Obama’s Nobel

So, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. And it goes to Barack Obama, which has now set off an avalanche of grousing and complaining and sarcasm from the right and left. At least we won’t have to talk about the Olympics not being in Chicago any longer. It is always noteworthy when the right and left pick up on the same talking points. Funny for teasing your friends on either side (hey, you and Fox agree!), but also instructive about larger cultural stuffs.

Let me make two basic observations about this “controversy” over Obama’s award. And let me too say that I think it is a fabulous choice. Unexpected. For sure. Though, let’s be honest, not many of us pay attention to the process…and how many can name, without internet access, the past ten recipients? Ahem.

First, I think the critique that he isn’t really worthy of the prize (left critics like to note that wars are still going on in Afghanistan and Iraq) because he hasn’t made peace engages in a certain kind of historical amnesia. And U.S.-centrism. It is actually a lot of amnesia, because it forgets the long history of violence that foregrounds his appearance on the world stage. The Middle Passage, slavery, colonialism, segregation, and the persistence of anti-black racism at every level of American life (and life in the West generally) are certainly violences worthy of consideration, and Obama’s candidacy and election is surely a blow against that violence. No, one doesn’t have to go to the “post-racial fantasy” extreme. One simply needs to note that the unthinkable happened. Yet, I’ve not seen much attention to any such foregrounding violence in the commentary. It’s as if Obama became president, then even the critics of “post-racial America” forgot that he was black and what that means and how much violence forms the context of his election.

Second, I think a certain (and to my mind deplorable) American pragmatism comes into play here. The criticism that Obama has not brokered peace or ended two wars not of his making is all over the left and right. I wish those wars were over. I also have no idea how to do such a thing responsibly. But that’s not my point. My point is this: the narrowness of historical thinking that determines “accomplishments” in terms of policy action is troubling. Such thinking makes meaning instrumental. Wholly pragmatic. Larger historical meaning matters not, and instead we should only care about how a policy was formed and put into play (successful or not…because former winners have seen good hearted plans fall apart, in terrifying ways). This makes everything bluntly ideological (did he do what I want?) and makes human life much too discrete and isolated (only this moment matters!).

It is probably of some note – and I think a ton of note, actually – that Obama’s candidacy and election meant so much across Africa. Have we forgotten his visit to Africa and how he was welcomed like a long lost son? Maybe we have. Or maybe we haven’t forgotten and instead just believe that, well, those Africans aren’t all that important when it comes to big, global stuff like Nobel prizes. However, if we are thinking outside this moment in history and the suffocating narrowness of pragmatism, then the meaning of Obama’s address to history has to be important across the world. Especially in those parts of the world most harmed by anti-black racism.

No matter the policy question or the issue of successful summits, Obama the person and historical actor expresses a world-historical address to four centuries of unspeakable violence. We should take note of this in every possible way. Perhaps this requires many to think outside the very American habits of amnesia and pragmatism, but all for the better. For, in the end, the long-shadow of history informs our thinking, speaking, and acting more than we ever know. Obama’s address to that terrifying and decimating shadow is worthy of many things. One of those, to my mind, is a Nobel to call his own. And our own.