Is the World Ready for a Black American President?Contrary to European newspaper reporting, racism is not unique to the United States.
Posted Monday, June 9, 2008, at 8:01 PM ET
"Will Americans vote for a black man?" I think I've been asked this question by foreigners of various origins a dozen times—or maybe three dozen times—since the U.S. presidential campaign began for real in January. Now we have the answer: Yes, Americans will vote for a black man. Which means that it is now time to turn this rather offensive question around the other way: Will foreigners accept a black American president?
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StumbleUponI realize that this, too, may seem like a rather offensive question, particularly if one believes everything that one reads in the newspapers. Germany, to take one random example, is at the moment experiencing something like its own version of Obamamania. The press appears to see the Democratic candidate as what a Der Spiegel journalist calls "a cross between John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr."; the German foreign minister has already been heard chanting, "Yes, we can!"; and Obama T-shirts can be spotted in the hipper quarters of Berlin. This sort of enthusiasm isn't unique to Germany, either: British, French, and even Polish newspapers splashed Obama and his candidacy on their front pages last week, most accompanied by laudatory articles that solemnly proclaimed that "America has changed."
But has Europe changed? And have Asia and the Middle East changed? I hate to put it so crudely, but—European newspaper reporting to the contrary—racism is not a phenomenon unique to the United States. The situation of ethnic minorities in Europe and Asia is completely different from that of the United States, and in many ways our societies aren't comparable: Most nonwhite inhabitants of European societies are recent immigrants, not descendants of former slaves, and the particular situation of, say, the black Christian population in Arab-dominated Sudan is unique.
Nevertheless, it is safe to say that there is a distinct dearth of nonwhite politicians in Europe. The Indian caste system has an element of skin-color discrimination built into it. Arab societies have their own history of trading in black slaves, and the existence of anti-black-African prejudice in the Arab world is no secret. Periodically, African students in Moscow get beaten up on the streets.
Though certainly more severe in those countries that have large nonwhite populations, unreflective racism exists even in parts of the world that have barely any darker-skinned or nonnative inhabitants at all. Japan has been singled out by the United Nations for its racist treatment of foreigners. And while some of the stares that black Americans say they get on the street in Warsaw or Prague reflect simple curiosity, some, I'm told, also contain an element of hostility.
President Obama wouldn't have to worry too much about angry stares from people at bus stops, of course, and it is fair to assume that prejudices harbored by the odd foreign leader will vanish in the presence of the U.S. president. In the rosiest scenario, an Obama presidency—or just an Obama candidacy—might even force a broader international discussion of race. Last year, Andrew Sullivan wrote eloquently about the way in which Obama's face, just by itself, will help change America's image around the world.
By the same token, candidate Obama—merely by being who he is and looking like what he looks like—could begin to change European, Arab, and Asian attitudes about race. Millions of Africans would surely treat a U.S. president of African descent as "their" president, just for a start.
But in the meantime, do not be surprised if there is some backlash. A hint of what might be hiding behind those enthusiastic headlines emerged last week in Obamamanic Germany, where Die Tageszeitung, a Berlin newspaper, put a photograph of the White House and the headline "Uncle Barack's Cabin" on its front page. The editors argued that their intention was satirical, but since the same newspaper has also referred to the current U.S. secretary of state as "Uncle Tom's Rice," it is clear that they understood the nastiness of the "Uncle Tom" connotation perfectly well.
Listen carefully, too, when foreigners start worrying about Obama's lack of foreign-policy experience. Though this is a perfectly legitimate concern, I do think I occasionally catch a racist undertone in this kind of conversation. "How could a black man possibly understand European/Middle Eastern/South Asian politics?" is what my interlocutors sometimes, in fact, seem to be saying.
The correct response, of course, is that plenty of white men don't understand European/Middle Eastern/South Asian politics, either. But not everyone, everywhere, is going to understand that. Foreign coverage of U.S. politics always reveals a lot about foreign countries, but never more so than in this election season.
