Different Takes, Different Problems

The New York Times has an interesting article discussing European reaction to Barack Obama’s election. The article dwells on the different problems the major EU nations face with their ethnic and religious minorities. The reaction of my community to Obama’s election was diverse, but largely positive: the older the person was, the more likely they were to view the whole thing with disbelief. Younger people, my high school students especially, were enthusiastic and not at all surprised. I was kind of surprised by the degree to which they accepted Obama’s election as a matter of course, but these students view African-American culture (especially hip hop and Rhianna) as more their birthright than mine, so they have an interesting take on ethnic identity in the US. I passed by a newsstand today that was selling a magazine with a large cover photo of Obama, whose title translated as “A History of Obama.” This country was never as anti-Bush as the rest of Europe, but everyone here is excited about Obama in one way or another

It’s different, however, when we talk about ethnic problems inside the country. The idea of one of the several ethnic and religious minorities in this country rising to a position of real leadership is outside what people see as possible. In the parliament, there’s a large, ethnically Turkish party that usually makes up about nine percent of the vote. While that party wields a lot of power in its ability to make or break various governments, it is emphatically a junior partner. Ethnic tensions are largely peaceful here although there is still a great deal of institutional and systemic racism at play.

On thing the article does not discuss and I think is worth mentioning is the degree to which European nations define citizenship and being part of a community in ethnic terms. It simply is not enough to speak German to become a German. One advantage that the United States has over Europe is, whether or not the founding fathers intended it this way (they didn’t), the framework they created allows us to embrace a constantly widening conception of “Americanness.” It doesn’t matter where your ancestors happen to be from, but if you are participating in American life you are essentially American. While that originally was based upon the differences of the major (mostly British) groups making up the thirteen colonies, it’s only a small step from that to everyone else. The racial problems that have long plagued the US do not, at their base, presuppose that those of different races are some how not American. The US is certainly not without problems, but the problems we have exist on a wholly different footing than the problems of Europe. Anyone can move to the US and become an American in relatively short order. If I move to Italy, speak Italian, marry an Italian, become a citizen of Italy and live the rest of my life there, no matter what I do, I will never be an Italian. Maybe my kids, but by virtue of the fact that Italian itself is an ethnic as well as a cultural category, I cannot access it, because I am not ethnically Italian. In the United States, we define ourselves culturally (speaking English, a (somewhat) shared vision of what the US means) and not ethnically. Hence, a mixed race child of a Kansan and a Kenyan with a Muslim name can grow up to be as American as the decedents of John Winthrop.