cc AdaminaThe prominence of the Obama family has brought black people's humanity onto the world stage, writes Patricia Daley. The Obama family's success challenges patriarchal systems headed by white alpha-males and reveals possibilities of overcoming exclusion for non-white people across North and South America and Europe, Daley contends, albeit in the face of a backlash aimed at reinforcing white supremacy. But if struggles in the West over racial exclusivity can ultimately promote greater confidence from Africans and black people around the world, will there be a fresh impetus to challenge explicit and implicit claims of superiority?
African peoples of all backgrounds, academics and governments have long been concerned about the image of Africa in the West. More recently, countries are being encouraged to re-brand themselves for the Western market and entrepreneurs, from a place of wild animals and semi-naked tribal peoples, to modern spaces where business can be conducted with efficiency and in languages that can be understood by foreigners. How does the re-branding of Africa as an entrepreneurial space fit with the persistently negative image of the continent’s people? In most of the world, and in particular in the West, these images have deep historical roots, and were used to justify slavery, colonialism, accumulation by dispossession and the continued unequal and ‘unfair’ trade relations that exist between Africa and the West. Despite hundreds of years of effort by Africans living in the West to challenge these images, they continue to be propagated. To many in the West, the only way for the continent’s image to improve is for Africa to take hold of its own destiny – to validate the lives of its people through improved access to those services which protect the human. However, a surprising alternative is the rise of people of African descent to positions of power in the West.