Obama’s Election Has Healed a Wound in Me that Went Back to Fascism

I must confess my huge emotions during the inauguration ceremony of Obama as president of the Empire. Millions were crying–they were tears releasing the grave injustices suffered by the blacks of humanity. The blacks cried within the immense public, the injured party of many elasticities in the United States of America, humbling Obama.

Obama will be in front of a titanic task, perhaps an impossible one. I do not know if he can do it. He will possibly fail. However, that ceremony affected me so much. I had a wound in the heart that even today, after 70 years, has never healed. It was the memory of apartheid, of contempt, of harassment, abuse of power, the daily insults to which some colonial Italians and fascists (not my parents) in Eritrea had tried to “educate” our children and young people against those generous people and the very ancient Coptic culture.

I have never forgotten when I, at ten years old, saw a small “black” child playing and was torn when I saw the child pursued by adults, because he had dared to play with “white” children. When I arrived, the little one was on the ground trampled on by the crowd, emerging from it was a vile forty year old Cremonese Fascist fanatical supporter in a black shirt (decorations of the World War), who hit the child with the heel of his boot. I was permanently shocked and I fled. My shock is still raw.

I recalled the irascible disdain and raving of the faithful white, from the origins of the “white” Catholic Cathedral, who attacked when a “black” Catholic approached. Even the Eritrean nuns were forbidden to enter! I have not forgotten the existence of a “white” bishop for whites and a black one for the blacks. I returned to Eritrea at twenty years old, changed by the anti-fascist north wind.

I thank the Americans who voted, and I thank the 1775 American Revolution prodrome of the French, as well as the War of Secession in 1862, which abolished slavery. Those who have not surrendered, challenge the vile racist anger of factions to uncivilized “white Anglo-Saxons.” Thanks fellow blacks. Thanks to the thousands of heroes who have defended the dignity and unity of the human species: Thanks to Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mohamed Ali (Cassius Clay). Thanks black rebels. Thanks to the young white people who have fought for the “civil rights” of blacks. You have also cured my ancient affliction.