My initial reaction was “For what?”…However, when I sat down and thought about it, I realized that if we look at past Nobel Peace Prize recipients, they have often been those whose work is not yet finished…”
Dear friends,
On Friday, October 9th, 2009, the Nobel Committee announced that it had selected President Barack Obama as the recipient for its 2009 Peace Prize. My initial reaction was “For what?” After all, he has not even had a full year to accomplish much. Moreover, to be sure, there are a number of other individuals and groups who represent causes that have been in operation for some time and have yet to receive due notice.
However, when I sat down and thought about it, I realized that if we look at past Nobel Peace Prize recipients, they have often been those whose work is not yet finished, but who, nonetheless, through that international “voice” called the Nobel Committee bring light to genuine issues that will mean a tremendous amount of human uplift should the former succeed.
In other words, the Nobel Peace Prize is often used to put issues on the world stage that have gone unnoticed for too long.
For example, when Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the Voting Rights Act that changed the lives of millions of African Americans who lived in the South at the time had not been signed (until a year later).
Also, King was awarded Nobel towards the end of the so-called Civil Rights Movement and the beginning of its successor, the more lasting and successful Black Consciousness Movement, that was based upon the work and wisdom of Black leaders of the distant past (that is, preceding the Civil War). They were freedom fighters like: Richard Allen, Gabriel Prosser, Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Martin Delaney, and Harriet Tubman. Again, these folks represented some of the earlier stages of the overall “Freedom” Movement of African American people that began on the first plantation that became “home” to African captives (so-called “slaves”), during the early 17th Century.
In the 20th Century, the newer stage of the Movement was originally led, at least intellectually, by, to name a few, everyone from a number of Black historians/activists that included W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey to the likes of Franz Fanon, Robert Williams, Kwame Nkrumah, and Imari Obadele, to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad through personalities like Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, to community activists like Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael), H. Rap Brown, Maulana Karenga, and, later, Jesse Jackson, to artists/activists like Imamu Imari Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Toni Cade (Bambara), Francis Beale, Elaine Brown, Curtis Mayfield, and Gil Scott Herron, as well as athletes like Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, and Tommie Smith.
Suspiciously, this Movement that was so popular with Black youth (that is, the “baby boomers” of World War 2) had yet to draw much attention, much less support from the US government- and corporate-controlled mass communications media – let alone their worldwide counterparts.
However, it (said Black Consciousness Movement) eventually became largely responsible for creating the actual social awareness and conditions that led to the recent election of Barack Obama as president of the United States of America. Moreover, the global recognition brought, in part, by the Nobel Committee’s awarding of their Peace Prize to Dr. King showed that the plight of African American people spilled over to giving more notice to the struggles of African and other peoples everywhere.
So the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, sometimes, has had great effects - eventually. Proof? Let us not forget that apartheid in South Africa had gone on for generations when Bishop Desmond Tutu was awarded Nobel, in 1984. Still, the scurrilous system of oppression and exploitation that was apartheid continued for almost ten years after Tutu accepted the Prize. In addition, during 1993, then newly-elected President Nelson Mandela and his immediate predecessor, the former South African president F. W. de Klerk, were each awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their “peace”-ful transition from apartheid to a “free state”, although, now many years later, there remains serious, if not great, doubt about the integrity of the “freedom” that has been won by either black South Africans themselves or their new government.
And, do you remember the Nobel Peace Prize being given to Yasir Arafat, along with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, in 1994? There has been no settlement in the conflict between Palestine and Israel to date. In fact, there are not even negotiations of any kind going on these days, years later. As well, I wonder why there were not so many murmurs of disapproval by so many citizens in this country when the two aforementioned officials from Israel (the euphemism for Occupied Palestine) received the Nobel Committee’s nod, considering both the mass murder and expropriation of arable land by Jewish “settlers” that the here-to-mentioned officials’ own government at that time, and all other past and present Israeli regimes have sponsored, for, roughly, three generations, against the Palestinian people.
Also, whereas gargantuan problems like violence against women and girls, worldwide hunger and poverty, and humankind’s suicidal proliferation of nuclear weapons seem, at least to me, to be far more immediate concerns than “global warming”, did not the Nobel Committee award former Vice President Al Gore and some scientists the Peace Prize anyway, in order to make the overall worldwide public more aware of the dilemma? Racism already existed in America, when Dr. King was awarded Nobel. Apartheid already existed when Bishop Tutu was awarded Nobel. Leprosy already existed there, when, in 1979, Mother Theresa was awarded Nobel for her work in Calcutta. Additionally, many renowned scientists, as well as philosophers of science such as myself, have issues with the whole concept of “global warming”, but should the Nobel Committee have waited until all of the plants and creatures in the Pacific Ocean might have been cooked, before they gave the issue notice?
At any rate, in less than ten months, President Obama has changed the image of the United States from being what his predecessor George Bush and his Republican cohorts had made us look like: notorious bullies who were hated everywhere, as “Bring it on!” dares were spouted from a nationalistic voice of domination.
Instead, President Obama has insisted upon us having dialogue with all other nations so that we can all share in our combined resources. Because of that, we are no longer seen as we were when Bush and the Republicans bullied their way around the world, while making more or less unilateral declarations of war against tiny nations, for instance.
Of course, these days, Americans who travel around the world, as all three of my own progeny do, are much safer. Also, more nations may now become involved with us. Do you know of any other North American politicians or even world leaders, for that matter, who could have done that? Would either Hillary Clinton or John McCain (or Sarah Palin LOL) have been able or even wanted to do that, had s/he become president?
Nevertheless, as was apparent with his speech to the US Congress, with the entire world watching, as he very articulately appealed to both the humanity and anemic intellects of almost all of those who belong to the just mentioned US Congress, in asking them to overhaul America’s health care system, even as the more openly racist members of that legislative body made cries like “That’s a lie!” or booed him, President Obama remained a “peace”-ful statesman, and did not allow himself to join the latter in their vulgar displays of ineptitude and unkindness. It is that type of behavior by our president, of being intelligent and civilized, that has made this country and the world a different place already.
Finally, no one should try and second guess the members of the Nobel Committee. As both history and reason have shown us, they are simply trying to promote world peace, fellowship, and safety by, again, providing an international forum (AKA “voice”) for those who are fighting for freedom from affliction whether biological or social. Besides, rushes to judgment tend to reveal human inadequacy as opposed to our competency. And, when I say “inadequacy”, I am defining it in the context of the great Freud as a process that ranges from “short-sighted apprehensiveness to selfishly narrow interests to conclusions that are based on insufficient premises.”
So, let us all say, “Yes…Congratulations, Mr. President, for a job that has not been completely fulfilled as of yet, but seems to be taking this country and the world in a brand new and positive direction”.
Cheers!
G. Djata Bumpus
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