M2RB: PSA: Don't Use The "N" Word
Don't Use The "N" Word
“My image of Onyango, faint as it was, had always been of an
autocratic man—a cruel man, perhaps. But I had also imagined him an
independent man, a man of his people, opposed to white rule… What Granny
had told us scrambled that image completely, causing ugly words to
flash across my mind. Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger.”
In one of the most remarkable passages in Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,"
he uses the terms "collaborator," "Uncle Tom," and "House nigger" to
describe someone he detests. That someone, it turns out, is his own
grandfather! We have a striking phenomenon here: the first African
American president using the N-word, and to refer to his own
grandfather! Ordinarily this would be occasion for massive comment and
analysis, but if there has been any, I am not aware of it.
So what could possibly cause the president to describe his own
grandfather in this appalling way? The answer, it turns out, provides an
important insight into Obama’s character. The president is not the
healer and unifier that he said he was four years ago. Rather, he views
people who disagree with him—including members of his own family—in
terms of ideological kinship or betrayal. And by Obama’s standard, even
his own grandfather is an ideological sellout deserving of insults and
abuse.
President Obama is not the healer and unifier that he said he was. Rather, he views people who disagree with him—including members of his own family—in terms of ideological kinship or betrayal.
Onyango Obama is an odd candidate for such abuse, because he was
himself a victim of colonialism. In fact, he suffered far more under
colonialism than did Barack Obama Sr.
Onyango Obama was born around 1895, the very year the British
established Kenya as a "protectorate." By the time Onyango was 25, Kenya
was an official British colony. Onyango was a house servant in Nairobi.
He had to carry around identity papers that included evaluations of his
previous domestic work. During World War I, Onyango enlisted to help
the British who were fighting the Germans in East Africa. He worked for
several years with road crews in the former German protectorate of
Tanganyika, which was taken over by the British. Onyango also served
during World War II in a British regiment called the King's African
Rifles; in this capacity he traveled to Europe and Asia.
During the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s he was detained in an
internment camp, along with tens of thousands of other Kenyan males. He
was there for approximately six months and, according to his wife Sarah,
endured torture at the hands of British soldiers. (This account has
been disputed by David Maraniss in a recent biography, but Maraniss
provides no proof that Sarah Obama's account if false.) Eventually
Onyango was released, lice-ridden and looking aged.
So far we might expect that Onyango would have his grandson's full sympathy, and this indeed was the case.
It is what followed in Onyango's life that got Barack Obama thinking
very differently about him. His grandfather, Obama learned, was an
Anglophile. No, he did not consider the British to be inherently
superior to the Africans, and he did not approve of British mistreatment
of Africans. But at the same time, he performed admirable service for
the British, as the evaluations on his identity card showed. One
employer said Onyango "performed his duties as personal boy with
admirable diligence." Another commented, "He can read and write English
and follows any recipes....Apart from other things his pastries are
excellent."
Throughout his life, Onyango identified the British with civilization
and progress. He had grown up in an Iron Age society. He saw what
British rule meant in Kenya and around the world.
Onyango had the good fortune to study English at an English mission
school, and consequently was one of the first in his tribe to learn to
read and write in a Western language, something in which he took great
pride. He grew skeptical of shamans and witch doctors at a time when
such figures were highly revered in his village. He took regular baths
and became obsessed with cleanliness, not permitting cows to come near
his hut because they brought insects with them.
Obama's brother Roy told him that their grandfather "would make you
sit at the table for dinner, and served the food on china, like an
Englishman." Onyango was considered the first Luo tribesman to discard
traditional garb and wear Western clothing, not just pants and a shirt
but, more controversially, shoes. One of Onyango's prize possessions was
an RCA gramophone. Onyango permitted only his closest friends to come
and listen, but they had to sit outside the gate of his compound, and no
one was permitted to touch the gramophone. In keeping with Luo
tradition, Onyango as a young man had his six front teeth removed; later
he adopted the Western solution of getting dentures.
From Obama's point of view, Onyango's unforgivable heresy was not
merely his admiration of the British, but how this man contemplated the
differences between Western and African ways.
When Onyango returned home to his village after his confinement, he
began to ponder the question of how the British, from their tiny island,
were able to conquer so much of the globe. Here I must quote Sarah
Obama on her husband: "He respected the white man for his power, for his
machines and weapons and the way he organized his life. He would say
that the white man was always improving himself, whereas the African was
suspicious of anything new."
According to Sarah Obama, Onyango admired three things about the
British. The first was their level of knowledge. "To him knowledge was
the source of all the white man's power," she said. Onyango also
considered the British to be generally fair-minded. "If you do a good
job for the white man," he liked to say, "then he will always pay you
well."
Finally, Onyango unfavorably contrasted African organization with
Western organization. “How can the African defeat the white man,”
Onyango would tell his son Barack Sr., “when he cannot even make his own
bicycle?” In Onyango's words, "The white man alone is like an ant. He
can be easily crushed. But like an ant, the white man works together.
His nation, his business--these things are more important to him than
himself....Black men are not like this. Even the most foolish black man
thinks he knows better than the white man. That is why the black man
will always lose."
Onyango's favorable disposition toward the West, provoked in Obama a
visceral reaction. Obama reports that as he heard Onyango's views,
"I...felt betrayed." Of Onyango he says, "I had imagined him an
independent man, a man of his people, opposed to white rule....What
Granny had told us scrambled that image completely, causing ugly words
to flash across my mind. Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger." And
thus it came to be that Obama came to view his own grandfather as an
ideological sellout, and to write him off with the N-word.
We see here a defining Obama trait which contrasts dramatically with the image he portrayed in 2008.
In reality, Obama is a polarizing figure who divides the world into
the good guys and the evil guys. For him, the latter group is simply the
enemy. Today that group is Mitt Romney and the Republicans, but it is
instructive to see that the first of these villains, from Obama's point
of view, was his own grandfather.
Dinesh D'Souza, narrator and co-director of the film "2016: Obama's America," is the author of the bestselling new book "Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream." For more visit www.DineshDSouza.com.
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