We like to think that past is past–that the present and future are entities of their own, unknown and new, divorced from bygone mistakes, misfortunes, successes and triumphs. Human beings are an optimistic species–forward looking, if you will.
However, history has a way of winding its way into the here and now. And often, echoes of past events–traumatic, joyful or otherwise–sound more loudly in the present than they did at their inception.
This election year is a case in point. Barack Obama’s campaign has led to the unearthing of a whole century’s worth of racial tension and conflict. Between McCain rally-goers chanting “Obama bin Laden” and young white supremacists being arrested for murder plots and the wanks on FOX boasting about “lynching Michelle Obama” one is amazed at just how close Jim-Crow era hatred runs under the surface of American society. I could write a whole book on just this piece of the picture, but I won’t.
Rather, what I find most fascinating is how the threads of past events weave into the present. Obama himself is the product of his parents, and of the sixties–of that massive time of upheaval that redefined the boundaries of race and ethnicity. His father, a Kenyan, fled the upheaval of his homeland to come to a United States in the throes of change. Little would he know that his son would be campaigning for the highest public office in the land, in a point of history also fraught with change. In this campaign year, the echoes of Obama’s past, of our past, reverbrate strongly with us.
Every one of us is a product of a particular past, a history, a chronology of events that provides a prologue for our actions and thoughts. My own family is of Indian Muslim background from the former princely state of Hyderabad. Those distant events–the Partition of the Subcontinent, the divestment of India’s Muslims, the fading legacy of the Islamic nobility are woven into our history. Their ramifications, have shaped my personal attitudes to a surprising degree. The way that I conceptualize myself as a part (or not a part) of Indian-American society is shaped by the experiences of my family, how those experiences were communicated to me.
In the end, history is something always being made. But in order to truly appreciate who we are, we must know where we came from–and why.
Past is Prologue
Posted in Uncategorized with tags philosophy, political commentary, race on October 29, 2008 by SultanaHistory is a funny thing.
We like to think that past is past–that the present and future are entities of their own, unknown and new, divorced from bygone mistakes, misfortunes, successes and triumphs. Human beings are an optimistic species–forward looking, if you will.
However, history has a way of winding its way into the here and now. And often, echoes of past events–traumatic, joyful or otherwise–sound more loudly in the present than they did at their inception.
This election year is a case in point. Barack Obama’s campaign has led to the unearthing of a whole century’s worth of racial tension and conflict. Between McCain rally-goers chanting “Obama bin Laden” and young white supremacists being arrested for murder plots and the wanks on FOX boasting about “lynching Michelle Obama” one is amazed at just how close Jim-Crow era hatred runs under the surface of American society. I could write a whole book on just this piece of the picture, but I won’t.
Rather, what I find most fascinating is how the threads of past events weave into the present. Obama himself is the product of his parents, and of the sixties–of that massive time of upheaval that redefined the boundaries of race and ethnicity. His father, a Kenyan, fled the upheaval of his homeland to come to a United States in the throes of change. Little would he know that his son would be campaigning for the highest public office in the land, in a point of history also fraught with change. In this campaign year, the echoes of Obama’s past, of our past, reverbrate strongly with us.
Every one of us is a product of a particular past, a history, a chronology of events that provides a prologue for our actions and thoughts. My own family is of Indian Muslim background from the former princely state of Hyderabad. Those distant events–the Partition of the Subcontinent, the divestment of India’s Muslims, the fading legacy of the Islamic nobility are woven into our history. Their ramifications, have shaped my personal attitudes to a surprising degree. The way that I conceptualize myself as a part (or not a part) of Indian-American society is shaped by the experiences of my family, how those experiences were communicated to me.
In the end, history is something always being made. But in order to truly appreciate who we are, we must know where we came from–and why.
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