Sunday, November 09, 2008

Why Barack matters to the rest of the world

When we read how important so much of the world found our Presidentail election, when we see foreign eyes crying with joy over President Elect Obama's victory, I'm sure most of us believed it was because of American foreign policy the last eight years. Well, there was a lot more to it than that.

A great many religious liberals seem to think that racial problems are a uniquely American phenomenon; I can't count how many times I've heard or read in blogs the phrases "America's original sin" and "the most racist nation on Earth". This is, of course, nonsense; it is a human problem, and the world is full of people. Every nation on Earth has to deal with institutional racism- and for all those nations in which the institution is white, Obama's victory is a shock and a thrill. From the essay, "Black and middle class: now there’s a threat" in The TimesOnline : "Being black and middle class is part of the reason white people voted for him: his skin may be brown but he is a recognisable quantity, with his suits and his Harvard degree and the fact (probably) that his children eat pesto. The black middle class is sizeable in America; that isn’t yet true of Britain, where it seems invisible. ... For some of the 47% of people who didn’t vote Democrat, I would guess his middle-classness stuck in the craw even more than the colour of his skin. Nevertheless: the brown middle class has a visible champion at last and he is the leader of the free world."

6 comments:

Robin Edgar said...

Well it is open to some question just how free the alleged "free world" is these days Joel. . .

I and other non-Americans hope that one of Barack Obama's top priorities will be to roll back the disturbing encroachments on civil rights and liberties, to say nothing of other human rights, that were enacted during the Bush/Cheney regime. In fact I expect that many non-Americans were as dismayed with America's domestic policy of the last eight years as they were with its foreign policy Joel. America was looking more and more like a police state. It will probably take several years to remove that impression assuming any effort is made to do so. . .

As far as middle-classness goes I would have thought that middle-class voters were fairly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Vice-President Reject Sarah Palin seemed to try awfully hard to present herself as middle-class (if not working class) to the American public in her speeches and interviews did she not?

Joel Monka said...

I don't think any European was worried about America becoming a police state, Robin; if you've been there any time in the last ten years you'll know what I mean. There are more security cameras and machinegun toting police on the average street corner in Paris or London then there are at the average Presidential speech here.

As far as the middle-class thing, remember that the article was written by a Brit for Brits; read it again from that perspective.

Robin Edgar said...

Actually I haven't been over there in the better part of the last ten years Joel but may be over there in the next couple of months. I was not aware of machine gun toting cops in Britain and France. Still. . . Just because some European countries may appear to be police states themselves in no way means that their citizens are not concerned about the U.S.A. apparently heading in that direction.

Oh well. . . It looks like Barack Obama's election really did it in for Canada's ELITE plan which no doubt many U*Us were seriously considering applying for. ;-)

Bill Baar said...

A back bencher like BHO couldn't take over anywhere else.

They symbolism is not so much is heritage (although that's big too) but the fact America can throw up new blood like that into the political system.

We take risks with untried Pols. No other Democracy would do that, or allow it.

I worked for the US Army in the 80s in Europe when the post-Vietnam Army was recovering form defeat. We always came in dead last in the exercises and the racism from Europeans about the case being the large numbers of AA solidiers was startling to hear.

Robin Edgar said...

How Barack Obama matters to the U*U World. . .

Enjoy!

Sisyphus said...

Race and ethnic relations are always complicated in every society and resolutions are not always peaceful or quick. Europe suffered centuries of warfare before Protestants and Catholics were able to live together in peace. In that sense no society is necessarily better or worse than the others -- some just resolve differences earlier than others.

American relationships between the dominant white Protestant population and all the rest have been no less complicated than elsewhere in the world and resolutions to those differences work themselves out at different paces and in different ways. Consider how Jews and Irish are now considered "white" yet during the first half of the 20th Century they were thought of as races apart.

The black population of the United States has always had a special status among American minority groups in that they were imported here against their wills as slaves (as they were also to plantations in the Caribbean and parts of South America -- mostly Brazil). The "badge of slavery" and dark skin made the culture and law of segregation easily enforceable by the dominant political powers. It took decades of various assaults to bring down the old system but as we entered the 21st Century it looked hopeful we might be entering a new phase in American race relations.

The election of Obama certainly confirms that although the reasons a majority of Americans voted for him is far more complex than the single issue of race. That said, hopefully this will mark the beginning of post-racial or post-ethnic era in our country. If polls are to be believed, that is already the case among younger voters.