What Obama means to the world

The buzz around Obama’s inauguration is huge in America, but it reverberates far beyond our shores.

I live in what may be one of the most Obama-crazy neighborhoods in the US, a gritty urban hamlet of mostly minorities where only 14 people voted for John McCain. Seriously. That’s an official number.

As I was trudging through shin-high snowdrifts on my way to work this morning, I wondered if the snow-blower operators hadn’t just decided to join the throngs already in Washington, heeding the telephone-pole poster I saw last month for a bus trip to the Inauguration.

But if people in my neighborhood are excited about an African-American man rising to the US presidency, think of what it means in France – where minorities fill only three of 911 seats in parliament – and in the rest of Europe. Rigg Walker, a young Ghanian in the Parisian suburb of Chateau Rouge, told the Monitor exactly what it means:

"Whites think blacks can't do more, that we have a black mentality not as good as theirs. But give us opportunity – this is what Obama proves – and we can…. Obama shows that capability is not about skin, but about the mentor, the teacher – and this is where we can grow."

Pap Ndiaye with the School for the Advanced Study of the Social Sciences in Paris put it well to our European bureau chief, Robert Marquand: "Obama puts the political system in France on the hot seat.”

But Obama also resounds with the elite in Europe, potentially enabling him to become a unifying force there. In Berlin last summer, a huge crowd turned out to see him speak – more than double the number officials were expecting. He warned the enthusiastic crowd against allowing “new walls to divide us from one another,” giving many hope for a more united US-European approach on issues ranging from climate change to Afghanistan.

"He's an inspirational individual and that may be important when it comes to offering a vision that asks Europeans to do more,” said Karen Donfried, vice president of the German Marshall Fund in Washington.

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