By the Content of their Charachter..

....and not by the color of their skin (or how foreign their names may sound...)


When the News Networks called the election for Obama, the crowd that I was surrounded by began to chant "Obama" repeatedly. Some of them were jumping up and down, some clapping and others were clenching their fists in victory. What got my attention was all the people, strung from all the races and places in the world were chanting, what Obama himself called 'a funny name'. Immediately, something struck me.


I imagined millions and millions in the world seized in that historic moment and chanting the name of an african man, from an obscure village in Kenya, whose son now carries his name and has made it a household name across the world.


Dr. Martin Luther King's dream of a time "...that they will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their charachte...." had come true. It could also be interpreted to mean or include not just colours of skin but also name.....something like " ... not by the wierdness of their name, but by the content of character..."


Obama's victory is for all those people whose names are not Jackson, Henderson, Smith and Jones. It is for all those living in cultures where their name, no matter how meaningful and beautiful may sound in another language beyond the horizon, sounds weird and warrants a repetition or spelling at every office and infront of every clerk.


I remember all my ethioisraeli friends in Israel who had taken up Israeli sounding names as kids. Some by the decisions of their parents others by the decision of their teachers. One friend ahs even told me how the teacher had let other students choose a name for her, as she foudn her ethiopian name to hard to pronounce. 'Ordinary' sounding names were thought to usher their assimilation in Israel society. Almost all of them had reverted to their Ethiopian names once they had grown up and their experience had shown them that the key to assimilation was not in their names.


That night, when the students went shouting "Obama, Obama" on their way out..... For me it was the same as if they were chanting any african name or any asian name. It might have been the same if they were shouting Abebe, Li, Huan, Hailu or "______".



Caveat
Ofcourse one should note that Obama's name is simple to pronounce. Even babies say it easily, it has O, ba, and ma (sylables easy enough for kids to say and remember). Names which are hard to pronounce don't make an easy chant line nor do they fit in the name memory slots of human brains easily. Imagine a crowd of europeans chanting "Gebreegzihabher".....in Berlin on Senator Gebreegzihabher (D-Il) world tour. Somehow it sucks out all the excitement out of it.