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- Oct 16, 2014
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President Obama was in the UK on a state visit during which he has taken the opportunity to urge voters not to elect to leave the European Union in a referendum due in June.
Barack Obama is “part-Kenyan” and has an “ancestral” hatred of Britain. Those words by Boris Johnson (pictured), the mayor of London, have triggered a considerable storm.
President Obama was in the UK on a state visit during which he has taken the opportunity to urge voters not to elect to leave the European Union in a referendum due in June.
President Obama’s intervention has been greeted with fury by those supporting the “leave” campaign, which is led by Boris Johnson.
Racial card
Rather than outline the reasons why they consider Obama to be wrong, those campaigning to pull Britain out of the EU have instead reached for the racial card.
Here is the mystery of the Obama presidency. Why do so many of his critics consider it an insult merely to refer to him as a Kenyan?
Obama is very proud of his Kenyan heritage. His first book is a lyrical celebration of his roots.
He was smart enough not to visit the country in his first term because those who believe the false theory that he was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to be president would have had a field day going into a tricky election.
But when he finally arrived as president last year, he was unabashed in his embrace of the land of his father.
“This is personal for me. There’s a reason why my name is Barack Hussein Obama. My father came from these parts, and I have family and relatives here. And in my visits over the years, walking the streets of Nairobi, I’ve come to know the warmth and the spirit of the Kenyan people.”
Commentators in the West tend to tread very carefully on these issues, because the whole issue of racism is considered a powder keg and discussing it is treated as delicately a task as walking on egg-shells.
But the inescapable fact is one of the main reasons Obama annoys so many of his opponents is because he is irritatingly successful, which undermines many dearly held assumptions about race.
This is a man with a “first-class intellect to go with a first-class temperament, with (a) pitch-perfect sense of humour,” in the words of Timothy Egan of the New York Times.
Far from failing as president, he has turned around the American economy bringing down unemployment levels, creating 14 million jobs, delivering healthcare to 17 million people and inking historic deals to end the senseless isolation of Cuba and Iran.
His opponents, though, struggle to see beyond his skin colour and his Kenyan roots and there are few characters with a more ingrained sense of their own superiority than upper class Britons.
The colonial settlers who came to Kenya in the early years of the last century were overwhelmingly drawn from the upper classes and they shared Winston Churchill’s view that they were on a civilising mission and that “barbarous savages” and “brutish children” (his precise words) should be grateful to lose their land in return for becoming part of the British Empire.
They should “willingly, naturally, gratefully include themselves within the golden circle of an ancient crown”, Churchill felt.
From India to Malaysia to Burma and, very bloodily, in Kenya, the “natives” had other ideas and resisted.
The British, “imbued with the conviction that the British ruling class, both at home and overseas, could do no wrong”, still struggle to overcome their colonial hangover or even to understand that those outside London do not share their views that they should be governed in perpetuity by upper class Britons.
“The problem (with Africa) is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more,” Boris Johnson wrote in The Spectator magazine in 2002.
How irritating it must be, therefore, for Johnson, an Eton-educated politician with outsize ambitions, to see Obama, a son of the continent he feels the British should rule over without end, come into the UK and give his team a public ticking off.
While Obama’s opponents including the London mayor and his lookalike across the Atlantic Donald Trump have reached into the gutter to attack the American president, Obama reacts with humour and unflappable poise.
His decisions such as the call to replace a bust of Churchill in his office in the White House with one of Martin Luther King Jr are calculated moves which show that Obama knows his history but prefers not to too loudly rake over the details.
Hawks like Hillary
Obama has made his fair share of mistakes, including allowing hawks like Hillary Clinton to lead him into the disastrous war in Libya.
But overall, history will judge him a considerable success. Which is a source of great discomfort to racists like Boris Johnson whose world view is keenly challenged by Obama’s success.
Source: DailyMail
Barack Obama is “part-Kenyan” and has an “ancestral” hatred of Britain. Those words by Boris Johnson (pictured), the mayor of London, have triggered a considerable storm.
President Obama was in the UK on a state visit during which he has taken the opportunity to urge voters not to elect to leave the European Union in a referendum due in June.
President Obama’s intervention has been greeted with fury by those supporting the “leave” campaign, which is led by Boris Johnson.
Racial card
Rather than outline the reasons why they consider Obama to be wrong, those campaigning to pull Britain out of the EU have instead reached for the racial card.
Here is the mystery of the Obama presidency. Why do so many of his critics consider it an insult merely to refer to him as a Kenyan?
Obama is very proud of his Kenyan heritage. His first book is a lyrical celebration of his roots.
He was smart enough not to visit the country in his first term because those who believe the false theory that he was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to be president would have had a field day going into a tricky election.
But when he finally arrived as president last year, he was unabashed in his embrace of the land of his father.
“This is personal for me. There’s a reason why my name is Barack Hussein Obama. My father came from these parts, and I have family and relatives here. And in my visits over the years, walking the streets of Nairobi, I’ve come to know the warmth and the spirit of the Kenyan people.”
Commentators in the West tend to tread very carefully on these issues, because the whole issue of racism is considered a powder keg and discussing it is treated as delicately a task as walking on egg-shells.
But the inescapable fact is one of the main reasons Obama annoys so many of his opponents is because he is irritatingly successful, which undermines many dearly held assumptions about race.
This is a man with a “first-class intellect to go with a first-class temperament, with (a) pitch-perfect sense of humour,” in the words of Timothy Egan of the New York Times.
Far from failing as president, he has turned around the American economy bringing down unemployment levels, creating 14 million jobs, delivering healthcare to 17 million people and inking historic deals to end the senseless isolation of Cuba and Iran.
His opponents, though, struggle to see beyond his skin colour and his Kenyan roots and there are few characters with a more ingrained sense of their own superiority than upper class Britons.
The colonial settlers who came to Kenya in the early years of the last century were overwhelmingly drawn from the upper classes and they shared Winston Churchill’s view that they were on a civilising mission and that “barbarous savages” and “brutish children” (his precise words) should be grateful to lose their land in return for becoming part of the British Empire.
They should “willingly, naturally, gratefully include themselves within the golden circle of an ancient crown”, Churchill felt.
From India to Malaysia to Burma and, very bloodily, in Kenya, the “natives” had other ideas and resisted.
The British, “imbued with the conviction that the British ruling class, both at home and overseas, could do no wrong”, still struggle to overcome their colonial hangover or even to understand that those outside London do not share their views that they should be governed in perpetuity by upper class Britons.
“The problem (with Africa) is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more,” Boris Johnson wrote in The Spectator magazine in 2002.
How irritating it must be, therefore, for Johnson, an Eton-educated politician with outsize ambitions, to see Obama, a son of the continent he feels the British should rule over without end, come into the UK and give his team a public ticking off.
While Obama’s opponents including the London mayor and his lookalike across the Atlantic Donald Trump have reached into the gutter to attack the American president, Obama reacts with humour and unflappable poise.
His decisions such as the call to replace a bust of Churchill in his office in the White House with one of Martin Luther King Jr are calculated moves which show that Obama knows his history but prefers not to too loudly rake over the details.
Hawks like Hillary
Obama has made his fair share of mistakes, including allowing hawks like Hillary Clinton to lead him into the disastrous war in Libya.
But overall, history will judge him a considerable success. Which is a source of great discomfort to racists like Boris Johnson whose world view is keenly challenged by Obama’s success.
Source: DailyMail
