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- 20 -After being severely beaten by Prospero, Caliban attempts to side with another master hoping to gain someprotection. But he soon realises that one White master is just as bad as another and eventually returns to theservice of Prospero. Because the emotionally destroyed Caliban found himself emotionally connected to thefirst White man he had ever encountered, he crawled back to him in spite of the brutality. And so goes theIndigenous-Colonial narrative of the entire Fourth World towards a Europocentric future patterned after themost anti-human political state of the last century led by a Black leader. Only in America.In conclusion I would like to point to Bro. James Baldwin’s thoughts on the Black man in America as heexperienced it in Harlem and in France during the sixties. In his 1966 essay, “A Report From OccupiedTerritory,” the writer points to the ease in which many upwardly-mobile Africans adopt the class and racialbiases of their White counterparts when it comes to the “Bad Nigger” of the American inner-cities. Hespeaks to the sense of disgust and outrage these assimilados have learned to develop towards those of theirown ethnic and social group in order to be accepted by their “betters” and allowed to saunter the hallowedhalls of the White establishment.For the Black man of the Diaspora and all other colonialised peoples, including our European brothers andsisters still facing ethnic and national oppression on the subcontinent, we are taught that race and caste areimmutable, divinely inspired and best tolerated on a bellyful of indignity and self-doubt. The awarding of theNobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama did not eliminate his responsibility to African people to tellour story of grandeur and devastation. Our struggle for survival and dignity against all odds should not beallowed to be sidelined by an Obama moment, but it is and in all frankness our own fault for allowing it tohappen.It’s not that we have forgotten how to speak up for ourselves, its that the fight in us has been diffused by thepsychic weight of the Europocentric power structure and Barack Obama is part and parcel of that mentalrepression. More than a century away from the plantation we still suffer from the very same psychologicalimperialism we experienced as chattel slavery, and we still endure the dutiful and loyalist Boss Negro skillfullykeeping the field slaves and house staff in line for his White master. This is the unending cycle of colonialistdynamics. The rise of Barack Obama is a matter of White self-preservation, not progress.Mr. Obama did not become president of the United States through a “fit of absentmindedness”. Empires bytheir very nature must adapt to changing circumstances or risk being overrun by centrifugal force. In order tosurvive they mush renew themselves with new jingoisms, justifications and partisan connections to justify itsexistence. Barack Obama fills this role perfectly in a truly globalised new world order. His visibility by fiatsuggests a moral legitimacy White imperialists can no longer maintain in the 21st century. This may changehowever now that an African is responsible for the current wars of occupation and exploitation.The myth of social and racial equality in the United States is just that, a myth. It is the last of the real taboosof western industrialised society but this does not diminish its force. Perhaps we were initially brainwashed bythe removal of the “Whites Only” signs, or maybe it was being able to sit anywhere on the bus we wanted towithout fear of being lynched. But we are still in danger. As Baldwin said, we live in an occupied territoryliterally and figuratively and waiting on Obama to articulate this for us any longer is more than folly, its suicide.- Fin

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