From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu Nov 05 2009 - 10:49:33 EST
For the last thirty something odd years the US has been home to thousands of
Eritreans. Through the years the various Eritrean communities across the
country have produced individuals of stellar achievements that were able to
crossover to the American mainstream. In the Entertainment Industry we have
Broadway, Opera, R&B, and Rap performers. In American politics, we have
those who took a stab at running for public offices. We have a significant
number of professors educating America, as we have Medical Doctors working
in the Health sector. The list of course goes on with Engineers, Lawyers etc
… And then we have our sports heroes that made it to the top and in process
introduced Eritrea to a lot more people, notable amongst them Thomas Kelati
and Meb Kiflezghi.
Over the weekend Meb Keflezghi made us proud by winning the highly coveted
New York City marathon but his triumphant victory was marred by negative
comments made by a CNBC journalist and quickly blew into a huge controversy.
Meb was enormously proud of his accomplishment for grabbing the NYC marathon
title as an American and the Eritrean community was equally proud and
celebrated another Eritrean achievement.
The CNBC journalist claimed that Meb’s win was “empty” and that it does not
count as an American achievement. People were outraged by that remark and
responded to his article in force and CNBC editors were flooded by a call to
take “appropriate action” against the journalist. The next day, the
journalist, Darren Rovell, made a convoluted apology but by then the
controversy had a life of its own and it still does not seem to show the
sign of abating. The issue continues to be discussed in the Blogsphere and
mainstream news websites and media as whole. According to Google indexing
since Meb’s win his name is mentioned in more than 5000 articles, that is
not even counting the blogs.
Here on Dehai, as a news contributor, I tried to give Dehai readers a
sampling of what is being said and written on the matter, some of the
articles I forwarded to Dehai were allowed to appear on the website while
the others were not. Here we have an Eritrean in the center of a huge
controversy and I think we should be aware of what is being said and
participate by adding our voices into the conversation, no matter how
repetitive it may seem. The articles being forwarded to Dehai are minuscule
compared to the articles that are out there.
Of course at the core of the matter is, were the comments made by the
journalist racist (a lot of people thought so), or were they a knee jerk
reaction that went totally awry? Some even drew a parallel with the
arguments of the so called “Berthers” who are adamantly making the claim
that Obama is not American. A number of columnists pointed to the fact that
Rovell’s comments are yet another illustration of the extreme
“nationalistic” attitude that has surfaced since the election of Obama. Not
withstanding the rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence and
the 14th Amendment, this whole episode begs the question, who decides who is
an American? For those of us who call ourselves “Eritrean-Americans” what is
the lesson learned from this controversy?
Biniam
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