Republicans are ever so quick to criticize Barack Obama as playing the race card any time he has cause to talk about race. They enjoy quoting him out of context to make him look bad. I say they are wrong to do that because everybody plays the race card including the new Pope who never misses a chance to remind the world to re-examine their consciences like he just did to the world summit of businessmen taking place in Davos Switzerland. The Pope is playing the race card for the right reasons while the Republicans are playing it for the wrong reasons if you see what I see.
Republicans are ever so quick to criticize Barack Obama as playing the race card any time he has cause to talk about race. They enjoy quoting him out of context to make him look bad. I say they are wrong to do that because everybody plays the race card including the new Pope who never misses a chance to remind the world to re-examine their consciences like he just did to the world summit of businessmen taking place in Davos Switzerland. The Pope is playing the race card for the right reasons while the Republicans are playing it for the wrong reasons if you see what I see.
Playing the race card is condemned same as homophobia and an attempt to divide America on racial grounds when the game is played by any black or colored person. The same game is eulogized as patriotism, however, when it is played by a white person because Republicans are scared to death about the fast pace of incipient demographic change in America. They are aware that Democracy's foundational pillar which is based on one man one vote and because they now know their chances of ever winning the White House any time soon is zero because voting, the central pillar of Democracy is a game of numbers. I have just one vote like Donald Trump or Bill Gates the world's richest man. If the poor and the under-privileged in America gang up to vote their interest in any election, Republicans will be history. I will play the race card if only to remind the Republicans they are wrong, and decidedly so to never see anything right in the first black President in the leader of the Free World.
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Unto God be the glory for letting the first black President serve the same two terms of a glorious presidency the whole world is going to forever cherish long after the charismatic young man has left office. The God-at -work–factor in Obama’s 2 time victory is one observation I have often written about because it renews my faith in God and it puts me on the same pedestal with Pope Francis who agrees more with President Obama than he disagrees with him on most of the issues the Republicans criticize him for. The Almighty God we serve judges a man not for his skin color but by his faith, his good work and strength of character as brilliantly amplified in Martin Luther’s greatest speech when he proclaimed like a Pope that he has a dream.
That dream suggests that slave owners and slaves and their off-spring will one day sit at the same table of brotherhood to break bread. Martin Luther King had stopped short of predicting that the landlord to the Lincoln bed room and the White House which should have been called the Peoples’ House would, for 8 years, be the official residence of a black couple and their two young girls. The famous couple (Barack and Michelle) have proved by their accomplishments and God-given talents and brain power that they could match any of their white rivals for a right to occupy the oval office and the highest seat of power in the world. God is truly awesome.” Allahu Aqbar Kum Faya Kum”. Many Republicans never believed they would ever live to see a first black President. They are stunned by the experience and they are doing everything in their power to de-legitimize him but God is saying no and doing everything to uphold him because he did not put himself in the White House.
The Martin Luther King prediction has become manifest in so many ways. I see it come to fruition the day Obama was first sworn into office and at his second inauguration. I see it manifest itself at the annual dinner of News correspondents and top notch journalists usually hosted by the President. The journalists don’t just come to dinner they all come there at the invitation of a black President and his amazing wife. The couple both attended the highest citadel of learning in America by the special grace of God. Mr. President was a product of Columbia and Harvard, and his wife, one the smartest American first ladies is a product of Princeton and Harvard. It doesn’t get any better than that if you ask me. I see it when Obama’s position as leader of the world was acknowledged when he became the first leader to speak for the whole world and not just for America at the burial of Nelson Mandela the first black President of South Africa and one of the greatest world leaders of the 21st century.
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I, for one, if I were Obama would play the race card any day if I must, and regardless of how the Republicans try to use that to blackmail me. Obama’s negritude and blackness are the greatest asset going for him if you ask me. You invoke or mobilize your greatest asset if you have to. You don't play to your weak point. For the Republicans to expect President Obama to distance himself from his own identity and people when it serves him the best is not only hypocritical but wicked. If the Republicans would be honest, they would realize that Barack Obama has demonstrated a lot of restraint and a high sense of responsibility that his white predecessors in that office could not match in talking about race as a great communicator. He has taken a lot of insults from whites trying to provoke him so they can blackmail him as the angry black President.
The young President, the conqueror of Osama Bin Laden is one hell of a strong leader carefully chosen by God to lead America at one of the most difficult time in history. He is one black man with a difference. Check it out. The man does not have a single skeleton in his cupboard nor any criminal record or scandal in his past the Republicans could have effectively used to destroy him. They do not wish him well and they don’t want him to succeed and understandably so, because if Obama wins, the Republicans lose and if he looks good they look bad. They have thrown everything at him including the kitchen sink but they have failed because God is with the man. He has done pretty good as President and he has nothing to be ashamed of.
We all must understand that racism is as old as mankind itself. Every body plays the race card including our Lord and master Jesus Christ the son of God as confirmed in the Holy scriptures.The Jews and Hebrews never pass up a chance to differentiate themselves from the Philistines or the uncircumcised Egyptians. They call themselves covenant people and the chosen people. When Jesus decided to drive out from the temple or synagogue those who have turned his father’s house into a market place, I believe he was playing the race card without saying it too loud. I admit there were instances in the Bible when Jesus actually showed he did not discriminate between Jews and Gentiles or between the righteous and the sinners when he asked anybody who has never sinned or committed adultery to throw the first stone at the woman. When he found that not a single stone was thrown, he told the poor woman her sins were forgiven and she should go, and sin no more. I see nothing sinful or outrageous about playing the race card if you have to. I will do it any day if only to remind the Republicans they are wrong.
