Obama and the Black Emperor

As white supremacists woke up on November 5th fearfully expecting a knock of their doors requiring them to report to the cotton fields for orientation in an Obama led black backlash -- and fearfully dreading the end of western civilization as we know it -- Portia was reminded of another time in history when a black man, Elagabalus, became a Roman Emperor.

“Look at the two guys, don’t they look handsome and sweet,” laughs Portia. “But let’s hope Barack Obama has a better outcome than handsome young Elagabalus -- and to do that he had better keep an eye on his aunt Zeituni Onyango, living illegally in a public housing estate in South Boston, because it was Elagabalus’s aunt, not the Romans, who had him done in.”

“I think the white supremacists may have something to worry about if Obama follows Elagabalus and stacks his administration with blacks from his ancestral country and encourages a mass of black immigrants into the land he now governs,” says Portia, “but so far there’s not much evidence of that sort of thing happening.”

“Because the Romans had conquered most of the known world -- repaying its soldiers with land rights and positions of power in conquered territories -- cleverly winning the hearts and minds of the natives by building roads and aquaducts and grain silos and good stuff like that,” explains Portia, “there was not much antagonism shown towards them by the conquered peasants whose lives had been improved by their presence.”

“However, the native elites of all conquered territories had their noses put out of joint by the Romans and were constantly trying to regain power and wealth by fomenting rebellions and, failing that, they did their best to marry into prominent white Roman families or, at least, get their daughters pregnant by one of them in order to give the child Roman status.”

“That’s how Elagabalus rose to power,” explains Portia. “His family history is sketchy -- sort of like Obama’s -- but it all starts with the first so-called black Roman Emperor, Severus, who wasn’t really black at all. Severus was born to an aristocratic white Roman family overlording in Lepcis Magna, North Africa, and during his travels he took a native Syrian girl as his wife. He died in York in 211 while restoring military order in the north of England -- and may have left some illegitimate progeny there, your ancestors perhaps? -- and was succeeded by his legitimate half-Syrian sons Antoninus and Geta.”

“Antoninus had Geta murdered in 212 and became Emperor in his own right,” says Portia. “He preferred the life of the common soldier to one of leisure and imagined himself to be like Alexander the Great. While he was stationed in Antioch, Syria, he supposedly fathered Elagabalus with the niece of Severus's Syrian wife (ie his maternal first cousin).”

“When Antoninus was assassinated in 217 by a conspiracy of officers on one of his Alexander the Great expeditions beyond the Tigris -- around present day Iran and Iraq -- Elagabalus was put forward as the rightful new emperor by the Syrian elites who, thanks to an earlier edict of Antoninus granting Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire, now had equal rights with white, native born Romans and were very pushy about it.”

“When Elagabalus arrived in Rome in 219, wearing his colorful Syrian robes, he created a sensation similar to the one that greeted Obama’s victory on November 4th, 2008,” says Portia. “The liberal Romans were entranced by the handsome young black man, but the conservative Romans were appalled.”

“Firstly, they did not believe he was the son of Antoninus -- and in this respect they had good grounds for being skeptical because Antoninus was unmarried, probably gay; and, secondly, there was a white supremacist type of protest, not so much because of the color of his skin (a lot of white Romans were swarthy) but because Elagabalus came from a conquered nation of virtual savages in comparison to mighty, sophisticated Rome.”

“And it’s this type of elitist white supremacism, I think, that’s behind the antagonism towards Obama,” explains Portia. “The white conservatives look at third-world largely uncivilized Africa, where Obama’s father came from, and freak out about some savage’s son now being President-Elect of the mighty, sophisticated USA.”

“Relax everyone,” laughs Portia. “Black Elagabalus from Syria didn’t bring down the Roman Empire; didn’t start a black backlash against the whites for past misdeeds; didn’t stab anyone in the back; and didn’t stop civilization from progressing.”

“He kinda liked being a Roman, and most Romans kinda liked him, too.”

“So, sit back and enjoy the color that Obama and his family are going to bring into your lives.”