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by overeducated on April 5th, 2009

overeducated

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How many other countries have already achieved electing a racial minority as their leader? (or have negotiated a similar hurdle?)

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  • by iwnit on September 30th, 2009

    iwnit

    1) "These same rhetorical ploys did not keep Benjamin Disraeli (motto: "forti nihil difficle''; literally "nothing is difficult to the brave'') from twice becoming prime minister of Great Britain during the reign of his good friend Queen Victoria."

    "Disraeli, though a Christian from age 13 on, never tried to hide his Jewish identity."

    "but one year after the far-off, sunny isle of Corsica was acquired by France in 1768, there was born there one Napoleon Bonaparte, whose heavy Italian accent made him seem even more exotic to la France profonde than his strange name."

    "Germany's Greens elected Cem Ozdemir, an ethnic Turk, as their new leader."

    " Alberto Fujimori, who held both Peruvian and Japanese citizenship, was elected president of Peru in 1990. Sonia Gandhi, born Edvige Antonia Albina Maino in northern Italy, led her Congress Party to a resounding victory in India's 2004 elections. Daniel arap Moi is from the Kalenjin people, not the Luo or Kikuyu who are the nation's largest ethnic groups and its centers of political gravity. But this did not bar him being president of Kenya from 1978 to 2002."

    "Stalin, of course, wasn't Russian. It's a matter of some debate whether Alexander the Great was ethnically Greek. Quite a few rulers of the Roman Empire came from underprivileged, barbarian families in North Africa, Syria, and the Balkans. The Times' portrait of ethnically blinkered European politics would have surprised not only Disraeli and Napoleon, but also, inter alios, such second- and third-century Roman emperors as Philippus (known as Philip the Arab for his ethnicity), Septimius Severus (father Roman, mother North African), and Diocletian (humble stock from Dalmatia, present-day Croatia)."
    Source and further information:
    http://www.slate.com/id/2204822/pagenum/all/


    2) "People kept giving the example of Morales in Bolivia, but he's actually from the racial majority -- the previous mestizo leaders in Bolivia were from the racial minority. Most other countries in Latin America have been or are lead by politicians from racial minorities -- usually white, but you'd include Fujimori in Peru, too.

    Depending on how you define "minority," an argument can be made for including Sarkozy (Hungarian and Jewish ancestry) and Canadians from Quebec. And by "racial," are you including what gets called "tribal" or "ethnic group," or religious affiliation? Because then you could include everyone from Saddam Hussein to Moi in Kenya."
    Source and further information:
    http://ask.metafilter.com/106003/Is-Obama-the-worlds-first-minority-Chief-Executive


    Further information:
    http://www.metafilter.com/76227/We-have-the-facts-and-were-voting

    Comments

    • good answers, tx. just what I was looking for.

      overeducated

      by overeducated on September 30th, 2009

    • overeducated: you are very welcome!
      :-)

      iwnit

      by iwnit on September 30th, 2009

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