Today marks the first full day of command for our new President, Barack Obama: Hail to the Chief! Mr. Obama's election has been lauded by many the world over as a triumph of intellectualism over ignorance, of decency over dogma, and of multiculturalism over the antiquated face of homogenized America. For, you see, Barack Obama happens to be America's first black President. He just also happens to be our 44th African-American President. Let me explain...
6 million years ago Orrorin tugenensis roamed the tropical woodlands of eastern Africa. Tugenensis was a bipedal ape, and, putatively, the first hominid: your ancestor, mine, and Mr. Obama's. From the humble origins of this chimp-like, quasi-arboreal primate, a whole line of world conquering apes descended. Austrolopithicus afarensis, Homo habilis, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapien; though the progression was not a linear one, the lineage is undeniable. Homo sapien, the world-spanning super-adapter, has strong roots on the dark continent, a fact reinforced not only by fossil records, but by genealogical analysis as well. From Africa, our ancestors (possibly ergastor, possibly later species) began their great diaspora, first to the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent, then into Southeast Asia, and up into the Medditeranian. From there, hominids spread into Northern Europe, China, Siberia, and the Russian interior, swaddled in skins, with the grease of mammoth, reindeer, and rhino ribs on their lips. They launched primitive watercraft out into Oceana, and farther into the Pacific. In the grip of global ice age, men crossed the Bering Sea into the Americas, following the coast south, trailing game into the wilderness of the virgin continents. Finally, Europeans sailed west to North America (as well as across the rest of the globe) in what would amount to the last and most vicious phase of humanity's global dispersion. So what does it all mean?
Well, ultimately it all comes down to semantics. If I, as a citizen of the United States of America, believe the 'out of Africa' theory of human evolution, and I quite clearly do, then I can indirectly trace my own ancestry back to Africa. Ergo, African-American. My vintage may be somewhat more venerable than that of a Guinean or Nigerian immigrant, but what's a few hundred thousand years, more or less? I may be as white as a sheet, pasty even (due to a multi -millennial over-stop in Ireland and Lithuania) but genetically, I am nearly identical to my Nubian brothers. Sure, the melanin in my skin may have kicked it down a notch, and my stomach has adapted to process lactose a little better (thankyouthankyouthankyou), but really, I'm separated from my African forebears only by superficial differences. At the end of the day, even the concept of race is being eroded by new research into our shared human genome. Black, white, asian: we're all African under the skin, be it African-American, African-Irish-American, African-French-Hatian-American, or any one of the multitude of combinations that contribute to our national diversity.
I don't delve into this subject to be glib. And I certainly don't seek to diminish President Obama's victory; the history of blacks in America is long and sordid, and Obama's success represents a very real triumph over years of inequality and segregation. If anything, I bring up this topic because now is the perfect time to start addressing racial issues at their deepest and most basic level, now when the dialogue can be so immediate and open. Obama may be our first black President, physically, culturally, but he's not our first African-American leader, just the first openly, obviously so. In truth, he's African-American, I'm African-American, and if you're reading this as a US citizen, you're African-American. We're all parts of the same chain of humanity, separated only by visible, largely arbitrary divisions, linked by so much more. We're all genetic, anthropological brothers and sisters, and the pride of Obama's Presidency shouldn't be the pride of one race, one culture, or one creed, but the pride of all men and women for their fellow man. So come on with me now: say it loud, say it proud, I'm African-American and I'm proud!
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