Europe's Obamamania

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Europe's Obamamania

By Ian Buruma, The Guardian. Posted November 5, 2008.

The president-elect is seen as something more than an American – he looks like a citizen of the world



Why do Europeans adore president-elect Obama? Stupid question, you might say. He is young, handsome, smart, inspiring, educated, cosmopolitan, and above all, he promises a radical change from the most unpopular American administration in history. Compare that to his rival, John McCain, who talked about change, but to most Europeans represented the opposite.

And yet, there is something odd about the European mania for a black American politician, even as we all know that a black president or prime minister (let alone one whose middle name is Hussein) is still unthinkable in Europe. Or perhaps that is precisely the point.

Europeans have long been hospitable to black American stars. Think of Josephine Baker, who wowed Parisians and Berliners at a time when blacks could not vote -- or even use the same bathrooms as whites -- in many parts of the United States. Cities like Paris, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam offered refuge to black American jazz musicians, who needed a break from institutionalised racism. The same was true for other artists. The writer, James Baldwin, for example, found a home in France.

Since there were very few black people in Europe, the adoration of black American stars came easily. It made Europeans feel superior to Americans. They could pat themselves on the back for their lack of racial prejudice. When large numbers of people from non-western countries started to come to Europe after the 1960s, this proved to be something of an illusion. Still, the illusion was nice while it lasted, and Obamamania may contain an element of nostalgia, as well as hope. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/election08/106134/europe%27s_obamamania/

[AuntPatsy]

1. Interesting article and it makes alot of sense...

[Tartiflette]

2. Not entirely

There is a sense in the article that I think does Europe a disservice. The influx of large minorities of ethnic groups is a relatively recent phenomenon in Europe, and to my mind it is unfair to claim superiority, as is implied in the article, based on an apples and oranges scenario. Further, Europe (as with the individual US states) is hardly homogeneous and both the make-up and treatment of minority groups vary widely from country to country. That is not to downplay the horrendous racism that exists in Europe (as it does in the US - I'm not making a claim for superiority of Europe here, either, as I've read testimonies of people claiming each to be more racist than the other...). However, I cannot fault the argument that Senator Obama's election victory may help to smooth the path to true equality across the world, and his victory was truly inspirational.

[DemoTex]

3. "The Paris Intifada" by Andrew Hussey (Granta 101 .. Spring 2008)

One cold evening in late November last year I left my flat in southern Paris, took the métro to Saint-Denis, a suburb to the north of the city, and then a bus to an outlying council estate, or cité, called Villiers-le-Bel. The journey took little more than an hour but marked a sharp transition between two worlds: the calm centre of the city and the troubled banlieue. Banlieue is often mistranslated into English as ‘suburb’ but this conveys nothing of the fear and contempt that many middle-class French people invest in the word. It first became widely used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to describe the areas outside Paris, where city-dwellers came and settled and built houses with gardens on the English model. One of the paradoxes of life in the banlieue is that it was originally about hope and human dignity.

To understand the banlieue you should think of central Paris as an oval-shaped haven or fortress, ringed by motorways – the boulevards périphériques (or le périph) – that mark the frontier between the city and the suburbs or banlieue. To live in the centre of Paris (commonly described in language unchanged from the medieval period as intra muros, within the city walls) is to be privileged: even if you are not particularly well off you still have access to all the pleasures and amenities of a great metropolis. By contrast, the banlieue lies ‘out there’, on the other side of le périph. The area is extra muros – outside the city walls. Transport systems here are limited and confusing. Maps make no sense. No one goes there unless he or she has to. It’s not uncommon for contemporary Parisians to talk about la banlieue in terms that make it seem as unknowable and terrifying as the forests that surrounded Paris in the Middle Ages.

The banlieue is made up of a population of more than a million immigrants, mostly but not exclusively from North and sub-Saharan Africa. To this extent, the banlieue is the very opposite of the bucolic sub-urban fantasy of the English imagination: indeed for most French people these days it means a very urban form of decay, a place of racial tensions and of deadly if not random violence. (Full essay at link)

http://www.granta.com/Magazine/101/The-Paris-Intifada/1

Welcome to DU!

[TahitiNut]

5. Even outside Paris, there's a "pecking order."

The affluent and political mainstream French choose the western and southern banlieue while the northern and eastern banlieue are deemed less desirable. Why? Well the Germans invade from the east! So, the real estate values are lower for the cannon fodder. Aulnay sou Bois, for example, lies on the east-northeast of Paris between Le Bourget and Charles DeGaulle airports. It's populated by the communist and socialist reactionaries ... and immigrants. More industrialized, it's not favored by the affluent. La Defense, a cluster of corporate high rises and power centers, lies to the northwest of Paris. The more valuable real estate is that which isn't overrun by the invading Germans.

It's a fascinating treatise on history.

[marmar]

7. La Defense is where that hideous underground shopping mall is, n'est-ce pas?

It's the least Parisian thing in Paris.....It was like being in Oakland Mall with great accents. The Grande Arche was cool, but we ran screaming out of that mall toward the Metro.

[TahitiNut]

8. Yup. It's business ... not personal.

I prefer the personal touch of the city inside the peripherique.

[DemoTex]

9. Pour moi .. Montparnasse!

In my next life ..

BTW: Ever eat at The Lilas in Montparnasse? It was one of Hemingway's haunts (A Movable Feast) and is, of course, still there.

[TahitiNut]

10. I think so. It was near the tallest office building inside Paris on the left bank.

I remember going to several restaurants that'd been around for over a century ... just fabulous. Many only had 'unisex' restrooms. I remember standing at the urinal and the wife of a coworker walking in, remarking that it was unisex, and blithely entering the stall. We sure adapted quite easily ... as sane folks tend to do.

[marmar]

11. Le Marais or Quartier Latin, por moi......

..... and Belleville has lots of character.

[AuntPatsy]

4. Very interesting and you make a valid point...

[The Craw]

6. The fact Obama has international appeal enrages right wingers...

For reasons I cannot grasp, right wingers *want* the world to hate us- or at least fear us- The fact that the Europeans admire Obama has the right wing enraged- Given the right wing xenophobia, it's hardly a shock...

WHY do these right wing vermin hold such an adversarial attitude toward the rest of the world- even toward our allies?

Is it mental illness? Or are they just assh**les?