The Obama Family 'Homecoming': The Beast
Friday, July 10, 2009 at 6:19PM Barack Obama’s one-day jaunt to Ghana this weekend carries a message for “multiple audiences,” according to the White House. On the heels of a Russian expedition and frustrating climate-change negotiations at the G-8 conference in Italy—all of which were overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson—the first black president of the United States is arriving on African soil as a hero, but not a stranger. Unlike every other American president who has made an in-office trip to Africa, Obama is no virgin tourist on the continent. In fact, Ghana’s new president described Obama’s visit as a “homecoming”—though in some ways, the media focus on the head of the family is misguided. Obama may be the first African-American president, but it is Michelle Obama for whom Ghana represents a true return.
The ugly centuries of traffic in black bodies from West Africa created the American experience that Michelle—a child of Chicago’s “black belt”—has always known.
Obama’s immediate predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, seemed to view their African sojourns in 1998 and 2007 as face-saving opportunities—for Clinton, a respite from the Lewinsky moment, and for Bush, a last chance to be received warmly before leaving office To Obama-watchers, however, the Ghana stopover is seen as not just a meet-and-greet, but as the next chapter in the exciting narrative of race and memory that seems to unfold at every turn in this young presidency. But while Anderson Cooper may be airing a special on “President Obama’s African Journey” this week, Obama has already had his African journey. It’s called Dreams From My Father. After visiting Nairobi 20 years ago, he wrote, admiringly, “here the world was black, and so you were just you.” A 2006 trip took then-Senator Obama and his wife back to Kenya, and seemed to cement his ties to the continent on which he is the first American president to have living relatives. more
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