How they see us: What a black president would mean for Europe

Not that America probably cares, said Simon Jenkins in Britain

Not that America probably cares, said Simon Jenkins in Britain’s The Times, but here in Europe we’re watching the U.S. presidential contest more closely than usual. The foreign adventurism of George W. Bush has left the world in no doubt that America’s president is in a sense president of all of us, a realization that has given rise to a “bitter sense of disenfranchisement.” But the other reason we’re fascinated with the race has the potential to reverse, if not entirely wash away, those ugly feelings: the candidacy of Barack Obama. The fact that a black man has even come this close to being elected president of the United States has already given pause to those who always dismissed the USA as a nation of illiterate, gun-toting racists. Were Obama actually to win the White House, it would “transform, indeed electrify America’s image worldwide,” instantly and for the better.

Here in France, it’s already happening, said François Durpaire in the Paris Libération. Two short years ago the ghetto suburbs of French cities were in flames, as immigrant youths vented their frustration and hopelessness through rioting. Today, in Obama, those disaffected youths are finding “something to smile about.” Obama’s spectacular rise from a single-parent home and a mixed-race background is a story “whose horizons extend beyond national borders” and that has the power to inspire pride and hope even in the slums of another continent. Think about that. Much has been written about what an Obama presidency could do for race relations in the U.S., but only now are people starting to realize that a win by Obama in November could even improve race relations here in Europe.

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