Obama once more

In old Manchukuo where Korean Peninsula tension intrudes from the west, and China’s Halal conscious populace from Xinjiang through Nei Menggu (Inner Mongolia) to the northern recesses of Dong Bei (Northeast China) asserts itself, U.S. domestic politics would be of least consequence, let alone significance among street vendors.

Obama is an exception.

It is generally true that the racial discrimination against those of darker skin extends to Zhongguo (China) in mainland Far East Asia. The northern Han looks down on their southern cousins, mostly due to skin shade before it is a critique on manners and good conduct. Northerners tend to see themselves as urban as opposed to the country bumpkins (nong cun) in the south! However, with the increasing presence of West Africans trading in China and many students from Ghana, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka in the academic halls of Shenyang Aerospace University, there is an ongoing humanization of racial skin coloration. Interracial dating is even taking place. Any Obama detractors do not do so on skin tones!

The “ugly American” is a well-used phrase first depicted in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American that presaged the seemingly well-intended but disastrous excursion into Vietnam, heralded in another roman a’clef 1958 narrative, the Eugene Burdick and William Lederer The Ugly American. The phrase has come to mean an American who is “loud and ostentatious,” or plain “obnoxious,” as well as “naive though well-meaning” to “plain folk unafraid to get hands dirty to get something done.”

In our Oral English class, we printed the Lincoln Gettysburg Address, the JFK Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You inaugural speech, and the MLK Jr. I Have a Dream oration, along with Hillary Clinton’s talk to the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing, and Obama’s acceptance speech at Grant Park in Chicago on the eve following his election to the U.S. Presidency. I indicated in the printouts the manner of the author’s dying, three assassinated. One of the students asked if I thought Obama would survive his first term before getting the bullet!

Obama is highly regarded by many in China, and a few consider Obama’s demise in the hands of a violent assassin a foregone conclusion; considering the venom he has received by even members of Congress, we can see from this far-flung vantage point why and what the ugly Americans could and would do to one of their own.

English teachers often ask students to get an English name to ease roll call, reversing the sequence of first and last names. Last term, when the media referred to the French Open Women’s Tennis winner as Na Li rather than her Chinese name Li Na, I vowed to remember my students’ names in Chinese in lieu of their makeshift English names. This semester, I asked students to write in their profiles their Chinese names first and their English names, second, and only if they had one. Well, one has “Obama” and he has had it since 2008! Being one of the smart students in class, I even call him by it once in a while to hold him accountable to the implication of his chosen name.

An Egyptian pilot, who flew a Mirage 2000 v. Israel’s F-series in 1973 Yom Kippur war and recently joined our circle of acquaintance here in China, explained that in North Africa, Obama may not be one of the “brothers” but with a name like “Barack Hussein,” one can count on deeper sympathies. A practicing Muslim, he regards Obama highly, in spite of the President’s policy track record on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I have no qualms identifying myself as an American, ugly or otherwise, and in one of our shopping forays in search of cheap notebooks for our students, I wore one of our Saipan campaign t-shirt, when one of the wholesalers started yelling, “Obama, Obama” and pointing at me. I was an “ugly” one, sporting a long-haired Mozart cum wiry Einstein wild mane with a five o’clock shadow long past sundown that Gaddafi himself would not mind claiming, so when I tried to protest the mistaken identification, the saleslady pointed at Angelo Villagomez’s photo, our wannabe Saipan mayor, on my shirt. (I smiled and being a fellow red, white, and blue Democrat, I did not think Angelo minded!)

Fear remains a global malaise and an active ingredient in American politics. With Obama having positioned himself well into the wedge-blade between “what is no longer” (closing out “war” as a management instrument) and “what is not yet” (green is in!), we see America on the throes of crisis, both on the tine of despair and possibility. Obama rides the prong of hope and fear!

Ugly Americans often have hearts of gold gilding treasure-laden mines of enlightened minds. We are betting on the side of hope.