The Obama Effect in Japan: Some Preliminary Observations (Barack Obama) (Viewpoint Essay)
By The Black Scholar
- Release Date: 2010-09-22
- Genre: Social Science
Description
COMPARE JAPAN to other industrialized countries. It has a smaller number of foreigners residing in the country and members of ethnic minorities as a ratio to the nation's overall population. (1) After the emergence of Obama in the US as the de facto leader of the free world, however, Japanese are realizing that the event is not irrelevant even to them. In fact, the situation has engendered a national discourse that is spilling over into such issue area as the political marginalization of Japanese minorities and Japanese attitudes towards black people and "foreigners" in general. Adapting Ali Mazrui's cultural framework of analysis and with guidance from his dialectical method of inquiry, I discuss the effects of the Obama phenomenon in Japan. Mazrui has flamboyantly said, "Obama is easily the most powerful single black individual that has ever walked planet earth." (2) If so, does Barack Obama's rise as the first black president of the US compare to a paradigm-shifting event in modern history? It is a tall order to answer this question, which I would not even attempt here, partly because the Obama project has merely begun.
