The Obama Phenomenon in Global Perspective

Lawrence J. Friedman

Thanks in large part to longtime Journal of American History editor David Thelen, the OAH has been very innovative in exploring how American history is understood through the lenses of scholars in other countries. This Newsletter issue falls within this decade and a half tradition. As Senator Barack Obama’s travels throughout part of the Middle East and Europe in July 2008 made transparent, his candidacy as the first African American nominated for president by a major political party has evoked the curiosity and concern of people throughout the world. While American history is being reconfigured in significant ways as Obama pursues the White House, citizens abroad are sharing with historians based in the U.S. both the excitement and the potential deflation inherent in the event.

During a visit to Africa, Barack Obama (second from left, back row) was photographed with his Kenyan relatives.

Our international contributors have diverse backgrounds—a United Arab Emirates investment banker, a South African journalist, a Kenyan literature professor and university administrator, a Bangladeshi physician, a leader of the peace movement in Japan, and a global ambassador for the American Friends Service Committee. Only two—our Nigerian and British contributors—have been trained professionally in history. Yet all of our contributors have historical perspectives as they characterize how the Obama candidacy has impacted traditional dreams and apprehensions within their nations. What unites our contributors even more is that all are public intellectuals who have been speaking for many years to general audiences about major national and global issues. Historian Russell Jacoby may be correct in registering a decline over the past half century in the impact of public intellectuals in America. But if our contributors are at least modestly representative of currents in their respective countries, the public intellectual as a social type has not receded abroad.

The American contrast with several other countries prompts a more disquieting issue. All contributors sent their essays electronically a few days after Senator Obama gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in late August. Each contributor had the opportunity to characterize the immediate reaction to Obama’s speech in her/his country. This introductory essay was written a month later and, while the election is too close to call, the deteriorating U.S. stock market seems to be enhancing Obama’s standing in the polls. The global dimensions of this financial crisis parallel global recognition of the importance of the Obama candidacy. By the time you receive this issue of the OAH Newsletter, the outcome of the election will have been decided. Judging from the essays of our contributors, Obama would easily have won if the election had been held in each of their countries. But antiblack racism in the U.S. has intersected with nativism, and issues of social class—all within a gendered context. Roughly twenty-six to thirty-two percent of whites who have been polled here have persistently and negatively asserted that Obama is a “Muslim” and possibly linked to terrorism. Meanwhile, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has presented herself as a white woman of the 1950s with a decidedly rural lower middle class demeanor, which has reinforced important gender and class elements during the last two months of the campaign.

Even if this racist-nativist-sexist and social class interplay does not determine the result of the November 4 election, that hardly makes these aspects of the campaign extraneous to historians. Fortunately, a number of American historians (several of whom were OAH presidents) have helped us to understand the interplay. With his focus on nativism, for example, John Higham underscored how it connected with racism, sexism, and issues of social class. Regularly exploring the history of women, Gerda Lerner and Fawn Brodie emphasized the links to race, class, and notions of the “foreigner.” John Hope Franklin, Leon Litwack, George Fredrickson, and Lawrence Levine often wrote on African American history, but they never deemphasized the interpenetration with racism, nativism, sexism, and social class. Different as their general views of the historical process were, C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter invoked very sophisticated perspectives on social class and its interconnection with notions of “the other.” Perhaps most of all, we American historians are indebted to Winthrop Jordan. Nearly half a century ago, Win taught us that we must forever juggle changing manifestations of Anglo-American racism with images of the “foreigner” and the “unwashed” as the “other”—all within a significantly gendered background. Succinctly, we can understand the outcome of the November election and the high negativity of many voters toward Senator Obama as “other” in the months and years ahead owing to a number of outstanding scholars who have made the OAH a treasure trove for historical understanding. With this issue of the Newsletter, we continue our tradition of looking at the American experience through the eyes of scholars and observers outside the United States.

Lawrence J. Friedman is professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University and visiting scholar in the history of science at Harvard University.