The Obama shockwave has yet to recede, and I’m already hearing chatter about America reclaiming it’s former glory because of him. I also heard that Canada, Europe and the rest of the world cannot hope to ever achieve such a position unless and until they produce their own version of Obama.

Excuse me?

Since when are we pinning everything on one person? In the past it was perhaps the only way to function, when villages were sparsely populated and settled far from each other, the villagers didn’t have much of an education (if any) and, busy growing food and tending to their animals, had no time to do anything but survive – they had to pin everything on one person.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, things have changed. For the first time ever, there are more people living in urban areas than in rural areas. We have tools available to us that those villagers couldn’t even begin to imagine. The world has become such that one person cannot hope to achieve anything were it not for the strength of the people he is working for. Not only does it give a whole new meaning to “One for all, and all for one”, but it sets to redefine the way we are currently functioning as a society. And from the looks of things, with it all crumbling around us – the way we are currently functioning is pretty terrible.

Barack Obama does seem to be an incredible individual who has achieved a lot; but it is unfair to pin it all on one person. There is one thing we can all do though, that is, reflect together and consult on our role in today’s society and see how we are going to help this vision of change for a better world happen.

And by the way, here is the very interesting article that inspired this post.

Can Europe produce an Obama?

By Steven Erlanger

In the general European euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, there is the beginning of self-reflection about Europe’s own troubles with racial integration. Many are asking if there could be a French, British, German or Italian Obama, and everyone knows the answer is no, not anytime soon.

It is risky to make racial comparisons between America and Europe, given all the historical and cultural differences. But race had long been one reason that Europeans, harking back to the days when famous American blacks like Josephine Baker and James Baldwin found solace in France, looked down on the United States, even as Europe developed postcolonial racial problems of its own.

“They always said, ‘You think race relations are bad here in France, check out the U.S.,’ ” said Mohamed Hamidi, former editor of the Bondy Blog, founded after the 2005 riots in the heavily immigrant suburbs of Paris.

“But that argument can no longer stand,” he said.

For many immigrants to Europe, Obama’s victory is “a small revolution” toward better overall treatment of minorities, said Nadia Azieze, 31, an Algerian-born nurse who grew up here. “It will never be the same,” she said, over a meal of rice and lamb in the racially mixed Paris neighborhood of Barbès-Rochechouart.

Read the rest of this post http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/12/europe/12europe.phphere.