Antibes, France
The face of Barak Obama has not yet replaced Che Guevara here as an iconic t-shirt or teenagers' bedroom wall poster, but he has already become a cult figure for France's biggest minority. The fact that an African-American has a good shot at winning the most powerful elected office in the world has sent a message of hope to millions of Muslim citizens of African descent who have never felt fully at home in France.
A French magazine that recently ran a story on the Obama phenomenon in France's ghetto suburbs quotes a schoolgirl whose family came from North Africa: “If he wins, it will be the liberation of all the blacks in the world!†It is easy to dismiss that sort of reaction as teenage hyperbole, but it gives you some idea of the emotional power of Obamania abroad.
French minorities who feel locked in their ghettos see Obama as an antidote to the discrimination that bars them from the best jobs and keeps them underrepresented in government. It's not just the color of Obama's skin that counts. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice never stirred the same kind of excitement here. Obama is seen as a communicator who can reach out and touch people on both sides of racial and religious divisions. His candidacy seems to be having a more positive psychological impact on minorities here than anything the French government has said or done to try to help them. Indeed, most French of North African origin believe their own president, Nicolas Sarkozy, despite the fact that his father is a Hungarian immigrant, promotes anti-immigrant policies
But although they are inspired by what is happening in the American election, French minorities also say the Obama phenomenon could never happen here. Karim Zerabi, a Muslim city councilman in Marseilles, says, “You would have to be crazy to be an Obama in France - people would say you were the candidate of the Arabs, of the Muslims or of the ghettos.†And yet polls show that if the French nation as a whole could vote in the American election, they would overwhelmingly choose Obama. The Obama phenomenon is full of paradoxes.
Above all, Obama is changing the image of the United States - not just here in France, but around the world. He is doing more to restore foreigners' faith in the American dream than all the propaganda and so-called “public diplomacy†that the U.S. government pumps out.
When it comes to shaping public opinion, actions usually speak louder than words. That has been America's image problem abroad, especially since the invasion of Iraq and all that followed – the scandal of Abu Ghraib prison, the imprisonment without trial of suspected terrorists at the American prison in Guantanamo Bay, the allegations that the White House authorized the use of torture, and so forth.
The Obama candidacy has not wiped the slate clean, but it has given the world another view of the United States. That may be his most valuable contribution to his country, whether or not he actually wins the election.
