Accepted wisdom has it that Barack Obama's race and mixed background will help repair the image of America abroad. This is supposed to be particularly true in west Asia. As Yasser Khalil wrote in the Christian Science Monitor recently, Obama's Muslim heritage and promised diplomatic approach to the region could herald a new dawn in the US' relations with the Arab and Muslim world.
Nouri Luhemiya on The Moor Next Door blog offers an altogether darker suggestion. Critiquing the way Obama's international appeal has been represented, Nouri writes:
The reporter, like many, focuses on Obama’s blackness as an asset outside of the United States. It is not quite PC to ask whether or not it would be a hindrance. My view is that, when one gets to a certain level of power, his color does not matter whatsoever. He will be treated with respect by heads of state, though there may be some gaffes on the part of European or Asian leaders.
It is interesting, though, to ask, just for asking’s sake, whether or not Turks, Syrians, Egyptians, or other peoples in the Muslim world would elect someone like Barack Obama. My guess is that they would not. (The status of blacks in Middle Eastern countries, in everyday life and even folk traditions lead me to this conclusion.) This also makes me skeptical as to the extent to which Obama’s “face” could dissuade people in the region from becoming or remaining anti-American. There is an exceptional amount of severe contempt that many Levantines hold for black people (and other dark skinned people), that many Westerners, especially Americans, entirely miss. I do not know for sure where it comes from on the whole. Part of it is surely the identification of blackness with social and racial inferiority, the result of the fact that blacks and most dark-skinned Arabs have slave ancestry (Arabs have very little sympathy for the descendants of slaves, especially from what African-Americans who have been to the Gulf have told me, and my own understanding of the way that most Arabs view black people). Being black is not as much an asset in the Muslim world as it is in American white liberal circles.
It is hard to believe that the ascension of a non-white leader to the Oval Office would not change in small part the way much of the world, including west Asia, sees the US. Surely even the most bigoted Levantine would register the momentous nature of an Obama presidency. Nevertheless, Nouri is right in his general scepticism. America observers are not simpletons; a charismatic "change in face" is no substitute for the much more arduous and subtle change in policy.