How Obama thinks: An Africanist interpretation

Ever since Barack Obama achieved national and global stardom many have struggled to understand his thinking process. In fact The Tea party has its own in-house guidebook on how Obama thinks. Newt Gingrich and Dinesh D’Souza believe the president has a “Kenyan anti-colonial worldview.” The problem with these philosophical viewpoints is that they’re inscribed within old Greco-Roman thematizations which insist that nothing good can come from Africa. To them, the African is backward, uncivilized and incapable of anything positive. If it smells African, then it has to be negative, dark or bad. McLuhan, Conrad and other scholars summarize the old European idea of Africa by referring to the continent as a “mysterious, throbbing, palpable, darkness within the European psyche”. Obama is a pure mystery to these people. As a member of this mysterious club, let me offer some help here.

I wish to argue that one of the ways to understand the Obama phenomenon is through African philosophical thought. We also need to somehow deliver ourselves from the impression that anything African is inferior. This is because at his core, Barack Obama is a community man, a people’s man, a community organizer. Obama’s DNA is ingrained with the philosophical belief that a man is defined not only by his individual agency but his commitment and connection to the wider society. While western thought glorifies individualism and adores exceptionalism or “hero” narratives, African traditional thinking ontologically, epistemologically and pragmatically believes that the community is indispensable to our definition of who we are. John Mbitie foregrounds this basic underpinning of African societies through the enduring dictum: “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am”.

Isn’t this what Obama has been saying all along: “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper…” “We’ve got each other’s back…” And so on and so forth. At his core, Obama deeply believes that the person and community are intrinsically linked. This is not different from Ifeanyi Menkiti’s thesis that “in the African view it is the community which defines the person as a person not some isolated static quality of rationality, will or memory…” To me, the belief in being each other’s keeper does not at all sound at variance to the evangelical doctrine of bearing each other’s burden (Galatians) since Christianity is a huge part of Republicanism—and rightly so. The GOP is going to have to find another narrative to counter the Obama machine this fall. Demonizing Obama and his core values even when they’re right in lockstep with yours is not the way to go.