Jaded Sage:

The far left has rightfully been vilified for their antics. For example, it is common for the loony left to shout down  right wing speakers at college campuses or to degrade  those who proudly wear the US uniform. But we are seeing there is an element on the right that is as equally dubious. As the presidential campaign enters its final phase, the McCain-Palin rallies have attracted some Republican party faithful with some hateful and inherent bias that is indeed troubling. It begins with those who choose to highlight Barack Obama’s middle name. What is the insinuation? Is it that he is a closet Muslim or is it simply to equate the notion that anything associated with the Near East is unworthy? Obama = Osama and Hussein = Saddam. It is the word association of the ignorant, of those who have never stepped one foot beyond this hemisphere or Europe and who have been insulated behind the walls of American bias and infused with a sector of the media that caters to an insular world view.

I would like to tell a story that occurred to me recently.  In the late 1980s I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Yemen. I taught in a small village named Oozla that was serviced by a single lane dirt road. The classes were huge by American standards; often well over 60 kids in a room with benches as seating and their laps as desktops. I left in 1990. Last week I received an e-mail out of the blue. It was from an ex-student of mine named Mohammed who went on to study English and became a productive member of society there. Though his English is not perfect I would like to share an e-mail he sent to me:

It`s nice to hear from you.Is Yemen mentioned in the history subject you teach?I hope a great future for your daughter.
I want to know where do you live in the States.
Mudir Abdulwahab lift the school in 1992 and replaced him Mr. Ali AL-Duais.He has now  a grocery in Oozla and his son got top 7 in high school certificate in Yemen and left for Germany to study university.Regarding your crazy neighbor he kicked the bucket 15 years ago.Of course I do know Mohammed AL-Omary,he taught me geography at high school.He is also my friend and his hair still like monkey`s.I promise to provide you with pictures for Oozla and all your friends when I go there.
Actually, the economy is going bad everywhere and hope you cope up with these bad situations. For Yemen, there is a massive raise in prices and we are suffering from unemployment.However Yemen was developed during the past 10 years, but the live is still hard.
My personal life, I am engaged and getting married in January 1st 2009. You are invited for my wedding in Oozla and hope you come with your family.I am wondering for the srtong memory you have got because you still remember funny characters from Oozla.Say hello to your family for me.
my best,

Mohammed

Mohammed is in his mid 30s now and despite all that has happened since 9-11 there is still that bond that links people not by their names or what their governments do but what is inside all of us. In January I could go back to Oozla to Mohammed’s wedding and be welcomed as if I was a member of his family. So when you see people single out Obama’s middle name, know they possess the ignorance that is the worst that America has to offer, a bias that is not based on one’s character but on the implausibility that his father was African, gave him an Arabic name and that he had the ability to perhaps be the most powerful man in the country despite that fact. And that is what is best about the American spirit.

Anyone with an open mind who heard Barack Obama’s speech on race today recognized the brilliance of the words. He is able to explain the anguish of the generation before him and the great strides that have benefited his generation. I have listened to a lot of right wing radio today simply because I wanted to hear how they were going to attack his speech. It was fascinating to hear them dissect and assault Obama They used the same tactic to attack the speech as they used to go after Reverend Wright. Don’t get me wrong, no person with intellect could condone the manner in which the Reverend said what he said. The “radio right” clung to two parts of this magnificent speech to criticize Obama. First, they said he threw his white grandmother under the bus by saying:

“I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

If he cared so much for his grandmother how could he possibly criticize her publicly like that?, they decried. But Obama was pointing to the fact that the generation that came before mine saw racism at almost every corner. My father had a Black friend at Kansas University in the 1950s and he would drive him to the African part of Lawrence to get a haircut because his friend couldn’t get his hair cut in town. This occurred in what is now the most liberal town in Kansas. I went to kindergarten in a school that was formerly the Black high school in Liberty, Missouri in 1969. When the school was converted to a kindergarten at the time when schools were integrated, the building, which had been battered and worn from years of neglect by the city was renovated to make it usable by the mostly White kindergartners. These events that are etched in my distant memory are nothing compared to the decades of injustice that has consumed this nation in the last century, never mind the two centuries prior. Are men such as Reverend Wright simply to forget this climate that surrounded their existence for most of their lives? Obama said it succinctly: 

“And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

The second criticism of Obama was best expressed by Dick Morris, the right winger on TV tonight. Morris said Barack Obama is too weak to be President because leaders need to be able to throw people under the bus, even when they are close friends. Well as we have learned Barack Obama is not your normal politician. He could not disown Reverend Wright because to do so would be to disown the entire generation that Wright speaks for; the generation that lived in pre-civil rights America. For us, it would be like disowning the WW II vet and all he has done to save us from fascism because he, to this day, can’t stand Blacks. But Obama does not identify with this generation. He doesn’t use race as a crutch. When he started his candidacy most African Americans were weary of him. You heard on the news that he was not “Black” enough because he was not running like all Black candidates had done before him. In past campaigns, like that of Jesse Jackson’s, he spoke primarily to the Black man with the hope that others would join. Others did not. Barack Obama spoke to everyone and the Blacks bought in. In this way he has transcended race.

