Is Europe Ready for a Barack Obama?
When Will Europe Be Ready to Chose a Leader Like Barack Obama?
As Barack Obama is sworn in as the first black president of the United States, Europeans wonder when — no make that if — they will ever see their own “Obama” in Europe.
(Markus Schreiber/AP Photo)
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Could a second-generation immigrant with roots in the black Third World be elected prime minister or president in Europe?
My American friends find it difficult to imagine an immigrant overcoming Europe’s white-dominated, slow and elitist political systems anytime soon.
“Does anyone really think that Britain would chose a second-generation Pakistani as its leader?” Yale professor and intellectual heavyweight Harold Bloom said.
“Would Germany choose a child of Turkish immigrants? Or France someone whose parents emigrated from Algeria?”
But European friends and intellectuals also seem more optimistic, even if most statistics say otherwise.
Raj, a teacher of postcolonial literature whose Indian parents moved to Great Britain in the 1960s, said he could envision a European Obama in the next 10 years. Particularly in Britain, which had a Jewish prime minister in the 19th century, and is perhaps seen as one of the better-integrated European countries.
ABC News: Is Europe Ready for a Barack Obama?.
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Tags: barack obama, Black Europe, Europe, global, History, Politics, president, Social History, united states, world
