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Europeans Foresee Their Own Obama Emerging One Day
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"We need to get more black faces in high places," Viswanathan said.
Obama's election, he said, would help his group's effort to field more candidates of black and Asian backgrounds for elected offices and increase the number of minority judges, top educators and corporate board members.
Simon Woolley, the head of Operation Black Vote, said a new "Barack Obama generation" of young leaders would be inspired to get into politics. "If any of them can come through, I think we will see a black prime minister within 25 years," he said.
Others are far less optimistic.
"I'm not sure that we'll see it in my lifetime," said Adam Afriyie, a Conservative Party member of Parliament, whose mother was a white English woman and father was a black Ghanaian.
"In Europe, there is still a long way to go," said Cem Oezdemir, a German of Turkish descent who is a member of the European Parliament.
"The message is that it's time to move on in Europe. We have to give up seeing every political figure from an ethnic minority as an ambassador of the country of his forefathers," Oezdemir said in a recent interview with Der Spiegel, a leading German magazine.
French political figures, human rights activists and commentators have seized on Obama's election as a lesson for France, where minorities have rioted in recent years to protest their lack of opportunities.
"The momentum generated by Barack Obama's election must usher in a mobilization with concrete results for us as well," declared Rama Yade, a junior foreign minister for human rights who was born in Senegal.
Yade is one of three ministers or junior ministers from immigrant families named by President Nicolas Sarkozy after his victory in May 2007, including Rachida Dati, of North African descent, who is the country's justice minister.
Yazid Sabeg, the son of an Algerian dockworker who has become a wealthy businessman, has launched a "Yes, we can" campaign, after Obama's slogan, to push what he called a "Manifesto for Real Equality." His petition called for, among other things, "forced renewal of the political world" through pledges from political parties to require racial diversity in their slate of candidates.
Across Europe, minority advocacy groups are highlighting Obama's victory on their Web sites and adopting the "Yes, we can" slogan.
