President Joe Biden’s dance on skin tribalism may be sparked by overwhelming support from black voters, writes Okello Oculi

Friday the 6th^and In May 2022, Joe Biden’s white presidential spokesperson, which aired on CNN, featured a “Black-Is – Beautiful” African-American woman as his successor. She had been his assistant.

Unlike Vice President Kamala Harris and President Barrack Obama (of Indian and Caucasian ancestry in their skin color, respectively), she is a straight-line black-African; and a double first timer.

It becomes Biden’s fourth pledge to “cover the back” of black people in exchange for voting for him directly or for critical Jews and black Democrats as Georgia state senators. Those two seats gave him the highly critical 50 votes to match the 50 votes of opposition Republicans. In the event of a tie on a bill, Vice President Kamala Harris, as President of the Senate, would have the winning vote. President Obama had faced hostile Republicans who routinely killed his bills.

Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as running mate had made a WOMAN and a BLACK AMERICAN “shatter the glass ceilings” of racial and gender exclusions. The appointment of Linda Thomas-Greenfield (another “Black-African-American” hotline) as Ambassador to the United Nations matched her racial visibility with that of the Chief of the Armed Forces.

Vice President Kamala Harris attended Howard University at a time when it was mandatory for applicants to attach their photographs. University officials preferred participants with a racial mix in their skin. The director, Spike Lee, made a film that castigated this outrageous racism between blacks and blacks.

These nominations highlight the magnitude of the race not yet run, namely: cleaning up areas of poverty, teenage pregnancies, drug ingestion and black-on-black violence, high academic fallout, lack of access to the State federal and local government funds for household economic development. Official policies have been documented to deny funds for the acquisition of personal housing and business ventures; as well as racist gang violence against black businesses, have blocked the flourishing of African Americans.

It is an area in the status of the African Diaspora that calls for the intervention and social engineering of so-called new African immigrants. There were some limited beginnings thanks to African graduates graduating from high quality American universities and taking up jobs in “Black Colleges”. They injected traditions of taking learning seriously into both teaching and student preparation.

It should be noted that the new African diaspora is educated and earns high salaries. Their economic intervention to help slum victims would be a vital investment. The African Union should review this situation.

Prime Minister Michael Manley has left a most valuable testimony to social engineering in Jamaica. He legislated free primary and secondary education as well as college scholarships for children from poor black families.

His black wife Beverly and Bob Marley urged the 89% of the black population to: “STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS”; and fight as Africans to put an end to ”the Philosophy which holds one race superior” to another

Brazil’s official policy of weakening a black liberation movement by indoctrinating mulato/”MESTIZO” children to hate BLACK Africans and Afro-Brazilians also calls for the intervention of the African Union and the African Diaspora. In 1922, the Swedish ambassador warned European governments that Brazil was becoming the largest African country in the world. Biden can accommodate it.

However, the US policy of categorizing anyone with a drop of African blood as No White has caused intense frustration among the Mulatoes and made them the vanguard of the fight against racial oppression.

Unlike Brazil, civil rights fighters like Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, WEB Dubois and Malcolm X did not break ranks with their black roots. Marcus Garvey, a dark-skinned Jamaican immigrant, openly exploited the loophole of “skin tribalism” to build his “African empire of mind and soul.” In his feud with Dubois and Dubois’ contempt for his lack of education, the “skin color division” lurked in the air.

This division would find an echo in the rallying chants of: ”I am Black and Proud”, ”Black is Beautiful”, ”We are young gifted and Black”, ”Black Panther”. In the mid-1960s, the Mulato girls began dating and marrying black African men. Barrack Obama followed the route of Michael Manley in seeking a Black Michelle for a wife.

Several American presidents have encouraged this “tribalism of color” by giving high government posts to “Mulato Blacks”: Ambassador Ralph Bunche, Secretary Colin Powel, Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Young. President Joe Biden’s dance to this skin tribalism is likely impacted by those very effective in mobilizing black voters at the grassroots.

In Africa, DStv promoted advertisements featuring Caucasian models. Cartoons deny figurines of black children who look like them.

The sectors of Nollywood, music, commercials, TV presenters and fashion have what Fela Kuti called: ”YELLOW Fever”. Their impact on the self-esteem of children in Lagos, Sokoto, Plateau, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa states cannot be uniformly healthy. The claim that 60% of Nigerians are mentally ill partly reflects this bias.

Professor Oculi writes from Abuja