Thu 5 Jun 2008
A little more than 12 years ago I started my American life as a graduate student. First few years, my life was a monotonous repetition of long cold nights in my attic den, day long lab and class and daily lunchtime walk to the student center for the 99c taco with a plastic glass of water. This lunchtime break with that taco was my window to the campus life and also indulgence into thinking of the far-away homeland and the left behind life. One of my first observations of the student life in my campus was the ethnic segregation of the students in the students’ center cafeteria. Young white men and women are crowding around one table. Blacks have their own corner. First generation desi students are flocking together, so are the first generation Chinese or the second generation desis.
This picture of the US life was in sharp contrast to the description of US I got from the booklets I received from USIS. I almost memorized the salad bowl versus melting pot concept. I saw all the glossy pictures of smiling blacks, whites, asians are chatting together in a green turf under a tree in the covers of college brochures.
And almost on a daily basis, while walking in cold Michigan or seating in a lonely corner table with the taco, my mind used to revolt. Just an uncontrollable feeling of escaping this self exile, simply running back to home sweet home, back to wild unbound youth. It is a dream of running barefoot, with other boys of the vicinity, crossing rice paddy and tiny streams, through people’s backyard, climbing the imposing wall of the mosque; only to catch the un-tethered kite flying aimlessly in the open sky.
Very recently, I discovered another person who had a stunningly similar urge to revolt. The same uncontrollable desire to throw everything away and running with the tethered kite. Exactly in the same fashion, bare foot, with bunch of bare body boys, through rice paddy, across people’s backyards.
The man with this same dream is Barack Obama. The day he received his acceptance letter from Harvard law school, he suddenly felt like revolting and going back to his boyhood days in Indonesia and start running, barefoot, after the tethered kite, across the rice paddy. [Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Author: Barack Obama]. Mr. Obama has just won a very hard-fought battle for Democratic Party presidential nomination. I support and wish all the best for Mr. Obama. How can I not support Mr. Obama when our spur of a moment dream, although so unlikely for someone living in USA, are so much similar.
I wish a Barack Obama presidency not only because we shared a dream, but also because I see Mr. Obama as a revolutionary. He is a revolutionary who has already stepped, very boldly, the first steps in alleviating the disgusting ethnic segregation in American society I watched with horror during my initial days in USA.
Mr. Obama is the presumptive nominee today because those white young men and women has finally joined hands with those black youth of the next table for one goal. This is a strong statement from young America to leave behind the racial distrust some in the older generation still nurtures deep inside them.
Godspeed, Barack.
[ Cross Posted at rumiahmed.wordpress.com ]
June 5th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Lovely Rumi bhai. I haven’t read the first book but I am finishing up the second one he wrote and the more I read, the more I realize why he is the most exciting politician around. Someone like Obama comes once in a generation. We are truly blessed to witness the rise of someone who has the capacity to literally change the world. I decided to leave America after George Bush got reelected. Obama makes me want to move back there again. I hope I can be in the US when Obama is elected as the President of the United States and witness in person history unfold.
June 5th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I work in the capital of a small western nation with deep historical ties with the US. Troops from this country fought alongside Americans in all major wars since World War II, including the sorry mess that is Iraq. American alliance is the bedrock of this country’s foreign policy. And in this country, the US has a less favourable impression than China - a communist dictatorship. That’s what 8 years of Bush has done to America’s image. And some time ago, when Obama emerged as a senior candidate, I heard this from a senior player in the corridors of power here: Obama’s the kind of president that will make it okay to be pro-American again.
I’m temperamentally more inclined to be cynical of rhetoric and emotions. I understand the politics of triangulation. I take it for granted the reality of deals and coalition building. I look for policy details, backed up by data and charts. In short, I ought to be a Clinton supporter.
And I was. But somewhere along the way in the last few months, I’ve to say that I’ve been won over by the audacity of hope.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I know this is supposed to be about Obama, but has anyone else ever caught NRB feelings about the homeland better than Rumi bhai in this section:
“And almost on a daily basis, while walking in cold Michigan or seating in a lonely corner table with the taco, my mind used to revolt. Just an uncontrollable feeling of escaping this self exile, simply running back to home sweet home, back to wild unbound youth. It is a dream of running barefoot, with other boys of the vicinity, crossing rice paddy and tiny streams, through people’s backyard, climbing the imposing wall of the mosque; only to catch the un-tethered kite flying aimlessly in the open sky.”
I didn’t have paddy fields or streams growing up in 90s Dhaka. But I know this feeling extremely well.
June 5th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
A week is a long time in politics, they say. By that measure, I caught Obama-fever a lifetime ago. These were my initial reactions to his keynote speech at the Boston convention 4 years ago. During this primary season, I’ve occasionally gone back and re-read that old post, and marvelled at how Obama has exceeded even the sky-high hopes he generated on that night. After 4 years, ALL of it has come to pass.