The real villains and hypocrites are the Republicans who don’t want to see anything good in Obama because he is black. The man got the Nobel Peace award within a year in office. That was an award that many had spent a life time trying to get as reminded us by Kelly Clarkson in her once-in-a-life time country-music album. Some critics don’t like the idea of a black President because they think that good things can only come from the white race. The world now knows that is not the case when you remember the avatars of life like the great Mahatma Ghandhi, the great Martin Luther king not to talk of Nelson Madiba Mandela who taught the world the black man can hold his own anywhere in the world by his willingness to forgive his Apartheid oppressors and tormentors who jailed him for 27 years while persecuting and harassing his wife and all those opposed to Apartheid regime.The man went ahead to create a mufti-racial South Africa where he was out to not just outlaw white domination but black domination as well. I am surprised Mandela did not extend the same forgiving spirit to his wife of 30 years. He, nonetheless, still made the black race proud by his principled stand on liberating his country and his people despite all the deprivations he has had to endure. Obama is another Mandela in the making.
Racism another term for playing the race card is as old as Humanity and most people play it, I will submit. Where we find a man in power like Obama playing the race card in a positive way, we have to be grateful to God for giving us such a leader. Even in the African continent which is predominantly populated by blacks you will be amazed about how Racism has taken a toll on the very fabric of our nature in that continent. If you are aware of the animosity that exists between the three major tribes of Nigeria namely the Hausa/Fulani in the North, the Igbos in the South East and the Yorubas in the Southwest not to talk of minorities in between like the Edos, the Kalabari, the Efiks, the Ogonis, the Urhobos and the Itsekiris, you will be amazed about the collateral damages Racism has done and still continues to do in a country where every store front is a Church.
I recall growing up in Akure where the Hausas were generally called “Gambari” and despised by the rank and file of our people. The same thing goes with the Igbos often ridiculed as “Yanmirin” or “Obioma” or the Ebiras who are ridiculed as “Egbira we san wo aja.” or “Ota mi de, ada mi da” and the funny way they speak Yoruba Language. We hold the same views of Urhobos or the Egberis and the Ijaws or the Isokos who some of us in Akure used to consider as inferior to us. Till tomorrow Yorubas who live in Ijebu, Abeokuta and Lagos derive some pleasure in ridiculing many of us from Ondo and Ekiti states and towns as “Ara Oke” who are less civilized than they are.
The first time I was posted to the Federal Ministry of Finance as an Assistant Secretary to serve under Abdul Azeez Attah, an Ebira man and the first son of Ohinoyi, the Atta of Igbira Land. I couldn’t help but remember how we used to ridicule Egbira farm laborers who came to Akure in droves to engage in farming in the late 50s. That was before the creation of states in Nigeria.
Racism in Nigeria remains pervasive till tomorrow. The Kanuris and the Hausas are being treated as inferior to the Fulanis the ruling class. Here was a country colonized by the British treating their fellow Nigerians as second class citizens. The British think of all of the ethnic groups and tribes in Nigeria as barbaric and uncivilized animists before Christianity came to our shores. The Muslims in the North still refer to Nigerians in the South as “Kaferis” or unbelievers while the Yorubas refer to the “Gambaris” in the North as sub human and cattle "Almajeris" and pan handlers begging for alms (Sadaka Sabo Da Allah). There was a particular ethnic group in the North called the Shashaws who went about their business naked until Awolowo came to their rescue by bringing clothing to them in the late 50s. I am not making up these stories. Most students of history would remember what I am saying here.
Racism has been a scourge in the African continent for as long as any of us can remember. The white Republicans panic any time Obama talks about race forgetting that they are far more guilty of Racism than Obama but they are always in denial. Can you imagine some Republicans now claiming that Martin Luther King was a Republican? How could that be when all the causes Martin Luther King ever championed were causes the Republicans are still fighting to subvert or undermine till now? They hated Martin Luther King as much as they hate Obama now. As a matter of fact, Martin Luther King was murdered in cold blood for canvassing such views and by encouraging passive resistance and civil disobedience like we saw in the several marches he personally led before his assassination. Martin Luther King was saying pretty much the same thing Obama is being criticized for today by the same Republicans.
Republicans were the greatest hypocrites who would not even agree that Obama has some white blood in him because his mother and his grand father and great great grandfather and grand mother on his mother side were all Caucasian. They argue that if anyone has only one drop of a black blood in him or her, he or she is automatically classified as black. But God Almighty who knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end had chosen to find for America a black President that is neither white nor black. His father came from the highly despised Luo tribe in Kenya and his mother came from Kansas.
His father earned a Ph.D in Economics from Harvard while his mother earned a Ph.D in Anthropology. Little wonder that the boy has turned out a genius. He could actually claim to be both black and white for purposes of argument. He has always chosen to be above the fray because the whites like Rush Limbaugh and whites who think like him, would never accept him as a white man not even as a hybrid of the two races. They say he is black, and because he is black, they do not expect anything good to come from him but the good Lord in his amazing grace does not think like the Republicans. That is probably why the Republican blackmail has not stopped Obama from being the best President he could ever be.
Whether the Republicans like it or not, God has made Obama his anointed and the elect of God. He had coasted to victory in 2 presidential elections in America because the God Almighty is with him every step of the way. Those fighting him are fighting God because he did not put himself in the White House. The God of Abraham and Jacob put him there and no weapons fashioned against him shall prevail.
I will play the race card any day if that is the biggest card I have and so should Obama. Why not if not?.
I rest my case.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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