Sunday, June 28, 2009

Non-White Conservatives Disappoint Yet Again

Article at American Thinker By Nigerian Second Generation Immigrant


Just as I think a non-white conservative has some promise, then he takes the typical "blame whites for my, and my people's condition" attitude.

Look at Colin Powell who actually endorsed Obama, and Condoleezza Rice who was running around the world equating Palestinians with American blacks.

Here is another one. While browsing through American Thinker articles list, I came across this: "Obama, the African Colonial" by L.E. Ikenga. The writer sounds West African, and the title original.

I clicked to read further.

It starts out quite well, with the writer making a case for Obama's African (rather than African American) psyche, which she says he adopted from his father, and evidence of which she found in his book Dreams From My father.

She calls him a product of Africa's colonialism, where such men as Obama Sr., and Obama himself, instead of finding their own African heritage, adopt Western "isms" in order to structure their societies and countries. Ikenga writes that such men "[use] socialist themes as a way to disguise [their] true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the 'will of the people' becomes completely irrelevant."

This is where Ikenga becomes the typical non-Western basher of Western ideals. She gives a 6-point "reminder" on what the European imperialist (the British in the case of her ancestral Nigeria) did to "[destroy] of all forms of democracy." They all fit in the classic: Europeans are the oppressors and destroyers of African culture, which is the reason the continent is in this quagmire.

She then equates these points with how Obama is destroying America. Her exact words are: "Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you [Americans]."

It is a clever juxtaposition of Obama's truly destructive ideologies with a system (European Imperialism) which actually brought democracy, stable system of governance and nationhood to many African countries. That some of these countries couldn't benefit from these systems is hardly the fault of the "imperialists."

Because many people have reading and comprehension deficiencies, and because they are so partisan (anything bad that is written about Obama is surely good), they got pulled into this typical Western-bashing article. Only a few comments of the 160 so far criticized Ikenga. Here is one lucid comment:
Posted by: Bruce Thompson
Jun 25, 05:40 AM

Much of what [Ms. Ikenga] complains about regarding the British would be called their desire to "assimilate" various tribal groups into a cohesive national identity. Where would India's "Untouchables" be without British colonization of India? Great Britain was the first nation to ban slavery. Great Britain built a nation called Rhodesia, which the native, tribal Africans have destroyed under the name Zimbabwe and it's "President" Robert Mugabe.

As to the Igbo tribe, Americans of a certain age will remember the pictures of starving children from the short lived nation of Biafra.

So Ms. Ikenga, please do not lecture us, the Americans, about the benefits of African tribal societies.