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Tuesday, February 21, 2006

A. Oluwatoyin

A. Oluwatoyin

  posted on Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Bio | Anthony Oluwatoyin Archives | Printer-Friendly Version

New Leadership Grades: From Pass/Fail to Black/White

Finally, Michael Brown got one right. The much-maligned, former Director of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has just handed out grades to all the main parties involved in the Katrina/Rita hurricane fiasco.

He gave President Bush an “A-”. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco shared “Gentleman’s Cs” (C- and C+ respectively).

The only clear-cut failing grade went to the black Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin. A disgraceful “D.” Actually, that was generous of Michael Brown. As a former professor, “I gotta tell ya” (to summon my best Liberano-Canadianese), Nagin’s real grade is “F - -,” F minus minus, a grade I used to reserve for student work that was not even fit to be graded.

Remember, the kindest cut that Brown himself suffered was being called “clueless,” in handling the hurricane aftermath. So he has every reason not to want to seem to be vindictive. But fair is fair. Brown took it like a man. As did the others. The Vancouver Sun had a recent headline that said it all: “Katrina poised to claim another victim” (Feb. 14). It was about Secretary Chertoff, whose resignation the Sun and its ilk are “poised” to trigger.

Bush, of course, has been called “racist” — and everything over and above pure evil. Governor Blanco, a Democrat, and a woman at that, has, thereby, enjoyed some cover. But she too has taken her licks.

Only Nagin, the lead man right at Ground Zero of the whole disaster, still has his smirk virtually intact. The man who failed to order school buses and city buses to evacuate poor black residents to safety, the simplest and most serious task of all, has now rebounded even from his racist “chocolate city” repopulation project. (“I gotta tell ya,” even I didn’t think he could pull that one off.)

Such is the power of the “politics of pigment.” “It’s the colour, Stupid,” as I said in my earlier piece on the topic (“Katrina and Rita no match for race card,” September 2005). Indeed, the race card is “poised” to replace the report card.

Liberal correctness has watered down “elitist” and “insensitive” As and Bs, so we ended up with a simple Pass or Fail. Now, just check “black” or “white.” You’ve been judged.

How else do you explain the celebratory send-off that has started in his last year in office for that most failed leader of the most failed institution in the history of the species. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Never mind all those Oil-for-food billions that built a few extra palaces for Saddam Hussein, money that was supposed to make economic sanctions against the former Iraqi dictator less harsh for his victims.

Annan was the U.N. point man directly in charge (Assistant Secretary-General, then Undersecretary-General) of Peacekeeping Operations (three years before he became Secretary-General) when almost a million Rwandans were slaughtered in three months of terror in 1994. Force Commander under Annan at the time, former Canadian General (now Senator) Romà ©o Dallaire, in his blistering memoir, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, has given his former boss a grade lower than Mayor Nagin’s “D.”

The glib Euro-lib, on the other hand, rewarded Annan (along with his organization) with their Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.

How do you stack that up against one of Annan’s predecessors, Dag Hammarskjold, who made trip after trip into the same African region so neglected by Annan, in attempts to mediate ethnic conflicts, eventually yielding his very life to the unforgiving jungle?

The President of Niger floats conspiracy theories about his own man-made hunger crisis in his country. The President of South Africa floats conspiracy theories about what causes AIDS. The President of the Sudan floats conspiracy theories about ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Exactly how has native black African (Ghanaian) Annan thereby been advantaged in responding?

The man is what my very African granduncles used to call a “buttocks level two-percenter.” Yet this bottom-percenter continues to be the little darling of global liberalism. Most recently, Annan has called for the closing of Guantà ¡namo Bay, the holding facility for militant combatant terrorists at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, based on his organization’s one-sided “report” of torture there. Not only did the U.N. not go down to view the facility, it actually refused to do so, allegedly because the authorities would not allow the U.N. a tà ªte-à  -tà ªte with the prisoners.

Never mind that no prison anywhere would allow any such unmonitored contact, separate from legal representation. Why hasn’t Annan called for the immediate closure of detainment camps throughout Africa and around the rest of the Third World, based solely on one-sided accounts of torture from escapees, exiles and experts?

What we have here is a failure of expectation. White liberalism, which expects nothing short of miracles from George Bush, fails to see the diabolical racism of excuse-making for every failure of every black leader. There can be only one antidote. Wherever a black leader is involved, no matter who else shares authority, we shall expect more from the black leader than from all others combined. We shall always expect more of a black leader, just by virtue of being black. Call it an “Affirmative Action of Great Expectations” to promote leadership in black communities the world over.

Here’s the rub. A white man who accidentally shot his lifelong friend on a quail hunt is hunted down in international abuse. A white hockey player, in addition to criminal sanction, will now probably pay millions for an altercation that took place during a game. Then you have black leaders failing black people, at every turn, in the worst ways imaginable, and still not losing their white liberal preferred status.  Still getting passing grades.

It is a crime against humanity.


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Nice line, eh

Anthony Oluwatoyin, a columnist for The Afro News, writes on community issues and religion. Originally from Nigeria in West Africa, he attended and taught at Universities in Canada and the US. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Posted on 02/21/06 at 08:33 AM
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