I got to read the poem “Still I Rise” written by Dr. Maya Angelou, a renowned personality in the African American Community and in the United States of America. This is a woman who knows her black history. She always seems to be acknowledged in virtually every edition of Ebony Magazine for some reason. My desire to read the poem was stirred by it’s title, which is same with a track in Tupac Shakur’s ( in Loving Memory) posthumous album, also named “Still I Rise”. Being a Tupac fan and having heard the track, I was certain that Pac must have read the poem before he did that track. Actually, it went further to reflect Tupac’s passion for the emancipation of the African America in the US.
However, this is not about Dr. Angelou neither is it about Tupac, rather it’s about the man of the moment “Barak H. Obama”. Recent campaign ads and speeches of his rivals, Sen. John MacCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have taken a rather racial undertone in the US. Palin at one of her rallies said Sen. Obama pals with terrorists and that he is not “like us” and doesn’t love America “like we do”. She casts Obama as the “other”. In the post September 11 attack in America, the “other” is synonymous with the “enemy of America”. Also, for the record at a Republican campaign rally in Florida last week, a man yelled from the crowd “kill him” (i.e. Obama). In the same regard, during the second presidential debate, Sen. MacCain referred to Obama as “that one”. From what I understand, is a phrase that a white man from North Carolina, would use to refer to a colored person. It is obvious that Sen. MacCain feels insulted to be fighting for the “white” house with “that one”.
In spite of MacCain/Palin tantrums and campaign of defamation of character towards Obama, the amiable Illinois Senator is gaining acceptance among whites, Hispanics, working class, first time voters and still rising. So I dedicate to Obama, these lines from Dr. Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise”;
…You may write me down in history, with your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But, still, like dust, I’ll rise…
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