For many people in the less-developed world, America, through the agency of Barack Obama – has lived up to its promise. Furthermore, the very poorest of the world’s people are today saying to themselves, ‘perhaps I can go further and farther than I thought.’
And according to this article from Venezuela’s El Diario de Yaracuy, the fact that Americans elected a Black man shows that the world at large has a much bigger problem with racism that the United States does.
For El Diario de Yaracuy, Malo Bueno writes in part:
“The fact is that for millions of his U.S. supporters, Obama’s race was less important than other factors. This is more surprising to the rest of the world than it is to the people of the United States. It was always more difficult to predict an Obama victory for a British person who knows how far his country remains from electing the son of a Pakistani as Prime Minister, or for a Spaniard who knows what a long way to go there is before the descendent of a Moroccan moves into Moncloa [the Presidential Palace], or for a Japanese who knows how impossible it would be for the son of a Korean to be put in charge of the government. From this perspective, for a Black man to become President of the United States was simply unimaginable. This tells us more about the racism that exists in the rest of the world than that which still persists in the United States.”
Then, talking of the change made real by Obama’s election, Malo Bueno writes:
“Naturally, the most transcendent change of all is Barack Obama. And this change will not only impact the United States. From now on, poor young people the world over – even those abandoned by their fathers – are aware that it’s not an impossible dream to climb the highest peak. Si se puede. Yes we can.”
By Malo Bueno
Translated By Paula van de Werken
November 5, 2008
Venezuela – El Diario de Yaracuy – Original Article (Spanish)
Nothing of it turned out to be true. Today, we know that God, racism, and accepted beliefs were not the key issues of these elections. They were pushed aside by the economic crisis, the personal history of the candidates, the failure of George W. Bush, and the advanced use of the Internet as a source of funding, disseminating the message and recruiting activists.
Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain referred to God in their speeches or advertisements as much as their predecessors during previous elections – or as much as their rivals did in the party primaries. The leaders of the most powerful religious-right political machine in America were less influential in these elections than they had been for decades. Its high point came with the imposition of Sarah Palin as a candidate for the vice presidency and who immediately inserted God into her speeches. She explained, for example, that U.S. soldiers go to Iraq to carry out “God’s Word,” and who, according to her, “has a definite plan” in this regard. But while this type of message was common in the past, in this campaign it had been banished. God was banished from this election campaign.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated and English-language foreign press coverage of the U.S. election aftermath.
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