(no subject)

[cinema_babe]

A question for the politics and history junkies out there in LJ land.

If When Barak Obama is elected in November, it will be the first time the US has had a president who was a member of a racial minority within the country he led.

Has this happened in any other Western, industrial democracies? I asked a friend this question and they offered South Africa under apartheid rule. Which I guess sort of counts (well, if you consider South Africa a Western style, industrial democracy.) I know that Alberto Fujimori was president of Peru which has a significant number of Japanese immigrants but then that only counts if you consider Peru a Western style, industrial democracy.

There have been female heads of state but I can't even think of a South American leader with a significant of Indian blood let alone a full blood tribal member.

So will Obama set an international precedent?

Comments

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Pierre Trudeau and others like him?

The concept of "racial" is squishy. It changed over time and place. Even so, Martin Van Buren probably doesn't quite count, but Leon Blum in France might.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

You might also be interested in this note from 2004:

USULUTAN, El Salvador -- In 1913, two Palestinians, Elias Handal and Musa Ali Saleh, left their homes in Bethlehem for a two-month boat ride across the ocean to start a new life in a distant land.

First setting foot in Central America, selling fabric from sacks on their backs, the two friends never imagined that Saleh's grandson and Handal's great-nephew would today be facing off across El Salvador's bloodied political divide as the two leading candidates for president.

If opinion polls are accurate, the winner of Sunday's race will not only come from a Palestinian immigrant family but also from one of two families that began their New World journeys together.

In any case, the Quebecois are different in that they're a regional minority who are the majority (both now and historically) in their own region.

Obama being elected here would be more akin to an untouchable being elected Prime Minister in India or an Algerian in France.

[cinema-babe.livejournal.com]

Yes, and that's more along the lines of what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking about Trudeau because although he was from Quebec, I wouldn't think of him as a minority. I had forgotten about Blum in France.