Election fever here was quite strong. We stayed up until 2 am in the lobby of a hotel that showed CNN in order to watch the votes get counted and Obama win! It was quite exciting and tears of joy were shed during Obama's speech. I don't think people in America realize how monumental this moment is for the world. In the few days prior to the election, I had countless conversations with taxi drivers, porteiros, or random salesmen on the street about the elections. These people who never in their lives will travel to America and many of whom have had a scrappy education cared deeply about the outcome of this election. They absolutely hate Bush and were ecstatic that I voted for Obama. In their minds, most Americans like Bush...otherwise how could he have been elected twice? Good question, but one I do not want to go into now.
In class on Wednesday we discussed the global impact of electing Obama. While throughout his campaign Obama did not pull the race card, his race sends a HUGE message to the world. A black man, president of the biggest superpower in the world...most people thought it impossible.
Though the population of Salvador is 85% black, they have NEVER had a black mayor (and this city was the first city founded in Brazil in the early 1500's). In the country of Brazil, which is home to the largest black population out of Africa has NEVER had a black president either. There are only 2 black people who hold even remotely powerful political positions and they are both in the ministry of culture. Obama is now serving as a role model to the world to show that a black person can be President. It is really impressive the potential impact Obama can have on the black movement here in Brazil. This unit in our culture class is about the Black movement here which was basically inspired and influenced 100% by Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, James Brown, and the Jackson 5 and would not have existed without the US black power movement. The ripples made in the states crash as waves all over the world.
So thank you America for electing Obama!!!!
(P.S. but what happened California?...how could Prop 8 have passed?!?!?!)
1 comment:
This election insight from Brazil is really interesting dans. People are obsessed with Obama and the manifestations of his election here in Germany too. (In a mock vote, something like 80% of Germans were shown to support Obama) However, they are hardly interested in the race issue; what they really care about is the potential for better relations in the international community, particularly EU-US relations (which were rather poor under Bush). Europeans tend to pride themselves in keeping the personal out of the political, perhaps sometimes to a fault. Thus there is very little aknowledgement here of how important Obama's race really is in the meaning of this election. Perhaps it is also because race issues in Europe have, until recently, been in the form of distant problems, relevant to Europe through historical policies such as colonization, but not part of the local experience. It is only recently that immigration in Germany has started to become much more multi-racial, and not just inter-European. Germans must soon face up to the question of how they will accept the presence of other races in their midst.
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