As the Conservative right ties the beliefs of Reverend Wright with those of Barack Obama, they continue to be ignorant of African Americans and further distance themselves from creating a nation where all citizens are truly equal. It seems they think Barack Obama, once he becomes President, will somehow metamorphize into a bitter Black man with a chip on his shoulder instead of someone who understands the Black experience and who fully comprehends the direction this country needs to go.

“For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.”

Barack Obama is the embodiment of the change that is going on in this country in regards to race. It seems it is those who wish to cling to the battles of decades ago; the culture war, Vietnam and racism, that engage with great vigor the issues that bring divisiveness. You will hear it from Reverend Wright and you will hear it from right wing radio; but you will never hear it from Barack Obama.

In 1954 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government in Guatemala and replaced it with a military dictatorship. The fears of a socialist government and the nationalization of industry in the small Central American country persuaded Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to doom the fledgling democracy. The decades that followed resulted in the most horrendous slaughter of indigenous people in the modern history of Latin America. The aim of these military campaigns against the Mayan Indians was to ensure a Latino majority who had historically been in the minority. A small Marxist insurgency sprouted up in Guatemala and the military led government with the assistance of the US government unleashed on the Marxists and Mayans alike. Death squads fanned out within Guatemala and killed hundreds of thousands of Mayans in the countryside throughout the 1980s. The Civil War lasted for 36 years. More people died in Guatemala then in all the other Central American countries combined; a significant fact since both El Salvador and Nicaragua waged war throughout this same timeframe.

The impact of US involvement in the overthrow of the Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán government in 1954 left a wound that festered during the Cold War period. A culture of fear and violence remains to this day. 90% of all cocaine traffic that comes to the US traverses Guatemala. Criminals rule significant sectors of the state’s police and military forces, expediting the movement of drugs. Gangs continue to threaten the civilian population there.

Guatemala has returned to a democracy following the civil war and recently Alvaro Colom, a liberal, was elected president. He is promising to heal the wounds of the past but this will not be easy. Any who have pushed back at the criminal establishment have ended up dead. He proves to be an interesting figure to lead the state. He is a trained Mayan priest despite the fact he is Latino and not Mayan. He is committed to improving the lives of the indigenous people; most of whom live on less than $1 a day. It would be in the US’s best interest to invest time and resources to ensure that Colom is successful. That is the least we can do for our transgressions during the 1950s there and the murderous decades that followed.

Guatemala’s Silent Genocide

Guatemala’s New Dawn?

Guatemala’s Challenge

2007 was a good year for me. For some, however… not so much.

Wacky 2007

For most, the modern Christmas has more do to with gift giving and materialism than Jesus Christ. That is a reality. There is an unusual phenomenon going on half way around the world that taps into the secular component of the holiday. Just over a hundred years ago, during what was known as the Boxer Rebellion, Christian missionaries were beheaded due to the threat their western religion had on Chinese traditions. When the cultural revolution under Mao took hold in China fifty years later, the communist state became the religion. Just a couple years ago Christians were forced to practice their faith in private for fear of government reprisals. But China is changing dramatically. In an article in the Christian Science Monitor, Peter Ford explores the emergence of consumer Christmas there.

“…China manufactures over 80 percent of the world’s Christmas decorations.
…Those decorations are increasingly brightening the streets, offices, and homes of China itself, as Chinese young people embrace a foreign festival with growing fervor.”

Christians should not get too excited. Most of those who are buying the decorations or are partaking in gift giving on December 25 do not know the significance of the activities. Some Christians may be somewhat appalled by the wholesale secular nature in the way Chinese society is hijacking the holiday. It seems to be a strange byproduct of the monopoly they have in the manufacture of everything Christmas; from the toys to the decorations and even to the artificial Christmas trees themselves. Who knows, maybe the Chinese will grow into comprehending the true meaning of Christmas in a “back door” kind of way. The Lord does work in mysterious ways, so I’m told.

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