The post was wrong on only one count. He made it in 08 - not 12 or 16.
For those who didn’t witness that first thunderclap of a speech, here it is.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Nuru and Toru in the land of McCain & Obama
AUSTIN — This is a tale of two brothers from Dhaka, Nuru and Toru, who have lived in the United States for some 35 years, but who find themselves on different sides in the current debate on race relations and presidential politics in America and whether or not to elect Obama over McCain for the U.S. presidency.
Toru is an American citizen and Nuru is not. Toru is moved that the African Americans are finally making their headway to the White House. Nuru is socially conservative who believes in majoritarianism and the true structural hierarchy of race as a political prerogative of the predominant white race in America. So he is not at all impressed with the bid of Obama for the White House and feels that Obama is not electable.
Nuru arrived in Ann Arbor in 1960 to study Engineering. Toru followed him a year later to study Computer Science at the University of Texas. When they left Bangladesh, they were almost identical in appearance and attitude. They dressed alike, in punjabis and pants with a Chayanot jhola on their shoulders; they expressed identical views on politics, social issues, love and marriage in the same educated-Dhaka Ekushey type middle-class accent. Both Nuru and Toru would endure their four years in America, secure their degrees, then return to Bangladesh to marry the brides of their mother’s choosing.
Instead, Nuru married a Bangladeshi citizen in 1962 who was getting her degree in Child Psychology at Wayne State University. They soon acquired the labor certifications necessary for the green card of hassle-free residence and employment.
Nuru still lives in Detroit, works in the Pontiac, Mich., General Motors headquarters, and has become nationally recognized for his fuel efficient and aero-dynamic automobile designs. After 36 years as a legal immigrant in this country, Nuru clings passionately to his Bangladeshi citizenship and hopes to go home to Bangladesh when he retires.
In Austin in 1963, Toru married a fellow student, an American of African decent. Because of the accident of her Illinois birth, Toru bypassed labor-certification requirements and the race-related “quota” system that favored the applicant’s country of origin over his or her merit. Toru was prepared for (and even welcomed) the emotional strain that came with marrying a woman outside his Bangladeshi ethnic community. In 33 years of marriage, Toru and his African American wife have lived in every part of North America. By choosing a wife who was not his mothers selection, Toru was opting for fluidity, self-invention, hot-dogs, hamburgers, blue jeans and T-shirts, and renouncing 3,000 years (at least) of ethnicity-observant, “pure culture” marriage in his Bangladeshi family. Torus opinions about this have often been unapologetic (and in some quarters overenthusiastic). His cultural and psychological “mongrelization was joyous.
Nuru and Toru have stayed brotherly close by phone. In their regular Sunday morning conversations, they are unguardedly affectionate. Toru is the only blood relative of Nuru on this continent. They expect to see each other through the looming crises of aging and ill health without being asked. Long before Obamas movement and campaign for the United States presidency, Nuru and Toru had their polite arguments over the desirability and electability of Obama versus Hillary and McCain while expecting the ushering of civil rights and ending of informal segregation in the American society from schools to workplace. Non-discrimination is a social benefit that both Nuru and Toru believe should come with living and working in America.
Like well-raised brothers, they never said what was really on their minds about Obama against Hillary or McCain and the possibility of any improvement in race relations in American society, but they probably pitied one another on each others political position and perceptions with respect to the electibility of Obama against McCain or Hillary. Nuru pitied Toru for his lack of structure in political perception, the erasure of cultural authenticity and ethnic purity in the American presidential politics. Toru pitied Nuru for the narrowness of Nurus conservative political consciousness, his uninvolvement with the mythic depths of the rap culture or the superficial liberal pop culture of the American society. But, now, with the scapegoating of the notion of “third term for George Bush by electing Mccain on the rise, and the targeting of political conservatives like Karl Rove for new scrutiny and new self-consciousness, Nuru and Toru find themselves unable to maintain the same polite discretion. Nuru and Toru were always unacknowledged adversaries, and they are now, more than ever, brothers.
“I feel used,” Nuru raged on the phone the other night. “I feel manipulated and discarded by the movement to elect Obama. This is such an unfair way to elect a person to the United States Presidency who was invited on political Affirmative Action as an up and coming minority politician to lead the United States as the commander in chief because of his race in a time of rapidly changing racial demographics of America. Hillary Clinton had over 16 years of political service and 8 long years as Bill Clintons partner that took America and Dow Jones to the pinnacle of economic prosperity. Since Obama was a child in South Chicago, Hillary and McCain invested their knowledge, judgment, experience and creativity into the improvement of Americas welfare. McCain has fought in wars and risked his life. He then served for many decades in the senate foreign relations committee. Hillary prepared the Clinton healthcare plan and authored a successful agenda of economic recovery since the end of the First Gulf War (1991). How dare America now change its preference in presidential choice in the democratic primaries to elect a modestly experienced, upstart African American and only one time elected senator from Illinois in midstream? If America wants to make better choices for presidential candidates, they should only risk their political decision on long experienced and well qualified candidates on good judgment. In Nurus opinion, Obama seriously lacked the former although he possessed the latter and Nuru strongly felt that the U.S. Democratic Party voters are on the verge of electing another Jesse Ventura to the White House or they found another way to loose another election, this time to John Mccain.
