Obama: American Dream of a Nonexistent French Diversity

There was not a single American in the room. Not many America lovers either. And yet, Thursday evening, there were close to 200 people, coming from Lyon, Paris and Marseille, to meet in a restaurant-bar in Lyon for an evening of support… for Barack Obama. Among them, many activists for diversity in France, from the left and the right, who see in the Democratic candidate hope for the kind of change that they are laboring to even glimpse in their own country…

“Barack Obama is the incarnation of a country’s ability to go beyond its origins, the weight of history. He didn’t get there thanks to his skin color, but through his skills,” explains Karim Zeribi. The elected socialist from Marseille says he has been “fascinated” by the Obama phenomenon ever since he attended one of his meetings in Philadelphia two months ago. He thinks it’s “very good” that Franco-French Obama committees have been formed, like the one that brings these people together tonight. But he notes that “it’s a sign of a profound malaise.”

“In France, one must dream of diversity through transfer. When you see what is happening in the Socialist Party, for example, you say to yourself that it’s completely impossible that an Obama could emerge in the next five years. It’s not just the socialists: the French elite in general are prisoners of social reproduction. So, inevitably, someone who emerges as a presidential candidate in a few years, that makes you dream,” Zeribi says.

He doesn’t see in Obama a “symbol of diversity.” “[French Justice Minister] Rachida Dati is a symbol. Obama no. No one ‘authorized’ him to be where he is. He got there on his own.” And to warn the activists for diversity “à la française”: “I don’t want to vote one day for a candidate only because he is black or North African. We have to be proud of our origins, but we have to transcend our origins, cut the natural link. We can’t constantly look towards the past and only bring the weight of history, of slavery, of our activism.”

During the evening, each person seemed to transfer his own political and societal expectations to the figure of the American Democratic candidate. Patrice Schoendorff, president of the Barack Obama committee of Lyon, sees in the rise of Obama the universe that America offers, as opposed to the conservatism of French society. This man, disappointed with the left, notes with bitterness that in the room there are “many veterans of the marche des Beurs [march of the Arabs] in 1981…. And no socialist official.” He remarks that the new generation, the product of diversity, is turning more and more towards the Anglo-Saxon countries. For her part, Fabienne Levy, elected radical (from the right) from the Rhone-Alps region, sees a “new Kennedy” in Obama.