Obama's victory has had reverberations overseas as European countries have had to think about their own racism in nations where nobody who is a racial minority could ever dream of ruling the country. For example, France has started re-thinking its own approach towards racial minorities.
In most of Europe, citizenship is determined by the same "one drop" rule that determines race here in the United States. Here in the United States, if you have "one drop" of black blood, you're considered black. In France and Germany and other such nations, you aren't considered French or German if you have "one drop" of non-French or non-German blood. In France, for example, live many refugees from Frances' colonial wars in Africa. They've been living in France since the collapse of France's colonial empire in the 1950's -- i.e., for close to 60 years now -- yet don't have French citizenship because they lack that oh-so-important "French blood".
The problem is that the number of people with "French blood" is shrinking. Unless France re-defines what it means to be a Frenchman, unless they turn being French into a nationality rather than an ethnicity, they are doomed because only bringing in talented immigrants is going to provide the manpower needed to keep their country going. And unless they grant full citizenship in actuality as well as name to those talented immigrants, they're in the same situation as the late-era Roman Empire, where the Germans who were the bulk of the Roman Legions were treated as second-class citizens... and eventually turned their swords upon the Empire and devoured it. So confronting their own racism is not just a moral imperative for Western Europe. It is a practical imperative also. So now we get to see whether Europe can throw off centuries of racism... or whether they die. We live in interesting times, don't we? -- Badtux the Race Penguin
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