By Wole SOYINKA

The Guardian  hustle

'Despite herself, the United Satates of America is poised on the brink of an altered state of being, and the reticent agency for that prospect is none other than - Diversity - reticent because uninvoked, uncoopted, a near random factor, a volunteer dimension, genuinely fortuitous, rarely articulated, even now still unacknowledged at the hour of its epiphany, least of all by those who stand to be vindicated as a patient, long obscured vector of humanity. For most, not even remotely anticipated, certainly not so soon and even - for many, 'not in my lifetime'. For all however, like it or not, the nation is witnessing Diversity made flesh, as affirmation at long last of true nation being' (Excerpted from the lecture 'Sweet Are the Uses of Diversity', delivered at the annual CONVIVENCIA conference of Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles on 26 October, 2008) 'Cakes and ales' there shall be, and song, dance and revelry, and in good measure, come that day whose closeness knocks on American doors. So, what does that day mean for the American people, a day that dawns on the installation of a rank Outsider in a historic White Mansion? Clearly, Diversity for many but, for others, Adversity writ large. Affirmative Action has transcended itself and sounds near trite, banal, even tuneless, given the concert of history under whose music it is subsumed. Despite herself, the United Satates of America is poised on the brink of an altered state of being, and the reticent agency for that prospect is none other than - Diversity - reticent because uninvoked, uncoopted, a near random factor, a volunteer dimension, genuinely fortuitous, rarely articulated, even now still unacknowledged at the hour of its epiphany, least of all by those who stand to be vindicated as a patient, long obscured vector of humanity. For most, not even remotely anticipated, certainly not so soon and even - for many, 'not in my lifetime'. For all however, like it or not, the nation is witnessing Diversity made flesh, as affirmation at long last of true nation being. In one stroke, a much reviled nation - and on many fronts deservedly so - will have contradicted, positively this time, much of her external regard, easily summed up as a case history of contradictions - the rhetoric of idealism against policy and act. It is a lesson in reversals, no, not now the negative face, as in the Greek tragic mode called peripeteia, but of that rare state of reversal when negative expectations and the condition of despair and impotence are submerged under the positive, and the protagonist even aspires towards a state of grace. It had happened once before, but never in such a dimension. The political pundits of the time were not completely off the mark when they summed up the national mood then as being not quite ready to embrace a Roman Catholic as president of the nation. Together with Women and Jews, their place within the inner political precincts was - the exclusion list. The inner sanctum of power was, by unspoken covenant, reserved for the WASP tribe only - white, Anglo-saxon Protestant - descended, however tortuously, from the recognized Founding Fathers. Then came John F. Kennedy, charismatic, cultivated, self-confident, with a transformative vision of Camelot shimmering on the horizon. It was a close call, but a sufficient proportion of a disillusioned people felt that he brought with him a hope for the termination of the reign of barbarians - and would not sign the nation over to the Vatican. Comparatively however, the present must be counted no less than a seismic shift. Not family pedigree, nor wealth, nor race credentials paved the way for this outsider who, to cap it all, belongs to a racial minority. We are speaking also of the, surely, now predictable margin of national acceptability - the mandate of a nation across warring sectors. Nonetheless, one must acknowledge that the very policies of that precursor, Jack Kennedy, his passion and executive boldness paved the way for the emergence of the defining moment. Segregation, after all, preached a kind of diversity, a dogma that became national policy, actualized on a ruthless and comprehensive scale in former Apartheid South Africa - the cynical doctrine of separate but 'equal'. Euphoria is one thing however, and very well in its place, but the practicality of governance is another. It would be unrealistic to expect the radical and immediate transformation of a deeply race-conditioned psyche - on all sides of the divide - as South Africa has discovered. A severely mangled economy - the real peripeteia in the tragic mode - ushers in its positive variant and casts a pall on the mood of vindication. Over there, the problem of South Africa was somewhat different - the post-apartheid order inherited a viable economy, but one that paralleled also the lines of racial divide - a huge abyss of affluence and impoverishment between the races. The U.S. economy, as is widely acknowledged, is massively shredded across both racial and class divisions, and I cannot help wondering which constitutes the greater challenge of transformation. Let me contribute a precedent in a minor key from my own nation, Nigeria, When we finally emerged from decades of brutal military dictatorship, we cautioned ourselves that no magic wand would be found to obliterate a deeply entrenched culture of economic waste and corruption, the murder of political culture, debasement of civil society, and the daily degradation of human existence. Just as well that we set our minds on the seizure, protection, and reinforcement of the essence of the moment - the termination of an all-pervasive national nightmare - an end that enabled even a partial restoration of civic integrity. As if by mutual pact across the Atlantic, the eight years that followed our transition could be said to have echoed the last eight years of the American experience. Our benighted, oil cursed nation endured a near decade of governance by deception, abuse of power, a heightened state of corruption and, most criminal of all - an unprecedented assault on democracy, backed by a blatant executive contempt for the rule of law, the totality of which has left the Nigerian nation steeped in disillusionment and teetering on the brink of anarchy. It would be wise for Americans, in turn, to avoid expectations that eight years of deception, high-placed financial chicanery and corruption, enabled by cabalist governance, ineptitude and cronyism would vanish overnight. We need to point out - from the observation post of us aliens - that the change now confronting the American people has parallels elsewhere, that Americans are not exempt, by special dispensation, from the mines that litter the field of social transformation across the world, nor endowed with any special talent for their avoidance, or deactivation. A slow, painful phase of correction of, and re-adjustment from, multiple ills is inevitable. But, let me end as I began - on a note of euphoria. It is crucial that we seize upon this moment as a self-contained, transformative event-in-itself-and-for-itself, one that is placed beyond adumbrations, and cannot be affected by eventualities. It is a moment that towers above even the main protagonist. Even though that moment is pregnant with visions of possibilities, it is a conclusion that stands within history but outside time. It stands beyond its own promise, beyond its wildest potential. No matter what, the citizens of this nation space, which was deemed a lost global cause, can claim that they have not merely glimpsed, but set their feet upon the mountaintop. Martin Luther King's dream, his vision of the re-humanization of the American peoples has attained apotheosis. That descendant and martyr of centuries-old history of dehumanization, disdain and racist arrogance, yet advocate of the inevitable convocation of all peoples in freedom and equality, can truly claim that he has brought his people to the Promised Land but, not just his fellow slave descendants repatriated from the black continent, but the entire diversity of the American peoples. This is a posthumous triumph, and we can celebrate with his countrymen and women on their entering into that condition that theologians, such as King, so elegantly refer to as - a state of grace. Who was it now that once quipped: there is always something new out of Africa? Julius Caesar perhaps? That attribution seems as good as any. Americans will shortly have cause to agree with him, whoever it was. A cynical quip has turned transcendentally prescient, two millennia after it was supposedly uttered. Were he alive today, our 'Julius Caesar' would have bestowed the laurel of astonishment on that land of broken promises, and unfulfilled expectations: by Jupiter! something new (and rare), Out of America.