[Mishmash] Obama? Oh, Please!

[Richard Barth]

At 09:09 PM 1/25/2009, you wrote:
>At 12:25 PM 1/25/09, you wrote:
> >At 11:48 AM 1/25/2009, you wrote:
> >>At 07:02 AM 1/25/09, you wrote:
> >>
> >> From the getgo I found it disturbing that Obama claims to be 
> black when in actuality he's a mulatto
> >
> > "Claims to be"?  Who, in this country, would consider him 
> something other than black?  Anyone with mixed-race blood is 
> automatically consigned to whatever category bigots consider the 
> lower class of human, and for a long time they were barely 
> considered human. A "mulatto" has no choice in the matter; he's 
> pre-designated from birth.
> >
> >On the other hand, an ivy-league education and presidency of the 
> law review are hardly qualities one normally associates with "lower 
> classes", are they?
>
>
>I don't know if he actually claims to be black or not - everyone 
>says he is and I've not read he's repudiated that - I suppose 
>technically he's neither black nor white - and claiming to be white 
>probably have lost him a lot of votes, white and black.  However, I 
>wasn't trying to delegate him into some sort of  "lower class" - 
>what I find repugnant is that it appears from what I've been reading 
>(or not reading) that he publicly turned his back on his mother's 
>family - the family that raised him  - half the people up here don't 
>know he's mixed race at all.  But I get tired of hearing about the 
>"first black president" when he's actually the first mulatto 
>president - or is that word not politically correct?

The point is that while most Canadians may not know his racial 
background, it's common knowledge in the States.  He is considered 
here, by both blacks and whites, to be black.  Everybody in this 
country who hasn't been living in a cave for the last two years knows 
he is of mixed race, and he has said so himself.  He made a joke of 
that point when he was discussing the fact that the Obama family 
plans on getting a dog, by saying it would be gotten from a rescue or 
shelter and "...will be mutt like me."

I don't know whether Canadian TV carried much detail of the 
inauguration.  I live in the DC suburbs where the estimated 1.8 
million people who showed up for the event were local news and 
heavily covered live on TV and in the next day's papers.  Black 
people in this country were quite emotional about the fact that one 
of their own had come to fill the highest office in the land, and 
Obama alluded to it in one his remarks when he said that in a country 
where his father would not have been served in a restaurant not that 
long ago, he was now taking the sacred oath of the presidency.

As for turning his back on his mother's family, it didn't happen.  He 
took time out in the most heated part of the campaign to visit his 
grandmother, who had raised him, because she didn't have long to 
live.  In fact, she passed away a few weeks later.  While Obama did 
dedicate a book to his father (for reasons I don't understand since I 
haven't read it), his loyalty to his mother's side of the family is 
well known here.

>I wish I had access to more indepth news reporting up here from the 
>States - the only reference I've seen in months and months to his 
>mother's family was that he wasn't going to take time off from 
>campagning to attend his grandmother's funeral.  But perhaps that 
>was a decision his handlers made.

Or perhaps he preferred to remember her as she was while she was 
alive.  I don't know his reasoning, but that's not an uncommon emotion.

As for U.S. news not getting published up your way, it's 
reciprocal.  We don't know a whole lot of what's happening north of 
the border either, unless we deliberately go looking for it. Thank 
God for the internet; at least the information is available for those 
who want it. Most major papers have web sites that will let you 
search for anything that interests you, and if you'd like some local 
color on the inauguration, try www.washingtonpost.com.


Dick

>Susan
>
>
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Richard Barth *** W3HWN(at)ARRL.NET *** Silver Spring, MD