A New Conversation

It has taken me the twenty years of my life and thousands of miles of world travel to realize why I am a young supporter of Barack Obama and his message of hope. As an American, female Kent State student volunteering in Zambia, I am perpetually bound to my skin and culture. It’s as if my light color and trendy clothes advertise: “I have unlimited access to any resource you can possibly think of. All you have to do is ask.” And they do but I do not have gifts for everyone in Zambia.

I want to tell them that the richest resources in the world could be in their hands too but, sorry, my culture and I are currently controlling them. Unfortunately, this conversation is between nations, not people. The actual conversation goes something like, “please, madam, food?” “I’m sorry I have nothing.”

How can I possibly explain to the starving, naked child that I am a citizen of another America that they can’t always hear? An America that doesn’t approve of its own government and whose collective heart aches at the thought of starving children and inequality? I cannot. I am finding that these skin induced barriers cannot be broken by one person’s language alone. If they could, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus, and Gandhi would surely have destroyed them all by now. I hear them every day, those revolutionaries who have energized whole nations with amazingly optimistic rhetoric. For so many decades of these brilliant minds crying for justice, peace, and democracy, how can I not have an explanation for this child?

The answer lies in the fact that there is an international conversation going on that I seem to have no say in. I had no part in the coup that killed Patrice Lumumba, I made no decision regarding the invasion of Iraq, and I’m very afraid I won’t be able to save the life of Evo Morales. My international conversation is between family in India, friends in Germany, loved ones in The United States, and the orphans I care for in Zambia. All of these people are also regrettably unheard in the international discussion I am not a part of.

My professed representation in this conversation saddens me daily. The drama that exists in the American political system makes me want to grab most of our politicians by the scruff of their necks and yell, “what are you doing? Can’t you see there are children starving to death?”

I have come to believe that Obama may want to do just the same thing (with much more style of course). And, uninhibited by federal lobbyists, he also wants to add, “Can’t you see we’re positioned to be the most generous nation in the world?” and, “Why has our tax money been so horribly managed?” and, “Why is discrimination still rampant in the United States?” So many of my peers have had something of a political awakening when it comes to Obama, and this is why.

He is asking the questions that many of my previously apathetic generation have already asked, and then answered themselves with, “things are completely out of my control, why bother trying to make change?” It is refreshing and exciting to finally hear a presidential candidate wax passionate about grassroots organizations, independence from fossil fuels, and a second look at global human civil liberties. Simply to feel as if he cares has been enough to raise so many young Americans out of their political stupor. (And it doesn’t hurt that he’s exceedingly charming either.)

Obama speaks to and for the America that I love and the America that I want the rest of the world to know. In Zambia, I have been asked by a girl of eleven, “Will that [Obama] make white people nicer like you?” Her question is devastatingly simple and I want her to know that many Americans are “nice like me” but they are clearly being misrepresented.

For all the Americans who volunteer their time to help those in need, who start inter-faith dialogues, who have huge amounts of empathy and intelligence, for the Americans who dream of the day when race and gender truly don’t matter, Barack Obama represents a very new opportunity.

I believe he has evolved into the next great American revolutionary voice. While his charismatic predecessors have made extravagant strides on a national level, Obama will open the door for America to join in a new, international dialogue on equality, peace, and unity. My peers and I will certainly have a say in this fresh conversation through his voice.

I can only hope that a new global understanding will develop and result in what sounds like the goals cited time and again by Miss America contestants (whose women have had it right all along): an end to ignorant fear and world hunger. This new world vision may sound young and idealistic, but so did Civil Rights and the possibility of a viable non-white presidential candidate in the United States. The process will be long and will not be easy but keeping our precious hope in Barack Obama’s campaign for change can move us forward into a new millennium of peace.