Obama Needs More Than Black Power to Win

When I learned there were rumblings in Black America about Sen. Barack Obama's lack of authenticity I was not surprised. For all the discrimination and ostracism black people have faced we can often be divisive and even exclusionary. I have the perfect background to understand Barack Obama's dilemma. I'm an African immigrant, who made his home in America. I consider myself to be a black American, and like Barak Obama I am not descended from slaves.

When I first arrived in the United States I naturally gravitated towards people who looked like me. I was soon made painfully aware that most of the black students at Oklahoma State University wanted nothing to do with Africans. Even though black Americans prided in using the term African American, and African medallions and Kente cloth were fashionable, native born Africans were not. I also learned that many black Americans had absorbed some of the worst stereotypes of Africans, and some even harbored animosity for slavery. Ironically in college black Americans students had an area where they congregated in the Student Union. They dubbed it Little Africa, but if one of the African students had actually gone and sat there he would have been shunned. I watched a painfully funny skit on "The Daily Show" recently where a black correspondent said that although black Americans insist on being called African Americans, they really want nothing to do with real Africans.