An opinion by Aubrey Matshiqi

I still remember how excited those of us who are black were when a 21-year-old Tiger Woods won the US Masters.

The jubilation had less to do with his age than the fact that many thought he was the first black man to win a golf Major. The joy turned to anger and disappointment when Woods informed the world that the proportion of blackness in his blood was so minute that it could not credibly be claimed that a black man had won a Major golf tournament.

It seems we did not learn much from the Woods experience because many black Africans are now as excited about Barack Obama becoming the first black man to represent a major political party in the race for the US presidency. Because of this remarkable achievement, there is an inordinate amount of interest in what Obama will do for Africa. What people are forgetting is the fact that in the term African-American, the word “African” performs an adjectival function. While it may be the case that Obama has a sense of solidarity with the African continent, it may also be the case that, as president, he will turn out to be an American who happens to be black. This has implications for the expectations of African-Americans, black Africans and blacks all over the world who may be labouring under the delusion that the US presidential race has given birth to a Messiah.

What are these expectations about? They, in some ways, are about the late civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, who dreamt of a future in which his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”. This is the postracial vision that Obama or his candidacy represents and promises. In positioning himself as a postracial candidate, is he not at odds with the expectations of global blackness?

I ask this question because these expectations may be about “self-representation” and how black people want to be represented. The expectations may be about “collective memory” — the past and not the future. In the book The Holocaust and Collective Memory, historian Peter Novick argues that “collective memory … is understood to express some eternal or essential truth about the group — usually tragic. A memory, once established, comes to define that eternal truth, and, along with it, an eternal identity, for the members of the group.”

IT IS in this context that the issue of victimhood arises. Black people find unity in, and their consciousness is significantly shaped by their history of slavery, colonialism, apartheid and other forms of racial oppression. To the extent that blackness has become synonymous with poor social, political and economic conditions, Obama represents amelioration and the need to break the coincidence between collective memory and what for many is the invocation of that memory not by the mind but by the material conditions which still define blackness. In other words, Obama represents the tension between the victim and postvictim dimensions of blackness.

Hopefully, he is not going to become the embodiment of the awkward dance between victimhood and denialism. If his postracial candidacy succeeds in creating a multiracial movement for the election of a black man as president of the US, blacks in SA will have to confront a challenging question.

When will the time come when the black majority is prepared to judge leaders not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their leadership qualities? Are the racialised collective memories of South Africans going to define us eternally? I hope not.

If Obama is elected US president, I hope it will teach us that it is possible to define national and personal interests, and pursue social, political and economic goals in terms broader than our narrow and historically constructed identities. I have a feeling this is something we will achieve, but we should not expect Obama not to be an American.

*Matshiqi is a senior associate political analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies.