The Respectfully Republican Conversation

Another article touting the racism in Europe...where are all the proponents of Europe is so great and America sucks!  LOL!

After U.S. Breakthrough, Europe Looks in Mirror

Published: November 11, 2008

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.

Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse

In a suburb of Paris, people watched election returns from the United States last week.

Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press

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.

For many immigrants to Europe, Mr. Obama's victory is "a small revolution" toward better overall treatment of minorities, said Nadia Azieze, 31, an Algerian-born nurse who grew up here. "It will never be the same," she said, over a meal of rice and lamb in the racially mixed Paris neighborhood of Barbès-Rochechouart.

Her sister, Cherine, 29, is a computer engineer. Mr. Obama "really represents the dream of America - if you work, you can make it," she said. "It's a hope for the entire world."

But the sisters are less optimistic about the realities of France, where minorities have a limited political role, with only one black deputy elected to the National Assembly from mainland France.

Has the Obama election caused any real self-reflection among the majority here? "It's politically correct to say, ‘O.K., great! He's black,' and clap," Nadia said. "But deep down, there's no change. People say one thing and believe another."

In all the jobs she has ever had, she said, "I've always been asked to do more, because I'm an immigrant. We always have to prove ourselves."

Down the street, picking through the cheap clothes on sidewalk stands, Fatou Diedhiou, 34, born in Senegal, said that Mr. Obama's victory may make the French give blacks "a bit of respect." But she finds deep racism among the French, who she says "think that all blacks are illiterate and can't do anything but clean."

Mr. Obama is an exceptional figure even in the United States, a nation of immigrants with a long and complex history of racial problems going back to the Indian wars and the extensive slave trade, which produced a bloody civil war.

Most European countries were relatively monoethnic until the postcolonial period. Britain, for example, was largely white until the mid-20th century and still does not have a substantial black middle class, while French immigrants are almost all from former French colonies in North Africa, like Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, or in black Africa, like Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast.

Measured by political representation of minorities, both the United States and Europe seem lagging, though Mr. Obama's victory seemed to underscore how much farther behind Europe is.

Mr. Obama is the only black in the current Senate, and unless he is replaced by an African-American, the new Senate will have none. The new House has 39 black representatives, about 9 percent. Blacks make up about 13 percent of the country's population.

But Rama Yade, the Senegal-born state secretary for human rights, called herself "a painful exception" in the French government, despite President Nicolas Sarkozy's appointment of three prominent black or Muslim women to his government. As for the political elite's embrace of Mr. Obama, she said, "The enthusiasm they express toward this far-away American, they don't have it for the minorities in France."

It is not only immigrants who are pondering what Mr. Obama's victory says about Europe. France's defense minister, Hervé Morin, called the Obama victory "a lesson" for a French democracy late to adopt integration.

"In this election, the Americans not only chose a president, but also their identity," said Dominique Moïsi, a French political analyst. "And now we have to think, too, about our identity in France - it's the most challenging election ever. We realize we are late, and America has regained the torch of a moral revolution."

In Italy, Jean-Léonard Touadi, the only black member of the Italian Parliament, sees the Obama victory similarly. It is "a great and concrete provocation to European society and European politics," said Mr. Touadi, born in the Congo Republic. Mr. Obama gives hope, he said, that "one day" there can be a similar outcome in Europe.

Markus Schreiber/Associated Press

GERMANY Early last Wednesday, American Democrats in Berlin watched election returns at a theater. German officials have struggled with the country's relations with its Turkish immigrants.

But not soon. Hossain Moazzem, a Bangladeshi waiter at L'Insalata Ricca restaurant, said he hoped Mr. Obama's victory would foster "change all over the world." But Italy, he said, had a "long, long" way to go.

In Britain, too, there was skepticism. Trevor Phillips, the black chairman of the independent Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that the political system held immigrants back. "If Barack Obama had lived here, I would be very surprised if even somebody as brilliant as him would have been able to break through the institutional stranglehold that there is on power," he told The Times of London.

Britain has several minority ministers below cabinet rank, but just 15 nonwhites in the 646-member House of Commons. The parliamentary system makes it harder for a young person or an outsider to emerge.

"In Britain, you can't make a brilliant speech and get noticed the way Barack Obama did," Sadiq Khan, a Labor minister, told The Guardian. "You have to rise up through the ranks in Parliament."

But Ashok Viswanathan, assistant director of Operation Black Vote, which works to engage members of minorities in politics, predicted that Britain could have a party leader from a minority in the next 10 to 15 years, and a minority member as prime minister in 30.

"If someone said two years ago that there would be a black president, most people would have laughed that person out of town," he said. "The very nature of aspiration is when barriers are broken, whether in flying to the moon or being the first black person around a cabinet table - it's something that nobody believes will happen."

Germany is yet a different case, with its largest immigrant population invited from Turkey to work in West German factories in the 1960s and 1970s. Germany now has some 2.9 million inhabitants of Turkish background, 800,000 of them with German citizenship under new laws. But they have little political representation in the unified Germany of 82 million, with just 5 members of the 613-seat Bundestag.

Even Cem Ozdemir, Germany's best-known ethnic Turkish politician, currently a European legislator, is having trouble getting on the Greens Party list of candidates for the Bundestag - in part because of internal opposition to his ambition to lead the party.

"Germans can't believe a Turkish politician believes in a politics for Germany," said Mely Kiyak, 32, a German-born daughter of Turkish parents who wrote a book, "Ten for Germany," about the problems of ethnic Turkish politicians. "The Germans think, ‘This is our country. Why should we elect a Turk? He might want to Islamicize the country."‘

The Germans love Mr. Obama, she said, "but we don't have minorities anywhere, not in media, in politics, in the executive or the judiciary."

Ferdi Sarikurt, 22, who works in a bakery in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, came to Germany at age 1 and is a citizen. A German Obama is beyond his imagination, he said. "The German government would not allow this to happen because it would think that a person with an immigrant background would favor the foreigners. Maybe this will change when I am 50 years old, if at all."

But Ms. Kiyak said the Obama victory was causing significant reflection in the immigrant community, if not yet in the country at large. "Minorities see what is possible in another country, and they become jealous," she said, noting that President Abdullah Gul of Turkey said recently in Der Spiegel that Turkish Germans "should take part in German society and politics and not look back."

Given that France has such close ties to its former colonies and more Muslims than any other country in Europe, the debate here is more complicated.

On Sunday, numerous politicians signed a manifesto written by Yazid Sabeg, a millionaire child of Algerian immigrants, calling for affirmative-action programs to turn the supposedly colorblind French ideal of equality into reality for alienated immigrants.

"The election of Barack Obama highlights via a cruel contrast the shortcomings of the French Republic and the distance that separates us from a country whose citizens knew how to go beyond the racial question," the manifesto said. It won support from Mr. Sarkozy's wife, Carla, who told Le Journal du Dimanche, "our prejudices are insidious" and hoped the "Obama effect" would help to reshape society.

But the French model of citizenship does not allow for official distinctions by race or religion. When a legislative official here was asked for data on the number of black or Muslim legislators, he told a reporter to "look at the pictures on the Senate directory," to judge by name and skin color.

Joseph Macé-Scaron, writing in the French-language weekly Marianne, said that the discussion of a "French Obama" was a diversion and a screen, substituting a false American model onto France. The problem here, as in other parts of Europe, he said, was less the rejection of nonwhite immigrants than the way political and cultural elites patronized and used them, "only to better block access to the top of the social ladder."

Praising "the ‘difference' of nonwhites locked them inside identities of resentment," he said.

But the conservative Le Figaro blamed French minorities themselves for part of their exclusion. The paper noted that Mr. Obama's success was based on his upbringing, education and success at integrating into the larger society and articulating its values, including patriotism.

"From this point of view, Obama should be the model to follow for young immigrants who have come to doubt their feeling of belonging to the nation," the paper said. "Minorities, who have chosen their exile, in contrast to black Americans, still have a lot to prove."

You haven't been back to the can't get our act together thread either, Shirley. Oh, wait..I just realized that's what you meant by the Lazy thread.  LOL.  What is WRONG with me?  Anyway, I finally responded somewhere in there to your question about my son.  And thanks for the update on your daughter.  I just bumped the old picture thread where you had posted some of her pics. 

When I first read your post in my thread, I was in the middle of something else and thought, "I'll respond to her when I'm done with this," and then when I finished it, I forgot.  Story of my life lately.  Anyway, I finally did respond, albeit late.  Sorry.

Moody, happy to make you laugh this morning. 

Here's a couple of pics of my baby when she was much healthier.  Yes, it even snowed a little in our part of the woods. 

Patrice, I'll go over there and read your response.  I can't remember jack...stole your line...and forgot I had posted there.  Oh, well.  I certainly cannot multitask.  So, here I sit on one thread instead of hopping around. 

Sherri, sorry to hear about your little "mutt." Tasha was deaf, but could see.  She also lost her "voice"...bark.  She loved to bark..yap.  But when she became deaf there was nothing to bark at. She couldn't hear the doorbell or other sounds. Before she lost her hearing she'd sit at the front door and yap, yap and I'd go look and nothing was there.  When I was on the phone with a friend and Tasha was yapping my friend would say, make her be quiet.  I told her no, because that's how she had fun. 

I can understand your dilemma as far as "when" that time comes to make "the decision."  If your baby doesn't appear to be in pain then he/she's just fine as far as I'm concerned.  She still feels your love.

mke, thanks for trying to watch the video.  There is a place on the video that you can set the speakers up if it isn't already.  I've had to do that on YouTube.

I do not read the NYT for my "news."  They are biased and were extremely ugly toward Palin.  That is not what I call a "newspaper."

Shirley

Blaest, the new rule about five posts a day was because we had spammers coming on here and upsetting people.  I do not believe you have the right to call some of the  women here "whiners."  I suppose you don't know this but a poster on the Obama thread reported one of our repub posters because she thought the post was racist.  The poster deleted the post and apologized for offending anyone.  Very easily done.  However, you would have had to seen what was posted prior to that post in order to understand where the poster was coming from.  But still, the poster did the "big" thing and deleted.

Some of your posts are mean.  And you just want to cause trouble.  You're not hear to enlighten us.  We don't need your views here.  We have our own.  I think you might be much happier posting on the Obama thread...well, maybe not.  Seems like you like to agitate.

Thought this was interesting.  I heard on Fox this morning that the Catholic Church was stopping their donations to ACORN.  I googled and found this.

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/religion_theseeker/2008/11/parishioners-ur.html  

Originally posted: November 10, 2008

Bishops investigate ACORN, some parishioners squirrel away funds

Blaest, I wish I could remember the words...My almost six year old granddaughter had to lead the kindergarten classes to the Pledge of Allegience.  She also recited for me The Character Pledge....it was only a few lines.  I need to write it down.  I was so proud of her and what they are teaching the children in her school..that if they study hard they can succeed..be anything..and have character.  I will try to get the words because when she was doing it for me it almost brought tears to my eyes.  She wasn't chanting anything about any person...Obama..as I have seen other kids taught.  The moral to the story is...I CAN DO IT!  YES I CAN!  She doesn't need to government to make her into whatever SHE wants to be. 

Blaest, the democrats want everything done THEIR way.  Pelosi wants to bail out the auto companies and next here comes the airlines.  When will it stop.  I want to be bailed out too!

Shirley

Daffodil, first let me say glad to see you posting again, and to the others too.  I was beginning to think me, Shirley and SherriG had been left to fend for ourselves. LOL

Now, you just can't post emotional stories like that on this site, cause I can't read what follows through all the tears.  That was the sweetest, most touching thing I have read in a very long time.  Thanks for sharing it, but dang it, dont do it again, cause I get all emotional!!!!!! 

ESPECIALLY after seeing those pics that LuAnnH posted with her precious boy in them!!!!!!!!!! 

GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS  and I only WISH I could be put in a situation like that guy and would even think to do the same act of kindness.  Dang chemo brain, I would probably think to do it two days after I got off the plane. 

Daffodil, my chemo brain...did I respond to your post about the troops on the airplane.  That was absolutely beautiful.  If I ever find myself in that situation I'll have to remember that story and do the same.  Those young men and women (if there were women amongst them) should feel great and have high morale before going where they had to go.  Thanks for posting.

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I've found the women (and men) on this thread much more willing to hear out people with views different than their own, and to present reasoned opposing arguments, or agree to disagree in a civil manner than on other political threads. 

News story in Medical center's newspaper:

 Rice Students develope anti cancer beer.

I knew all the money I have invested in beer had not been wasted. 

LOL, IBC.  I'm getting it fixed today!

Sorry to hear you had to make that trip again.  Time does fly when we get oldER.  But you did end up staying a few nights before coming back so I guess that three week in between was more like two.

Okay, now time to give up the puter for my dh.

Shirley

Blaest, the democrats want everything done THEIR way.  Pelosi wants to bail out the auto companies and next here comes the airlines.  When will it stop.  I want to be bailed out too

This one I agree with you with. Let GM go bankrupt and it will arise from the ashes stronger for it. Of course, the problem is the cost to the economy by doing so. I still think we should have let AIG go under, but all of the doomsayers were saying how horrible it would be for the economy. We are in this pickel because our government failed us, failed to regulate rampant lending and greed and corruption in the financial industries. I think they should all be held accountable but its not going to happen.  I agree the democrats are just as bad as the Republicans in this regard.  I have contempt for both parties.  I am very hopeful however that Obama will be different.  Remember, he didn't go lock stock and barrel with the rest of the dems when he voted against the war.  I believe he will be an independent and brilliant thinker who may well have lots of good ideas to help get the country going again.  And he will likely be very good for healthcare.  Don't forget his mother dies and he has complained that insurance companies refused to pay for her cancer treatment because it was a "preexisting condition".  Sound familiar?