Desmond Tutu: The Man of Tomorrow; Obama's election has turned America's global image on its head.

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: The Man of Tomorrow
His election has turned America's global image on its head.
By Desmond Tutu
Sunday, November 9, 2008; Page B01

CAPE TOWN I am rubbing my eyes in disbelief and wonder. It can't be true that Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan, is the next president of the United States....

***

The Bush administration has riled people everywhere. Its bully-boy attitude has sadly polarized our world.

Against all this, the election of Barack Obama has turned America's image on its head. My wife was crying with incredulity and joy as we watched a broadcast of the celebrations in Chicago. A newspaper here ran a picture of Obama from an earlier trip to one of our townships, where he was mobbed by youngsters. It was tacitly saying that we are proud he once visited us.

Today Africans walk taller than they did a week ago -- just as they did when Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president in 1994. Not only Africans, but people everywhere who have been the victims of discrimination at the hands of white Westerners, have a new pride in who they are. If a dark-skinned person can become the leader of the world's most powerful nation, what is to stop children everywhere from aiming for the stars? The fact that Obama's Kenyan grandfather was a convert to Islam may -- shamefully -- have been controversial in parts of the United States, but elsewhere in the world, Obama's multi-faith heritage is an inspiration....

Because the Bush years have been disastrous for other parts of the world in many ways, Obama's victory dramatizes the self-correcting mechanism that epitomizes American democracy. Elsewhere, oppressors, tyrants and their lapdogs can say what they like, and they stay put, for the most part. Ordinary citizens living in undemocratic societies are not fools; they may not always agree with U.S. foreign policy, but they can see and register the difference between the United States, where people can kick an unpopular political party out, and their own countries....

***

The renowned African scholar Ali Mazrui has pointed out that Obama could never have gotten as far as he has without an exceptional level of trust on the part of white Americans. In this, his achievement is similar to what Nelson Mandela had achieved by the end of his presidency....

Such a post-racial age for me has the characteristics of a rainbow. We are in a different time now than when I first spoke of a rainbow nation, describing the South Africa that Mandela led for the first time in 1994. But my vision for such a place remains. It is a place where people of each race and cultural group exhibit their own unique identity, their own distinct attributes, but where the beauty of the whole gloriously exceeds the sum of its parts....

(Desmond Tutu is the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110702896.html?nav=most_emailed

[liberalmuse]

1. Will Obama be good for Africa?

The people living in Africa have such incredibly high hopes. It breaks my heart. It's about damn time Africa ceases to be a wasteland of disease, exploitation, genocide and civil war.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. It would be wonderful...

if our election resulted in something good for the people of that Continent.

[HamdenRice]

3. A start? Not spreading false blanket stereotypes of the place as "a wasteland

of disease, exploitation, genocide and civil war."

Like Sarah Palin, too many people seem to confuse the continent with a single country. There are some countries going through terrible crises, and there are some that are experiencing the fastest growth rates and improvement in living conditions on earth.

But because of the blanket stereotype of the entire continent being "a wasteland of disease, exploitation, genocide and civil war" it is very difficult to generate trade and investment with the success stories.