The recently-released memoirs of former United States president Barack Obama, A Promised Land, was so absorbing that I read all 700 pages in less than two weeks, finishing it on Boxing Day last year.
What struck me was how the issue of race permeated almost everything, right from the start, when the young Obama described how he began to question things while in high school: "A lot of the questions centred on race. Why did Blacks play professional basketball but not coach it?" And on and on.
Race permeated Obama's political rise, too, by his telling. From being the first Black senator from Illinois to becoming the first Black US president. And how his presidency was plagued by what he regarded as many instances of ill-disguised racism from the political opposition to his policies to the outrageously blatant questioning of his American birth from his eventual successor, Donald Trump.
The searing issue over race was already very much in evidence from Obama's earlier written works, such as Dreams from my Father, which was what first caught him public attention. How could it not be, one must ask, given American Black history — from slavery, civil war, abolition to segregation and the civil rights movement — which succeeded only in winning for the Blacks full equal rights a little more than half a century ago.
All told, Obama's story was not just of his remarkable personal journey but also that of his nation's, too. How, through sheer grit, a powerful oratorical gift and no small doses of idealism, he was able to overcome odds — both personal and national — to reach for and grab the ultimate political prize.
Obama's story holds relevant lessons for us in Malaysia where the issue concerning race permeates national life almost as much (if not more so) as in America. A most useful lesson Obama may impart to us may be to accept matters to do with race as an inescapable fact of life rather than to wish that they will simply disappear or, worse, that they do not (and should not) matter.
In the US and elsewhere, it seems to be that minorities are most obsessed about race matters whereas, in Malaysia, minorities seem to be the ones complaining most that the majority is most obsessed about such issues.
This can be explained depending on how secure the majority of the population feels about its position. For the longest time, the minorities in the US resent what they view as White privilege, which subtly and not-so-subtly perpetuates the position of Whites at the top of the social pyramid. Whether one believes such privilege to be true, it has not, however, prevented the country from electing its first Black president.
Coincidentally or not, increasing numbers of US Whites no longer feel White privilege still exists, if it ever existed. Many of them no longer feel secure, especially given the economic problems the country confronts today. These are the people who have energised the political base of Trump to the extent that White supremacists are no longer shy to come out of the woodwork. The politics of majority-population disaffection, so powerfully exploited by Trump, needs to be addressed urgently.
What ails Malaysian politics may be just as straightforward even if it proves devilishly hard to cure totally. Despite decades of affirmative policies favouring disaffected groups, insecurities giving rise to arch-conservative political views persist.
Meanwhile, resentment continues to build among minorities as they hope for the day when they can see a more level playing field for all.
Ironically, Obama's rise to the US presidency has not meant an end to racial tensions; rather the opposite, given what came after him. The interplay of politics and economics can often lead nations into unknown and unfamiliar territory, vastly complicated by matters over race.
In much the same way that Obama sought to sensitise Americans into taking seriously that race is entirely relevant to the whole public discourse, Malaysians generally will do well to think likewise.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times