Nuru is an expatriate, professionally generous and creative, socially courteous and gracious, and that’s as far as his Americanization can go. He is here to maintain an identity, not to transform it.
Toru asked Nuru if Nuru would follow the example of others who have decided to vote for Obama because they are also minorities in the U.S. like him. And here, he surprised him. “If the minorities in America want to play the manipulative game of race, the expatriates who support the White majority Americans will play it too,” he snapped. “I’ll become a Republican Party voter for this election only, and then change back to being a registered Democratic Party Voter next time when I see a politician from the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant mainstream nominated by the Democratic Party. I feel some kind of irrational attachment to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans that I don’t to the Democratic Party. Until all this hysteria about electing Obama, I was totally happy. Having my American nationality meant I could enjoy my apple pie in my upscale white suburb in Detroit with the peace of mind that the commander in chief represents the European cultural values of the mainstream of people in the United States and we will not be ruled by a rap subculture out of Harlem that could potentially disturb my Beethovens 5th symphony every morning.
In one family, from two brothers alike as peas in a pod, there could not be a wider divergence of immigrant experience influencing presidential candidate preference. America spoke to Toru — He married it — He embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody unlike his brother Nuru, surrendering those thousands of years of “pure Bengali culture,” the Elish maach that he buys every week from the local ethnic grocery, the delightfully accented English. He retained them all. Which of us is the freak?
June 5th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I have to second DS, Rumi Bhai. That was beautifully put.
A simple dream, yet so hard to achieve.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:45 am
I simply feel pity for all those drooling over Obama. Why? Because
1. Without making a dent into the American ‘corporatocracy’, masquerading as ‘democracy’, none can bring about the ‘change’ Obama is promising to deliver. Can he do it? No way. Even if he wishes to do so, he can at best be another victim of the ‘jackals’ of the nexus of CIA and ‘economic hit men’.
2. Mere bringing back troops from Iraq / Afghanistan will not change the status quo, responsible for America’s ills and much of the world’s woes, as bringing back troops from Vietnam in the ‘70s did nothing to change the ‘corporatocracy’, ruling the roost since the ‘Operation Ajax’ in the early ‘50s.
3. Is Obama against the ‘jackals’ of CIA, the ‘economic hit men’, and the rule of ‘USrael’? Then, how he is qualitatively different from the other contenders in the presidential race? How can he change America and the way billions of people view it today?
June 9th, 2008 at 6:33 am
One has to agree with Ahbab. Grow up, Rumi, and smell the coffee! The first thing that Obama did after the nomination lock-in was run to AIPAC and scrape and bow, which must have made George Bush grin with pleasure : ‘How ’bout it, boy, all that hot talk ’bout change and they’re makin’ you do the same thing they did me…’
June 9th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Insightful observation indeed Ahbab, nothing will change if Obama is elected, rather he will disappoint quite a few naïve people with his smoke filled dream, “corporatocracy” is what rules this country and soon will run countries like India & China, a good orator without substance can only go so far
June 12th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Would disagree a little with Asif Matin #9 here. Obama doesn’t look or sound like ‘a good orator without substance’ - in fact one suspects there’s quite some substance there. But American politics, especially for the higher offices, is bound by some unbreakable laws, the first of which is Thou shall grovel before the nation of Israelites, and, to paraphrase the otherwise choleric Irishman and ex-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, ‘its amen corner in the USA’ - meaning Congress and the Zionist lobbies. So even men, and women, of ’substance’ have to bow before this god. What was disappointing was not Obama’s grovelling (that he has to do, I do not blame him for that), but how quickly he ran after the nomination lock-in. The delegate count was in, he barely changed suits, and ran over panting to AIPAC to assure them that though he might be black on the outside, he was white white white beneath, a real coconut!
October 28th, 2008 at 2:30 am
[...] Of course Obama’s very candidacy probably has improved America’s image abroad. One in four citizens of my adopted country is born overseas, and yet I don’t expect the son of an international student from any third world nation to lead this country any time soon. The Obama story is possible in America, and only in America. Rumi Ahmed captures the symbolism of an Obama candidacy very vividly here. [...]