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The black European by Thanos Kalamidas 2008-08-10 09:34:07 |
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An article I wrote a few days ago about the use of the ‘race card’ from the hopeful for the US presidential election McCain triggered a series of remarkable comments that moved the question to the other side of the Atlantic, so instead of asking if Barack Obama should use the ‘race card’ the question turned to be if Europe was ready for a black leader of the state. And by that I mean president or prime minister.
But before we come to this side of the ocean let’s stay for a bit on the side of the USA. Coming to Barack Obama I think there is a very old argument between historians, sociologists and scholars and it has to do with the role of the persona in history. How different Europe would have been without Napoleon or Churchill? Would Athens have had the Golden Age without Pericles and what would have happened to the Roman Republic without Augustus? Did it need to come to 2008 for the United States after a civil war and all the civil rights struggle that has lasted nearly till the end of the 20th century to have a black candidate for the Oval Office or does everything have to do with Obama’s charisma?
I have come to believe that everything has to do with Barack Obama and not with the timing. Remember Rev. Jesse Jackson? At the time and despite the fact that people forget, Ronald Reagan was worse than George W. Bush and for the ones who lived that period you might remember that despite the fact that at his time started at the start of the Cold War and the USSR as we knew it, his first period was the second worst period of the Cold War, especially when he started his ‘Star Wars’ plan, the fear of a nuclear war became more visual than ever.
When Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for a second term a young black American, one of the leaders of the civil rights movement, became one of the hopefuls for the Democratic Party. My personal opinion is that Jesse Jackson picked and invested in the ‘race card’ something that scared the average American black or white and actually I think that mistake became a lesson for Obama and that’s why he carefully keeps away.
In the race for the candidacy Jesse Jackson gained 21% popularity which means that the time was right, the candidate and his strategy was wrong. 21% means that he had attracted voters for all education, financial and colour sides of the American society. Of course the party was not ready for a black candidate but is anybody who believes that the Democratic Party was ready now? I think they were forced and if the power and the force of the people Obama had attracted was smaller the party would have definitely support a woman.
Coming now to this side of the ocean, I believe that this is where the answer lays, in the fact that we never had the persona, the right black persona to lead a party into elections and win the office. We just haven’t found our Obama yet! It will be very naïve to say that we are not dealing with racist problems in Europe, after all we had our war and a genocide to remind us how serious the racist problem could get but since then things have change dramatically. Who would ever believe that a man with Jewish background would ever be the president of France fifty years ago?
Despite to what we want to believe anti-Semitism was stronger in France that it was in Germany before WWII and the Jews suffered under the communist regimes till the end. But Nicolas Sarkozy is the president of the French republic today and people didn’t vote him for his background but for his ideas and what he is representing. You see in a way Jews were the European blacks.
It's not the system or the party’s bureaucracy or status quo that will stop a black candidate, Barack Obama after all had and probably still has to face exactly the same challenges in USA and don’t forget that in Europe we have shown much more tolerance to homosexuality for example. In Holland they had a gay candidate for the nationalist party something it sounds just unbelievable or very …European for the Americans or we have active even powerful communist parties something definitely unbelievable for the average American.
Cyprus this moment has a president elected from the communist party. So to my opinion to see a black candidate in Europe is not a wishful thought but a case of the right person, after all my daughter goes to a school this minute with kids that when it comes the day will have the right to elect and be elected and they are black, white, Asian but all of them are Finns.
I really hope Barack Obama will win the US elections and this has nothing to do with his colour but with the changes I really hope he will bring to the international scene but on more I hope I have is that his example will inspire more people internationally and more people will understand that colour, religion, origins, sexuality have nothing to do with it and this is precisely the wind of change Barack Obama brings.
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