That is the headline on Huffpost right now. I had dueling emotions upon seeing it. On the one hand, it frightens me; I worry about a pseudo-patriotic backlash: If Obama is the world's favorite, then he's not for us!
On the other hand, it warms my heart. Because, you see, I am one of those strange Americans who grew up overseas. I won't get into it too much other than to say that I am an American citizen who was raised primarily in Vietnam, Thailand, and India. Sociologists call us "Third Culture Kids" or "TCKs" because we are a blend of both our passport cultures and our international, expat environments.
I love Barack Obama for as many common reasons as personal. Were he white, I would still be enamored with his intellect, sincerity, and maturity. But it just so happens that he's more than all that. He's also a TCK, having spent four years as a child in Indonesia. He's also a combination of homegrown and immigrant, with a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya. Months ago, I wrote a post on my blog called "A President like me: Obama and Race." I will excerpt it here:
As a Third Culture Kid and as someone of mixed race, I feel at once proud and dismayed by what’s happening in American politics right now. On the one hand, we have a "black" candidate who has popular appeal, even among whites, and who has a great chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination and the White House. On the other, we seem still to be mired in the same racial conflict that has plagued us, or that we have brought upon ourselves, since our country’s inception.
I think about all of the times I’ve been judged, had things assumed about me, based on my skin color, and how false those assumptions have often been. People see what they want to see, and, really, who can be expected to see the complex reality that lies just beneath this thin veneer of skin cells and melanin? People often guess India correctly, but they cannot see Viet Nam; and they certainly cannot see a mother raised in the corn-fields of Indiana, raised by a family profoundly affected but not defeated by the Depression, and so inspired by the power of hope that she walked fearlessly into a war zone and went on to found the International Mission of Hope, an organization that, in its 30 years of operation, saved countless lives. And so it is with Barack. He is black, but he is more than black. I am certain that he wears his skin color much the same way I do: not without pride, but always with a feeling that it does not represent all of him. There is more.
Barack Obama’s background gives him the unique ability to appeal to many, but it is often neglected, replaced only by what people can see on the surface. Barack is just as much his white Kansan mother as his black Kenyan father; he is the product of both lineages; but that’s not what people see. It should not matter; a black candidate, a candidate whose background does match his skin color, should be able to win the White House. But what we need to realize is that Barack Obama’s strengths lie not in his skin color but in his extraordinary background, his integrity, his intelligence, his passion, and his ability–unique, I might add–to inspire Americans young and old, black and white, male and female, to believe in themselves and in the future of our country.
I know why the world longs for President Obama; it is, after all, the same reason I long for President Obama: he promises to reverse or at least mitigate the hubristic, myopic tendencies of the current administration and those that characterize large swaths of the American populace, which many in the world see, correctly or incorrectly, as isolated, afraid, and at times vengeful. Obama promises to unite America with the rest of the world in a true sense--so that it's not just our fast-food or ephemeral trends that make it across the ocean, but also our very best qualities: our wisdom, intellect, and compassion.