Europe has a long wait for its own Obama

updated 10:48 p.m. ET Nov. 1, 2008

MONTFERMEIL, France - Where is Europe's Barack Obama?

Not only are droves of Europeans voting with their hearts for the U.S. presidential candidate, many are asking when France, Germany or Britain will get a chance to cast a ballot for a leader from their own burgeoning "visible minorities."

The answer: not any time soon.

Dreams clash head-on with reality in the grimy ghettoes and sophisticated cities of Europe. There is little sense that "our Obama" is about to bound over the well-guarded — and largely white — porticos of power.

"Obama is rather far away. It's a bit of a fiction here, a bit of a dream," said Kadar Mkalache, tending a stand at the weekly market in Les Bosquets, a tough housing project in Montfermeil northeast of Paris. Born in France 48 years ago of Algerian descent, Mkalache said he's a French citizen who doesn't feel French — "not at all."

Still, Mkalache, who has an 18-year-old son, said Obama "could bring a ray of hope."

Changing face of Europe
Discrimination is only one reason that citizens of immigrant origin are unlikely to soon produce a leader able to crack the system. Another is that the Old World is young when it comes to its minorities of color.

In Spain, a magnet for migrants from north and sub-Saharan Africa, most visible minorities are still in their first generation. Elsewhere, they mainly go back three generations at most.

The changing face of some other European countries, like Britain or France, often reflects their colonial past — their immigrants come from countries they once ruled, and color barriers remain formidable.

In Britain, minorities — at least 8 percent of the population — hold only 15 of 646 parliamentary seats. However, a black, Baroness Scotland, holds the post of attorney general — the highest ranking minority in British government.

In France, where there are an estimated 5 million Muslims, mainly from North Africa, and millions more blacks, there is only one black lawmaker in the 577-seat National Assembly, who was born in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. The upper house has four senators with roots in North Africa.

Minorities in Germany's Bundestag hold 10 of 612 seats, although a politician of Turkish origin, Cem Ozdemir, is about to become the first to take the helm of a political party, co-leading the Green Party.

"Obama hasn't happened overnight," said Danny Sriskandarajah of the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain. "It took generations of minority activism in the U.S. to create this space and develop that sort of political acumen ... which is largely absent from Europe."

In the United States, racial tensions still fester but much of the anger was worked out in the long civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s. Minority groups are part of the political mainstream with a voice that cannot be ignored.

With Obama, Sriskandarajah said, "We are seeing, I think, in America the maturity of minority politics."

"There's no denying that Obama is a sort of pinup boy for the immigrant dream all over the world," he said.

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