Barack Obama’s emergence as a presidential candidate in the US represents a profound change in the American psyche, distinguished historian Simon Schama argues in his new series for the BBC, The American Future.
“Whether or not he wins the presidency, this represents an historic shift in America’s self-perception,” Mr Schama says.
It would have been inconceivable in the 1960s that white Americans in the midst of a major economic collapse would have turned to a black man to lead them out of the crisis, Professor Schama says.
The new attitude to race is the result of a generational shift that began with the civil rights movement, and has now affected not only the “baby boomer generation” born in the 1950s but their children as well, he says.
One of the big problems he sees is that Americans have been taught to believe that government is the problem, not the solution.
The key, as it was in the Great Depression, is restoring America’s faith in itself, he says.
He believes that Americans are still fundamentally optimistic, and that despite everything they believe that the US is a new and more attractive society than the Old World.
But one aspect of American ideology has to be revised, he says – the belief in limitless natural resources as underpinning America’s growth.