Well, Britain, could you do it?

In the general European euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, there is the beginning of self-reflection about Europe's own troubles with racial integration. Many are asking if there could be a French, British, German or Italian Obama, and everyone knows the answer is no, not anytime soon.

I'm far from an expert on European integration, but I know enough about the standards of journalism to know that objective reporters who aren't supposed to take sides on a question don't use a phrase like "everyone knows the answer is no" unless…well, unless everyone really does know the answer is no. So that's saying something.

I closed my election-night video blog with a similar thought as to America's unique capacity for such an outcome among the world's advanced, majority-white democracies, which generated some mild protests on the comment thread. One person suggested that Scots in the UK were numerically about equivalent to blacks in America and yet Britain has enjoyed (or endured) the leadership of several Scotsmen, including obviously the incumbent.

But I don't think any fair-minded person could seriously equate being a Scot in England with being black in America. Melanin count is what we're talking about here. It's the basis of the prejudice in the first place. A Scottish prime minister is more comparable to an oddly accented white president from a remote and disparaged section of the country. We did that back in 1828 with Andrew Jackson, when the institution of the presidency was but 36 years young, although it's true we don't do it often.

In some ways, this is just a matter of numbers. Blacks make up 13% of the US population. In England, if I'm doing the numbers right, your largest differently pigmented minority is Indians, who make up less than 3% of the total population, with Pakistanis a reasonably close second.

Three is a lot less than 13. It means not only that the talent pool is smaller, but that it will naturally take a lot longer for a minority group that much smaller to knock down the barriers to power.

In addition to being a reflection on his talents, Obama's election – and this point I hope my European readers will note well – is also the culmination of four decades of race-conscious policy in the United States designed to help people knock down those barriers. For example, how did he become a state senator in the first place? Because population-based districts were created in Chicago, drawn up in such a way as to ensure that of the city's whatever-number of state senate districts, X percent of them would likely go to African Americans. Obama won one of those seats.

Mind you there was tremendous opposition to this back when. In the old days, the bygone urban political machines used to take a black area and put a piece of it in this district that was mostly white, another piece in that district that was mostly white, and so on, effectively diluting black representation. This didn't change because the white district-drawers suddenly woke up on the different side of the bed one day and decided to be nicer. It changed in the 1970s because of agitation and legal action.

As a result, we now have specifically designated "majority-minority" districts in the US. Our House of Representatives has 39 black members – not 13% of the total, but 9%, which isn't great but isn't embarrassing.

But work happened on many different fronts than the creation of those districts. Our immigration act of 1965 has made America a less white country, and no one is talking about reducing those levels of legal immigration. Affirmative action, commenced that same year, opened up American society in uncounted ways.

Whether Obama ever was or wasn't a direct beneficiary, the many millions of African Americans, Latinos and white women who were given opportunity by that policy helped create a new middle class and a new political class that wasn't exclusively white and male. The "agitation and legal action" I referred to above was made possible only because American universities committed themselves to educating a generation of black and brown people who could then agitate and sue.

America has much sin in its past, more than Britain or most European countries, on the subject of race. But at least I'd say that for 40 or 50 years the nation (or about half of it) has been consciously working at atoning for that sin. Obama's election could never have happened without that work.

The Scottish-African American non-comparison, meanwhile, does bring up an important point about the differences in our political systems and how they affect a person's chances to get to the top. As Erlanger notes, "The parliamentary system makes it harder for a young person or an outsider to emerge."

Someone like Ramsay Macdonald had to work his way up slowly through the ranks. Barack Obama did not. Even in the age of television, which can make people into household names overnight (and did in Obama's case), I still get the impression that in Britain and other parliamentary systems, the priorities of the intra-party system still outweigh the possibilities of political superstardom.

So, I have to say no, you couldn't do it. Not yet anyway. Erlanger quotes a French political analyst, Dominique Moisi, as saying the following: "In this election, the Americans not only chose a president, but also their identity. And now we have to think, too, about our identity in France — it's the most challenging election ever. We realize we are late, and America has regained the torch of a moral revolution." It's late, but never too late.