Friday, November 07, 2008 Roperos: Black president By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
WHEN Oprah Winfrey was asked over CNN about her open declaration of support for Barack Obama early in the campaign, her reply took on many faces. But she left the impression that she felt it was the right thing for her to do, and that it was the time for the United States to undertake a change.
And change the Americans did.
When the first white people from Europe landed on the continent and up to the last quarter of the 17th century when they decided to declare independence from England, they had black slaves with them. Their population increased with the continued arrival of slave traders from Africa.
Blacks worked in the vast cotton plantations of the South and the developing manufacturing industries of the north.
Across more than two centuries, blacks in America, together with migrants from other nations, labored with whites to make the US not just one of the powerful nations of the globe, but certainly the most powerful.
Black population increased faster than the whites. But even if blacks eventually attained political rights equal to whites, they, including Asian migrants, still suffered racial prejudice in many parts of the American South.
Only a handful of Americans probably thought it was possible that before the end of this year a black American would be the 44th American president. Hilary Clinton was thought of as the next most probable American president. Who would have thought that Obama could upset her?
But that he did, and in the process generated a phenomenal change in the political outlook of the Americans, especially towards blacks and other. His feat tore down the walls of racial prejudice that was the norm in American social culture since the English colony won independence late in the 17th century and gained economic strength through the labors of purchased African slaves.
The Obama ascent to the Washington D.C White House ushered in a new meaning to democracy at the global level, with the US at the center of the generated democratic political flux.
Whatever the results would be in terms of changes in the social and economic outlook of the average American on the people of other nations of the globe, and vice versa, the fact would remain that we have entered a new era in global politics because of the Obama triumph in the American presidential elections.
