Questions of Identity

The lyrics from that huge sweeping anthem are instantly recognisable: “It’s been a long time coming...but a change is gonna come”. But can you name the title of the track? Is it the first or second of those clauses? And who sang it? Was it Otis Redding?

I don’t doubt that there are aficionados who scoff at the ignorance, but last year I was not alone in being unsure. When I read a version of that line on the BBC News website as part of Barack Obama’s victory speech, it brought back the difficulty I had downloading a song I had in mind but didn’t really know. Many people using the same programme as me had misnamed and misassigned it.
Although the discussion concerning the new President has often been centred around race, the more relevant question of identity remains: who is Barack Obama? In Europe, at least, there has been massive support for an unknown quantity. Is he really an agent of significant change? On foreign policy – which is what most non-Americans care about most - John Pilger in a New Statesman article certainly doesn’t think so. Same old, same old is his verdict: kowtowing to the Israel lobby and maintaining a belief in American military might as right
Obama himself has denied a shift to the centre after winning the Democratic nomination but a change there certainly did come. Now we get to see who the man is. Is his rhetoric merely that? I was hugely inspired by his grown-up discourse on the subject of race. But those were just words. The man will be measured by his actions.