Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, "Yu, u nobuntu"; "Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu." Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, "My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours." We belong in a bundle of life. We say, "A person is a person through other persons." It is not, "I think therefore I am." It says rather: "I am human because I belong. I participate, I share." A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming to others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.
Harmony, friendliness, community are great goods. Social harmony is for us the summum bonum—the greatest good. Anything that subverts, that undermines this sought-after good, is to be avoided like the plague. Anger, resentment, lust for revenge, even success through aggressive competitiveness, are corrosive of this good. To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. It gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
Why does Tutu believe that the legacy of apartheid will extend far beyond its practice?
What kinds of events does Tutu describe to illustrate the crimes of the apartheid regime? Who does he say is responsible for the violence that he cites?
What does Tutu see as the flaw in the Nuremberg trials that the Allies conducted after World War II? Why does he say the Nuremberg model would not have worked in South Africa?
Why did Tutu feel that it was important to reject the "let bygones be bygones" approach that would have extended blanket amnesty to anybody, on either side, involved in atrocities during the prior regime?
What is the point of the play Death and the Maiden, by Ariel Dorfman, as Tutu sees it? Why do you think that the woman in the play lets her former torturer go free?
How does Tutu translate the African term ubuntu? Why is this concept important to his argument?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
How does Tutu's understanding of democracy compare to that of Aung San Suu Kyi (p. 442)? How are their views shaped by their religious beliefs?
Compare the system of apartheid described by Desmond Tutu with the American system of segregation described by Martin Luther King Jr. in "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (p. 425). How does each writer respond to the political aspect of oppression?
Compare the way that Tutu uses the native African concept of ubuntu with the way Toni Morrison discusses African views of rhetoric and storytelling in her Nobel lecture (p. 217).
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Write an essay that applies the concept of synthesis, as described by Hegel (p. 668), to Tutu's rejection of both the Nuremberg model of justice and "national amnesia." How might Tutu's solution be considered a synthesis of the other two ways that society has used to address horrible crimes committed by the state?
Write an essay in which you argue that the amnesty offered by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa is incompatible with a belief in justice. Conduct additional research into the process that Tutu describes.
Read or watch the play Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman (a film version starring Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley is widely available). Use this play as the basis for an argument about either the value of a tribunal such as the Truth and Reconcilition Commission or the problems that prevent such a tribunal from operating effectively.
barack obama
A More Perfect Union
[2008]
BARACK OBAMA WAS born in Hawaii in 1961. His parents—whom he would later describe as "a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas"—were both students at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. As a child, Obama lived in Hawaii, Washington State, and Jakarta, Indonesia, the home country of his stepfather. After graduating from high school in Hawaii, Obama studied at Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard University before moving to Chicago, Illinois, where he became a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago and later a state legislator. In 2004, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, and in 2008, he was elected president of the United States, the first African American ever to hold that office. In 2012, he was elected to a second term.
Obama's campaign for the presidency began in February of 2007, just three years after his election to the U.S. Senate. His closest rival for the nomination of the Democratic Party was Senator Hillary Clinton; in the end, Obama won the nomination in one of the closest primary races in recent history and went on to defeat Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, in November 2008. The most serious threat to Obama's campaign for the Democratic nomination came in March of 2008, when videos surfaced of Reverend Jeremiah Wright (b. 1941), Obama's long-time pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, making inflammatory statements about the U.S. government and race relations in America. The videos, which showed Wright saying, among other things, that the government had invented HIV "as a means of genocide against people of color," received heavy news coverage and associated Obama with divisive racial politics at a crucial point in a hotly contested Democratic primary.
On March 18, 2008, after several weeks of headlines about the Wright issue, Obama delivered the speech "A More Perfect Union" at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In this speech, he responded to those who criticized his relationship with Wright, explaining why he disagreed with Wright and why he refused to denounce him altogether. In addition to addressing his relationship with Wright, Obama used "A More Perfect Union," whose title is taken from the Preamble to the Constitution, to address the broader issue of race in the United States.
Obama uses several rhetorical strategies in his speech. He supports his argument with anecdotes, historical facts, and logical reasoning. Underlying all of these strategies, however, is the creation of an ethos that is sympathetic to the diverse perspectives on race held by different members of his audience. At a number of points in his remarks, Obama refers to personal experiences as a multiracial American in order to establish his authority to speak knowledgeably from several perspectives.
"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Two hundred and twenty-one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars, statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.