Obama’s Hawaiian state of mind

[Whisp]

http://odewire.com/50875/obamas-hawaiian-state-of-mind.html

But Obama came to the White House infused with the spirit of a place very different from the rest of America. Hawaii, where he was born and attended school from the fifth grade to high school graduation, still celebrates a cultural heritage radically foreign to that of the rest of the U.S. And it has shaped the 44th president just as it does everyone of whatever ethnicity who grew up on the most remote, diverse and exotic state in the Union.

The West has already accommodated multiculturalism into music, culinary tastes and cinema. But to have a figure to which so much “foreignness” adheres as U.S. president marks a singular moment in American political history. The rest of the world registers it, too. Like it or not, America’s president is also to some extent president of the world. In Obama, the world has a leader who is not only open to other cultural influences and other points of view but has direct experience of them. The world is watching to see how much difference that will make.

In Hawaii, Obama was imbued with an islander’s sense of shared purpose. He grew up in a place less given to an “us versus them” mentality and more attuned to “we,” a place defined less by America’s frontier ethic than by the enormity of the Pacific Ocean. If Obama manages to keep that legacy alive, he could recalibrate America’s role in the world—and the world’s attitude toward America.

most excellent read.