There are those who are profoundly disappointed with US President Barack Obama for his apparent lack of contribution to African-American upliftment. But, for the realist amongst us, this apparent lack of contribution to ‘blackness’ is not a cause for despair.

Realists acknowledge Obama’s accomplishments, but also recognise the limits to his presidential powers. But importantly, realists also recognise the opposition that he faced in getting many of his proposals accepted.

Superman, but not omnipotent

People like to cast the president of the USA as a superhero. Yes, he sits on an awesome arsenal of weapons. He has the United States Bullion Depository (aka) Fort Knox, Kentucky, with its gold reserves of billions of dollars that he and Congress could call on if necessary. He has the Federal Reserve Bank, the most powerful financial institution in the world, that controls trillions of dollars which direct the economy. But, despite such fabulous resources under his will, there are limits to what even the president of the United States of America can do.

Now, not wishing to draw out the race card, there is even less a president who happens to be a man of colour can achieve, given the fact that he represents an ethnic or racial minority in a predominantly white Anglo-Saxon society.

Frustrations

Obama himself hinted at these frustrations in getting many of his policies through, especially as a president who is perceived as having ‘liberal’ leanings.

So could he, and should he have done more to improve African-American conditions in the US? Of course, he should have.

But, although he made tentative efforts to do that, he was on one hand tarred with the ‘racist’ brush by significant white critics, and on the other hand seen as being too timid by blacks who wanted him to take more decisive actions on issues, say, dealing with police mistreatment of black people, or on criminal justice matters.

Dr King

However, one also has to consider other African-Americans who have gone before him; not as presidents — he is the first — but as important spokespersons for African-Americans; how they were vilified by being cast as trouble-makers, rabble-rousers, etc.

Think of, for example, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. It was after Dr King’s assassination that he achieved heroic status for his efforts to gain African-Americans some semblance of social and civil justice. But this enterprise that he started is left incomplete.

So, in short, although there are those who are profoundly disappointed with Obama for his apparent lack of meaningful contribution to African-American upliftment, there ought not to be any sense of betrayal on their part.

Voice in the wilderness

Why? For given the ‘Realpolitik’ of the situation, where a solitary sentinel; a man of mixed-race ancestry, who in not only trying to save America from its self-destructive tendencies: to prosecute wars, and over-spend, and so forth; but, at the same time, simultaneously trying to save his beleaguered minority group, this was a task that only a dictator might have been able to accomplish at a cost of civil upheavals. Obama is no dictator, nor could he be one given the diffusion of power bases in the USA.

Visionary and post-racial man

If Obama is seen to have lacked a sense of genuine empathy with the economic and social conditions of disadvantaged African-Americans, and thus refused to give any special treatment to them; it is perhaps because of the realisation, on his part, that those African-Americans, and non-African-Americans who have sought to help people of colour, are often faced with abuse and are accused of ‘reversed racism’.

So it seems then that Obama in not wishing to be tagged with such a xenophobic label, and a bigoted lover of black people deftly trod around this problem. But I think that this perception is less the reality. For it seems more likely that Obama is a post-racial man.

The American Dream

In fact, Obama envisions America not in terms of black, white, red, or blue, and other such racial or colour labels — America is ethnically and culturally diverse, of course — but a nation where, despite or in spite of race, class, ethnicity, gender, class, or religious affiliations people should not be precluded or excluded from the ‘American Dream’ — so long as they wish to be a part of this experiment.

Part of this American Dream entails ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, and viewed through the visionary lenses of Obama, such a dream is no longer restricted to this or that particular group, but the dream encompasses all people in the USA. So each group should rise up and seize this dream, this enlightenment.

George S Garwood is a Jamaican author and adjunct professor of world religions in Florida, USA. Send comments to the Observer ormerleneg@yahoo.com.