[caption id="attachment_4044" align="alignleft" width="222" caption="President Barack Obama"]
[/caption]Carol Forsloff - Louisiana and Hawaii have many common characteristics. Both have multicultural populations, a love of music and food, and a variety of environmental wonders. But their contrasts require a President who can embrace change and tradition with equal aplomb.
Whereas politicians point to America's commonalities, which are indeed true, those intimacies are found in certain symbols, such as the flag, elements of Christian culture, and a common language. Yet ethnic groups maintain many old traditions, and in Hawaii and Louisiana these traditions are quite different. Their histories bring them to diverse points of view, different than the other several states. TThese differences require leadership that can relate to and bring together agreements across divides that can be chasms, even wider than the Republican - Democrat ones.
Hawaii has a history of caring for elders, children and people with differences. Although the Asian populations complain of losing the traditions of elder respect, they remain an integral part of Hawaiian culture. Children of various hues are celebrated as reflecting Hawaii's multi-ethnic fusions. The mahu or gay individual is not culturally shunned in the same way as they are places with fundamental areas of the South where acceptance of differences come slowly. There simply is no focus on sexual difference and therefore little shame.
By contrast Louisiana touches on its racial and ethnic differences in describing the uniqueness of its cultures, but it does so with trepidation from its past of racial struggles. Its cultures live in separate camps, often not quite equal. The myths and stories groups hold of one another means the outsider is not accepted easily, in spite of Southern hospitality and charm. The focus of the day is preservation, not change, and because of its geography, outside of New Orleans, Louisiana maintains its old traditions at the expense of embracing the new.
The President must manage people from such different places as Louisiana and Hawaii where values and lifestyles are as different as any states may be. Yet this President who has the racial composition of Louisiana, on its surface, and the multicultural embrace of Hawaii is best suited to lead across differences, once a traditional state is able to look beyond its racial boundaries to make that happen.
