Remembering Mandela

I've just been skimming through the Wikipedia article on Mandela. Mainly because I don't know all that much about him. I saw a few documentaries about him, I remember when he cam to Boston and My mom took me into the crowd near the Charles river and we actually had to get out of there because a crowd that big is no place for a child.
I wanted to write a poem about him or something but I've decided it's better that someone else do that.
Mainly I just saw that most of the television snippets I watched show him as an old man, and I figured, now that he has passed, that wouldn't it be nice to show more pictures of him as a young man? Yes he didn't become President and basically a world leader until he was an old man, but if he wasn't the young man that he was, he wouldn't have become the old man that he was.
He is one of the only people who was a young man like he was, a leader like he was, and who did not end up shot, or being forgotten. Instead, after being freed from prison, he went on to rule South Africa.
The more I glanced at the article (I don't have the attention to actually read everything. There's just too much) The crazier it seems that he was able to do what he did. Glance through it yourself.

I guess as Americans we are afraid of Young Mandela, and comfortable with honoring Old Mandela. Young Mandela was about violent revolution. He was a real warrior, preparing for guerilla warfare getting money from China, from the Communists. Americans are uncomfortable not only with that, but with the fact that doing those things was the right thing to do in his situation. That things could be so bad that a man in his position (well educated from pretty good family background) would choose that path. Which makes us, as Americans, uncomfortable with who we are, and what we have done in our own country.
When you think of Mandela to South Africa, the quickest American equivalent is perhaps Paul Robeson. A man who Americans are so uncomfortable with, that he has very nearly been edited out of our history books except for that he was a singer and sang "Ol' Man River" Of course Paul Robeson never became President (though if there was not a Red Scare or there were no such thing as a Soviet Union he was popular enough with white people during his time that it is conceivable that he could have been elected.

Some people might think of Martin Luther King. Except most Northern whites were very comfortable with what he said.... until he started talking about Vietnam... and that is when Martin Luther King died and was turned into a god/prophet/cultural icon.. most of the last part of his message, the part we as a country were uncomfortable with, being edited out of our nations meta-narrative.

But Nelson Mandela was perhaps to important to mysteriously die in prison, and able to really bring that nation together as President. And perhaps that is when other White Nations breathed a sigh of relief and became comfortable with having Nelson Mandela as an international leader and I guess that's why the news stations are focusing on that part. The Morgan Freeman with Matt Damon sort of story. Heart warming. Comfortable. Safe.

But apparently there is a movie out with Idris Elba playing Mandela, and I will definitely have to check that out. Perhaps something everyone should check out.