A leader like Obama in Europe?

After U.S. Breakthrough, Europe Looks in Mirror

From N.Y. Times: PARIS — In the general European euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, there is the beginning of self-reflection about Europe’s own troubles with racial integration. Many are asking if there could be a French, British, German or Italian Obama, and everyone knows the answer is no, not anytime soon.

In a suburb of Paris, people watched election returns from the United States last week. In Rome, a poster from the Italian Democratic Party said, “The World Changes.” The only black member of the Italian Parliament saw the Obama victory as a “provocation” to Europeans. It is risky to make racial comparisons between America and Europe, given all the historical and cultural differences. But race had long been one reason that Europeans, harking back to the days when famous American blacks like Josephine Baker and James Baldwin found solace in France, looked down on the United States, even as Europe developed postcolonial racial problems of its own.

“They always said, ‘You think race relations are bad here in France, check out the U.S.,’ ” said Mohamed Hamidi, former editor of the Bondy Blog, founded after the 2005 riots in the heavily immigrant suburbs of Paris.

“But that argument can no longer stand,” he said.

Continue... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/world/europe/12europe.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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