billion Muslims, and win many thousands of angry young men back from jihad and confrontation – was worth a peace prize on its own.
But no, he didn't deserve it for all these things, or for any of them. Somebody else did. It was just never established who that was.
Never before had being president been thought a precondition for the Nobel Peace Prize. Mother Theresa never held that office, nor Muhammad Yunus, nor Martin Luther King, nor (though he came close) Al Gore. Nelson Mandela got his prize before he was president, and so did Jose Ramos Horta. They got it for inspiring hope, for the audacity of hope they stirred up in their people. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama, it could be said, in their long pilgrimages of eloquent protest and stifled leadership, achieved almost nothing for their people. But they got the peace prize anyway for trying hard, and for speaking wonderfully and for winning foreign hearts to their cause.
Barack Obama in the past five years, in the 1872 days of his fame, his candidacy and his presidency, has achieved more for the general good (I draw a deep breath here) than all of them put together. And yet he is being told to give it back, it's such an embarrassment, it devalues the currency, it's corrupt, it's unpleasant, it's a joke, by those media commentators whose trade is encoded racism.
He's getting above himself, the uppity mulatto.
Or is there some other explanation?
Just asking.
It's racist to suggest Obama didn't deserve Nobel Prize
I wanted to post this in its near-entirety, because I think it's thought-provoking.
Sorry if it's in the wrong forum or breaking some rule or other.
Feel free to move it, edit it, or whatever you need to do.
I rarely post articles anymore because i'm not very clear on the protocol.
But anyway... thoughts on this piece?
Last edited:
