Obama's victory stirs Europe to confront race issue

By Julie Sell | McClatchy Newspapers

LONDON — For months before Barack Obama's election last week, his popularity ratings in Europe soared to levels never matched in America. Now that Obama is headed to the Oval Office as the first African-American president, his victory is prompting Europeans to confront some uncomfortable questions about race within their own countries.

In Britain, the head of the government's Equality and Human Rights Commission sparked a public debate for saying that a minority politician as "brilliant" as Obama would struggle to "break through the institutional stranglehold on power within the Labor Party."