Metorð og uppruni

Fyrir nokkrum mánuðum skrifaði ég örlítið hér á bloggið um metorð, hörundslit, Bandaríkin og Evrópu.  Var að velta því fyrir mér hvort að "einhver obama" væri í sjónmáli í Evrópu.  Það blogg má sjá hér.

Nú rakst ég hins vegar á grein á vef Spiegel, sem fjallaði um sama mál.  Greinin var um margt athygliverð, en þar mátti lesa m.a.:

"On Wednesday morning, news of America's historic election was gobbled up by an Obama-besotted Europe. But introspection has set in just as quickly, as the Old World has to admit that its own Obama figure might take some time to emerge.

"In Europe there is still a long way to go," said Cem Özdemir, who is about to make history in Germany as the first politician of Turkish descent to take the reins of a political party (he'll be co-leader of the Greens). "The message is that it's time to move on in Europe. We have to give up seeing every political figure from an ethnic minority as an ambassador of the country of his forefathers," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE."

"But the Obama story has kept immigrant groups riveted. “The fact there is an African-American president is one thing, but the fact that he is just the second generation, that his dad first migrated, is incredible,” said Cinar Safter, a representative of the Turkish Union in Berlin.

Europe poses a number of hurdles for its minority citizens who might want power. First, adjusting to societal change takes time, and while the US has a long history of immigration, Spain, for example, has only been a country of immigration for the past decade. In other nations, modern labor immigration started after World War II, in the 1950s and '60s.

Meanwhile, negative stereotypes limit success. "Obama succeeded because he found widespread acceptance in the mainstream," said Peter Doerschler from Bloomsburg University, whose research has focused on the Turkish community in Germany. "I don’t think European societies are quite ready to view immigrants as much more than distinct ethnic candidates. Partly this is because of the stigma that immigrants, Muslims in particular, represent security threats and therefore cannot be trusted to work for the common good."

But only time, and future elections, will tell whether Obama's message of "change" is afoot and discrimination is on the wane. "The initial agitation will soon die down," said Garbaye, "but it will not be straight back to business as usual.""