Back in midsummer, when the long, hard-fought Democratic primary campaign was drawing to an exhausting end, I heard a lot of skeptics saying that even though Senator Barack Obama had prevailed for the nomination he could never win the presidency. The US, I heard over and over again, wasn’t ready to elect a black man as president.
What was unusual about these sentiments was that they weren’t mostly from Americans — although there were plenty of skeptics here, too. Instead, the most pessimistic were my friends around the world.
Despite some notable advances for black Americans over the years — Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as successive secretaries of state, for example — a prevailing global narrative about the US has persisted; that it is an indelibly racist country and that black Americans remain an oppressed and entrenched underclass. It was a view I heard repeatedly, not only in this election season, but during my nearly 20 years as a foreign correspondent.
If I mentioned the growth of the black middle class, or the number of black American chief executive officers running companies such as American Express, Time Warner and Kmart, or the increasing number of blacks with doctorates, I was usually met with stares of incredulity or slapped down by undeniable statistics.
“So why are so many black men in prison?” a French friend asked me once.
Another, in Hong Kong, asked: “So why are black people in your country all living in ghettos?”
Of course, if I persisted there was always the trump card: Yes, but a black person can never be elected president in your country. Now along comes Obama, and much of the world, with its fixed image of the US — an image that is often as outdated as it is accurate — doesn’t know quite how to deal with his astonishing success.
Consider the June front-page editorial in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper, the People’s Daily, which often sets the tone for the line officials are expected to take: “Obama’s skin color is the biggest focal point of this year’s US election,” it began. “He is a symbol of assimilation rather than a representative of the different races coming together. Obama did not break the superiority complex of white people. On the contrary, his appearance strengthened the superiority complex of white people.”
Then there was the quote from a senior Japanese official — later denied — in the Shukan Bunshun weekly.
“It will likely be McCain who will win the race in the end,” the official told reporters, according to the paper. “Obama’s black and Hillary [Clinton] is a woman. I guess it could be difficult for them.”
The official added: “No matter what it looks like, the United States is a very conservative country.”
For the record, when the official denied the remarks he said he had many “black friends.”
If the reaction to Obama from Asia was skepticism, it was because it challenged some long-held views from a part of the world that too often sees a racial hierarchy based on skin color and complexion, with lighter skin being at the top of the pecking order and black at the bottom. When I lived in the Philippines, one of the common insults Filipinos made about each other centered on whether they were “too dark.”
Around the region, light skin is prized. Perhaps that explains the gap-jawed, almost humorous reaction to the Obama win in some of the press.
“Will Chinese benefit with a black man in charge?” asked the Xiamen Business Daily.
“Dark horse enters White House” was the headline in the Information Times in Shanghai.
My favorite was the front-page headline in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: “Black in the White House.”
But it’s not just Asia. Europe has been in the grip of Obamania since he burst on to the world scene. But Obama’s ascent to the White House will also challenge deeply held European assumptions about the US and American blacks. In France, where I was based for five years, I was constantly asked about racism in the US — to a point where I found many French took our problems as affirmation of their own perfection of egalite.
The view of the US as irretrievably racist has given others with their own racial problems a sense of superiority. It also robs the US of the moral high ground when it issues criticisms of the human rights violations of others. The US State Department issues an annual report on human rights around the world. In response China has begun issuing its own report on human rights in the US.
This year, in the section on racial discrimination, it claimed: “Racial discrimination is a deep-rooted social illness in the United States.”
The statistics quoted are mostly accurate but selective, chosen to highlight lingering problems while ignoring all the evidence of blacks and minorities entering the American economic mainstream.
Then there is the view from Africa. When challenged on human rights, African autocrats have become deft at deflecting criticism from Europe and the US; Europeans are routinely reminded of their colonial past and Americans are chided for slavery and our sorry history of race relations. When I was covering Africa as a correspondent, I never found a good answer to that retort.
“We try to own up to our own problems,” I would say. “Or, we’re not a perfect country, but that’s no excuse for gross rights violations elsewhere.”
But I knew that the US’ ability to criticize was always going to be measured against the history of racism in America.
Obama’s election, of course, does not mean the US has suddenly become a beacon of racial justice and harmony. Indeed, it’s one step — though, symbolically, as powerful a step as can be.
As Howard Wolpe, director of the Africa program at the Wilson Center in Washington, so aptly put it in an interview: “The fact that someone of African ancestry can be the president of the United States is going to substantially increase our moral stature and enable us, I believe, to have much greater sway in our relationships with African states.”
Or, in the words of Ugandan journalist and commentator Charles Onyango-Obbo, in a column written before the election: “If Obama is elected president, thousands of public intellectuals, radical professors and social activists and nationalist politicians and journalists will be plunged into crisis. Now they will have to explain how it is possible that a black person could be elected in this profoundly racist country.”
Will an Obama administration change the status of all blacks in the US? Of course not. But his astounding victory is at least changing some perceptions about America. Already it is forcing the rest of the world to think again.
Keith Richburg is New York bureau chief of the Washington Post.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to
RSS