Obama’s victory reflects the power of diversity

Obama’s victory reflects the power of diversity
Published on June 8, 2008, 12:00 am
Barack Obama is the world-man of the moment. His win as Democratic Party nominee has been splashed widely in the world news headlines as the maker of a world history, especially in US.
His victory is being celebrated all over. Indeed he has become more than a Democrat candidate but the world candidate of the year.
He is a true testimony of the Martin Luther King’s dream and a perfect heir of Malcolm X struggle of an American society void of racism.
His primaries campaigns showed that politics need not be marketed by politicians, packaged by pollsters and pundits and that politics can be a moral arena where people come together to find common ground. His candidature has expanded, unified, directed, and inspired the entire world towards the noble mission of identity with the mission to teach the illiterate; to provide jobs for the jobless; and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.
It holds a greater lesson; that we need not to talk tough, wage war on nations and play race or tribal cards on humanity to gain our political aspiration. It shows that we can stand on truth and be different if need be as long as we can do that, based on our inner believe for the common good of all.
We have watched of a good mind fast at work, with steel nerves, guiding his campaign out of the competitive and financially challenging field without appeal to the worst in us. We have seen his toughness and tenacity.
He has set a lasting tower of hope as a testament to the struggles of those who have gone before him; those to come after him; as a tribute to the endurance, the patience, the courage of the world forefathers and mothers especially from the black community; as an assurance that their prayers are being answered, their work, wish and suffering has not been in vain, and, that hope is eternal.
Obama’s win reveals of a leader who acknowledges that a generation may not choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born.
But above all, it shows that this leadership must be that of intangible combination of gifts, the discipline, information, circumstance, courage, timing, will and divine inspiration.
This is the kind of leadership that Obama has offered and believes in to mitigate the misery of America and that of the world.
Obama took into greater consideration that America is not like a blanket; of one piece of unbroken cloth, the same colour, the same texture, and the same size. America, and by extension the world, is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colours, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread – the true picture of the beauty of diversity.
The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt and so is the world. He has proved that he talked and appealed to all these groups and he stands to be their voice.
So the groups have spoken back, the delegates made their decision and the dice is now cast in favour of the son of African father and American mother. The American society has come forward to reconcile with the world that as much as they have been preaching democracy, a time has come for them to put it into practice. They have spoken and acted in the will and creed of their constitution.
Soon he (Obama) would travel the second tavern of journey — that of ensuring that he takes head on and brings into the rubble the fame and frame of the republican candidate, Senator John McCain.
The world now holds its breath with hope that the end will tally with the beginning. Obama’s candidature will go beyond the nomination but through to election. The wind of change is blowing and if the time has come, so be it. No one will stop this positive menace from clinching the coveted White House prize – that of presidency.
The campaigns were great; full of speeches and wisdom, energy and optimism and the world must learn that change lies in diversity. Time will tell, but the battle ahead is now between those for change and those against it.
The battle of course has surpassed the walls of blacks and whites – it is now at the level of the young and the old.
Oulu GPO,
Nairobi.