Jottings from the Granite Studio

Anne-Marie Slaughter writing at the Huffington Post on Senator Obama:

The cliché is true; he makes us proud to be Americans. That feeling was particularly strong for me because of a recent conversation I had in Beijing with a number of Chinese academics and fairly high-ranking party officials. The conversation quickly turned to American politics, and it became apparent that most of the people around the table expected McCain to win. When I probed as to why, the response was essentially that America would not really elect a black man. How I longed, and long, to prove them wrong, to prove that America is not defined by its past failures but by its continuing ability to overcome them. That capacity and desire for continuing renewal is precisely what Obama is tapping into.

I empathize with Ms. Slaughter’s conversational plight. I have had conversations like this–not just with Chinese friends but also with acquaintances from other countries as well–who share a similar skepticism as to the ability of the American public to look past race.  It’s sad too to think that such skepticism is not wholly without merit.  Such are the scars of racism in the United States.

It’s also worth noting that some of the reaction Ms. Slaughter encountered in Beijing may well have been a projection of Chinese elite attitudes towards minority groups in their own country…I’m not sure if we will have an African-American in the White House next year, but I’ll bet the farm the United States will see an African-American president before the CCP names a Tibetan or a Uighur as General Secretary.