Though Europeans generally rejoiced in Barack Obama's election as 44th President of the United States, a number of leading European lawmakers and journalists have made "foot-in-mouth comments" regarding America's black President-elect, reports the Washington Post.
These include a leading Austrian television journalist, Klaus Emmerich, who a day after the election, said on camera that he "wouldn't want the Western world to be directed by a black man." Emmerich, who works for the country's leading public television station, had previously work in Washington DC as a foreign correspondent. Emmerich told viewers:
"I think the Americans are still racists and they must be very badly off to so spectacularly -- and that has to be said, no doubt -- send a black man with a black, very good-looking and clever woman to the White House."
When he was later asked to apologize, Emmerich told an Austrian newspaper that "blacks are not as politically civilized."
Separately a right-wing member of Poland's Parliament called the election result "the end of the white man's civilization." He added: "America will soon pay a high price for this quirk of democracy."
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who governs with the help of a coalition that includes admirers of Benito Mussolini, last Thursday -- during a visit to Moscow -- praised Obama for being "young, handsome and even suntanned." He later accused his detractors of failing to take a joke.
The Post quotes Yonis Ayeh, a board member with the Initiative of Black People in Germany, saying that:
racial prejudices are common, if not always blatantly expressed. "Sometimes you have people or groups who say, 'We are the left wing, we are the good ones, we are not racist,' " he said. "But it doesn't matter if you are right wing or left wing. It's not just the neo-Nazis and the skinheads."
UPDATE: New York Times Paris correspondent Steven Erlanger filed a front page story for today's edition interviewing immigrants and minorities in France, Italy and Germany about the Obama Effect:
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.
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The world has problems with people of color, and the US has made a big statement with regards to race that will force other countries to deal with their own bigg0ted beliefs.
"Even suntanned" is a big issue; what in that man's mind made him make such a "joke?" Bigg0try.
Not a big deal? I think it is. Using r@cist beliefs as fodder for jokes such as these should be called out and called to the mat for just what it is: bigg0ted beliefs.
The world has problems with people of color, and the US has made a big statement with regards to r@ce that will f0rce other countries to deal with their own bigg0ted beliefs.
"Even suntanned" is a big issue; what in that man's mind made him make such a "joke?" Bigg0try.
Not a big deal? I think it is. Using r@cist beliefs as f0dder for jokes such as these should be called out and called to the mat for just what it is: bigg0ted beliefs.
What I did learn later, though, when I actually moved to Italy, was that Italians talk a lot about getting rid of "razzismo", but when you get under the surface, you find a lot of very open prejudices against blacks, gypsies, and, in some cases, people who just don't speak Italian as a first language. Sometimes I think that they see America as a land of racist issues because we've had a long, heated, and very open discussion of racism over here, whereas over they the struggle is just beginning. We just look worse because we've had a longer time to bring the wounds to the surface in order to start healing them.
For years Europe has been quietly feeding its own breed of racism, because of a dry intellectualism and a rich(I would say cumbersome) cultural legacy, racism is more sophisticated and vicious than in
the US.
Before this election, europeans have been fooling themselves and everyone that they were more civilized or smarter than Americans but this election has reminded to everybody what really matters
in this world and what America is about: Actions speak louder than words.
Now Europe has its nose rubbed down in its own racial contradictions and the real question is they gonna do about it?
You can read it here.
I was most surprised by the responses of the two elder gentlemen, since political new beginnings are hardly something new and are often met with cynisism by those who have been around to see it promised over and over again. Not so in this case. They all believed that Obama's victory and his promise of change really does mean something different this time.
Oh and as for skin colour, I can't even recall if it was mentioned by a single one of those I spoke to.
Stupid people will likely always be stupid, no matter what part of the world they live in. But they can't take away my joy about this election, and I know I share this joy with many of my European counterparts ... even though I'm black and stupid people would probably say the same thing about me that they said about President-Elect Obama. But it doesn't matter! He won!