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Remarks from the Fray:
The entire article seems predicated on the idea that Europeans look down their noses at us unenlightened Americans due to our inability to get past our own narrow minded bigotry. I've known and been close to many people from all over Europe in my life and work, and they certainly are not shy about making known the things about the US that doesn't meet with their approval. But setting aside the southern states and their slave history, I defy anybody to produce a European that will seriously state that the US is more racist than is Europe, or that this was the case at any point in the last 200 years.
In the US we have whole heartedly embraced industrialization, often to our own detriment. We have sacrificed culture and community for profit and economies of scale. We have no cultural identity and our elites care much less about creating an image to the world than they do about owning yachts and Swiss vacation chalets.
The Europeans, on the other hand, have a romanticized image of themselves, a strong opinion on what it means to be one of them and they have a clean delineation between themselves and the rest of the world.
--Wrolph
(To reply, click here.)
An avid reader of Ms. Applebaum's articles, and a "foreigner" myself living in central Europe, I find her argument here somewhat off-the-mark. I've also seen the hypocrisy behind the ubiquitous question an American receives here, "Will the Americans vote for a black man?" But to bring up Europe's racism is a completely different matter and has no bearing on this discussion.
Racism, at least where I live, is synonymous with anti-immigrant sentiment, which extends equally to Eastern Europeans, Asians, Middle Easterners, and Africans. It's a resentment from the "natives" who are paying 50% income tax to fund the masses who they see as "freeloaders." It's also a fear that their own culture gets lost as immigrants overrun the country. I've seen it get very ugly, but I've never seen it be about race per se.
On the other side of the coin, we can't forget that historically, American black celebrities were always much more appreciated in Europe than at home. While there's a lot of hostility here towards people who live here and don't care to learn the language or understand the culture, merit has always been appreciated. Some Korean friends of mine, who run a very successful chain of businesses and live in a swank apartment, are invited to the same balls as the politicians. The music conservatories are filled not with natives, but with Russians, Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans. Those who distinguish themselves find honorary citizenship easy to get.
None of this is meant to defend the ugliness that exists in Europe towards foreigners, rather to predict that an intelligent, reasonable, gifted orator who wins the White House will be accepted with no problems.
--Junggai
(To reply, click here.)
Modern racism has been entirely defined by the artificial constructions of "black" and "white", which are American inventions. Slavery encouraged "whites" to look at "blacks" as a separate species, because to view slaves as human beings would be massively problematic from a Christian perspective. This notion of biological division between "whites" and "blacks" remains a strong current in US racism, often backed by junk-science.
The claim that Africans are a separate "species" is very difficult to maintain outside the American bubble. In Europe, Africans and Europeans have lived in close proximity for millennia. Skin colour is closely associated with climate - pale Scandinavians, dark Italians, darker Africans. There is no evidence that the Roman Empire - which founded Europe's civilization - viewed black Africans as any more "barbaric" than blond Saxons. Both were enslaved, and both could become free Romans.
"Africanness" has little to do with racism outside the United States. In other parts of the world racism is most often directed at transnational or nomadic communities - Jews and gypsies - who are often accused of not playing by local rules of business or ethics.
--GreenwichJ
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Well, to be fair, there are a few "nonwhite" politicians of prominence in Europe. The most prominent example in Germany is likely Cem Özdemir, a prominent member of the European Parliament who has recently announced his intention to run for leadership of the German Green party (and who has a very good chance of making it, too).
But yes, there's still a fair amount of racism around, even if most of it is on a subconscious level and even if most Germans wouldn't even dream of saying something racist in public. Germany has made some progress in recent years - even the conservative parties have now acknowledged that the immigrants from Turkey and elsewhere are here to stay, and have a place in German society. But there's still much work to be done, like reforming the education system in many states which makes it hard for the children of immigrants to proceed to university.
Hopefully, if the United States can show in November that they have largely moved beyond racism, Germany will be able to do so one day as well...
--Jurgen Hubert
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