Uniting the US: Is Michelle Obama a wingless angel?

At the old English universities, the study term that begins in September is called “Michaelmas”. This refers to the Church celebration of the feast of Michael the Archangel, or super spirit, which is held on September 29.

The universities were traditionally closely associated with the church. Some other seasons similarly named after church celebrations are Martinmas, around November 11, in honour of Martin of Tours in France, and the most famous of them all, Christmas, in honour of — you know whom.

Back to Michael, the feminine form of the name is Michaela or, á la française, Michelle. Now, it is this Michelle, the most famous one in the world, who­ had me catch my breath, again, around Michaelmas this year.

You must have seen the image, which I believe went viral, of her, Michelle Obama, enveloping ex-President George Bush in what was, rather dubiously, described as a ‘bear hug’. I thought it was an angelic embrace.

I said ‘again’ above, because Michelle Obama, of whom I am a zealous fan, had made me gasp with a comparable gesture before, in 2009. This is when she put her arm around Queen Elizabeth of England.

I was in Juba then, putting a group of South Sudanese officers through an English language crash programme to enable them attend advanced studies in South Africa. I had been trying to explain to them the ‘restrained’ nature of English expression, clarifying what is called English reserve and understatement.

Then Michelle Obama, on a visit to Buckingham Palace, put that arm around Her Britannic Majesty! Probably no one had ever done that to the poor Queen in all her public life. It is taboo. It could even be an offence under an aspect of English law called “lèse-majesté”, insult or injury to the person of the monarch.

ALL LIVES MATTER

Surprisingly, the Queen did not appear to be startled or disconcerted by the American First Lady’s touch. Some observers even suggested that the old lady was probably comforted by the thought of being, for once, taken as a human being rather than as just a token of awe and reverence.

Fast forward to 2016, what particularly struck me about Michelle’s hug of George W. Bush, apart from the lady’s unfailing warmth and spontaneity, was the rich symbolism of the gesture. The occasion was the official launch of the Museum of African-American History in Washington, DC. That in itself would have been significant enough.

But it also happened at a time of almost unprecedented racially motivated police violence in the USA in modern times, which even claimed the life of my own countryman, Alfred Olango, in El Cajon, California, recently.

Add to that some of the most vicious sexist, chauvinistic, xenophobic — everything-phobic — rhetoric ever to be heard from the mouth of a person vying for the highest office in the land, and you begin to understand the need for supernatural intervention in the situation. This is where Michelle’s angelic embrace comes in.

I think the “hash tag” for that image of a youthful black woman enfolding an elderly white man in a warm welcome, at the shrine of African American History, should be “all human lives matter”. The image should also spell out clearly the inescapable truth that African-American history is American history, period.

Of all the immigrant waves that have washed the shores of America, the Black African wave is one of the earliest. Some commentators claim that there were Africans in the land by the time the Mayflower and the so-called Pilgrim Fathers docked into the bays of New England in the 1620s.

The problem is that, while most of the other groups of immigrants went to America by choice, the Africans were taken there by force, for reasons of obscene greed and outrageous inhumanity. They were kept there and ruthlessly exploited through naked brutality, systematic dehumanization and ironclad seclusion from the rest of society. The same old stuff about slavery and all that, one may think.

But the story is far from happily ended. The deadly conflict continues between two sets of fiery emotions: anger and frustration among those whose ancestors were enslaved, on the one hand, and fear and guilt among those whose ancestors did the enslavement.

MAGICAL COMBINATION

Even from this rather simplified perspective, the solution is not easy. But a solution must be sought and found. Otherwise, the USA may find itself immersed in a worse, home-grown, terror than anything posed by all the outside forces it is fighting right now. The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin called it in his book of that title, reflecting on the centenary of the “Abolition of Slavery”.

Part of the solution is the courage and willingness of angelic people, like Michelle Obama, to shed their anger and frustration and embrace their fellow Americans across the yawning divide. Equally importantly, the other Americans must liberate themselves from the fear and guilt, which makes them reach for their guns the moment they see an African-American, and learn to feel at ease with all their compatriots.

You may be wondering why Mwalimu is speculating on matters “far away”. There are two main reasons, and they are related. The first and most obvious is that “we are all Americans” in an almost literal sense. I hardly know of any middle class family in my immediate circles that does not have relatives in America, most of them American citizens.

Secondly, as I have hinted elsewhere, we “American-Africans”, ranging from the Obamas through the Ngugis and Lupita Nyong’os to my children and grandchildren, are probably best-positioned to reconcile our compatriots from every side. After all, we post-slavery arrivals went to America by choice and we are less tinged by the anger and frustration of the original African-Americans.

Fortunately, too, our ethnic closeness to the African-Americans probably disposes them to accept our advice and example (of confidence and dogged performance and achievement) more readily than if it came from other Americans.

That could be the magic of the combination of American-African Barack and African-American Michelle Obama.