From Kristof at NYT:
"The other day I had a conversation with a Beijing friend and I mentioned that Barack Obama was leading in the presidential race:
She: Obama? But he’s the black man, isn’t he?
Me: Yes, exactly.
She: But surely a black man couldn’t become president of the United States?
Me: It looks as if he’ll be elected.
She: But president? That’s such an important job! In America, I thought blacks were janitors and laborers.
Me: No, blacks have all kinds of jobs.
She: What do white people think about that, about getting a black president? Are they upset? Are they angry?
Me: No, of course not! If Obama is elected, it’ll be because white people voted for him.
She: Really? Unbelievable! What an amazing country!
We’re beginning to get a sense of how Barack Obama’s political success could change global perceptions of the United States, redefining the American “brand” to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality. This change in perceptions would help rebuild American political capital in the way that the Marshall Plan did in the 1950s or that John Kennedy’s presidency did in the early 1960s. In his endorsement of Mr. Obama, Colin Powell noted that “the new president is going to have to fix the reputation that we’ve left with the rest of the world.”
...many Muslims voiced astonishment at Mr. Obama’s rise because it was so much at odds with their assumptions about the United States. Remember that the one thing countless millions of people around the world “know” about the United States is that it is controlled by a cabal of white bankers and Jews who use police with fire hoses to repress blacks. To them, Mr. Obama’s rise triggers severe cognitive dissonance.
...Europeans like to mock the vapidity of American politics, but they also acknowledge that it would be difficult to imagine a brown or black person leading France or Germany.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/opinion/23kristof.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
4 comments:
I completely agree. Which is why I've cast my ballot for Al Sharpton in the past few elections.
I hope you voted for him too, I'd hate for the Chinese to think you were some closet racist or something.
You missed the point entirely including my preface comment about the attitude of the quote being condescending. The column had very little to do with race and everything to do with competent leadership instead of ideological leadership predicated upon American arrogance. tx.
Huh?!?! The Kristof piece was entirely about race, how shocked the world would be that the racists in the US would actually elect a black man president instead of dousing him with a fire hose.
I understand your point, that the world would be surprised that we elected a "competent" president instead of an arrogant hillbilly, but that's not what this article was about.
Upon re-reading the article I agree it had more to do with race than I initially took out of it.
But I remain firm on my point that I look forward, as does Kristoff, to a big shift in American leadership a shift for the better.
As you will have noted in several other posts this is imo an inflection point, not so much because Obama is of color, but because we need a shift in leadership to address the extraordinary challenges facing the US and the world. Obama embodies far more than McCain a shift towards new policies. Obviously electing a person of color is a signal that the status quo is changing that is the only point to make relative to race, Kristoff made the same point. The point has nothing to do with entitlement or affirmative action etc.
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