Category Archives: Obama

the first lady’s mix

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New York Times

In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery

Fraser Robinson III and his wife, Marian, with their children, Craig and Michelle, now the first lady.

By RACHEL L. SWARNS and JODI KANTOR Published: October 7, 2009

WASHINGTON — In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolinaestate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.

In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.

Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.

Viewed by many as a powerful symbol of black advancement, Mrs. Obama grew up with only a vague sense of her ancestry, aides and relatives said. During the presidential campaign, the family learned about one paternal great-great-grandfather, a former slave from South Carolina, but the rest of Mrs. Obama’s roots were a mystery.

Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors — including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields — for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.

The findings — uncovered by Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, and The New York Times — substantiate what Mrs. Obama has called longstanding family rumors about a white forebear.

While President Obama’s biracial background has drawn considerable attention, his wife’s pedigree, which includes American Indian strands, highlights the complicated history of racial intermingling, sometimes born of violence or coercion, that lingers in the bloodlines of many African-Americans. Mrs. Obama and her family declined to comment for this article, aides said, in part because of the personal nature of the subject.

barack like me

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BarackLikeMe.small

David Alan Grier: Is beige the new black?

Comedian writes about how Obama has made being multiracial cool

excerpt from chapter 2

Every pundit from Larry King to Atlantic magazine agrees: black is in. All shades of black. Which is good for most people, because so many of us are of mixed race. Myself included. It’s mind-boggling that we have ended up here, at this point in our history. There was a time, only a few generations ago, that being of mixed race was not so cool. In fact, it was illegal to try to pass yourself off as a different race. If the authorities found out, you lost everything — your position, your home, and all your possessions. You’d be separated from your family and often lynched.

President Barack Obama has changed all that. People now want to be mixed. Bi-racial, tri- racial, quad- and quinti-racial, how many you got? The more the better. Multiracial is the hot new facial, the best look in the book. Mixed race is the new superrace. If you look too black, people seem disappointed. They look at you and say, “You’re just black. Oh. That’s too bad. Are you sure? Anything else in there?”

They’re looking for the Obama mix. It’s like a new kind of coffee. “We just came up with it. Try this. The new Obama roast. It’s the perfect blend. Strong, but not sharp. Seductive. Bold. Sweet. Smooth. And not too dark. Not like that Dikembe Mutombo roast they’re brewing across the street.”

And why not be black like Barack? He’s the coolest guy on the planet right now. He’s bigger than any rapper, more popular than any rock star. He’s huge. We admire him and kids aspire to be like him.

…It’s still hard to get my head around this, though, the idea of acceptance that comes with the Barack Obama presidency. There is a part of me that acknowledges — and remembers, historically — that people of color who tried to deny any part of themselves were suspect. They would have to make a decision and stick with it. If it was found out that they were denying a part of themselves, they would be accused of running away from themselves and be rejected by their own. We’re looking at a whole new playing field as of right now. You can embrace all the parts of you. You can say, forthrightly, “I am who I am. I am all my parts,” or even, “I am all my parts, but I am embracing this particular one. This is who I am.” And we, as a people, will embrace it as well.

Excerpted from “Barack Like Me” by David Alan Grier with Alan Eisenstock. Copyright (c) by David Alan Grier.

i like my coffee like my presidents'

i “needs to talk” to obama about this too

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Mariah Carey: in a frank interview, the singer tells all

Mariah_Carey_mother

…Carey’s own parents divorced when she was little, and although her father materialised occasionally to take her on trips – hiking or to the races – she didn’t get to know him properly until she was an adult… He was tough. He’d been in the military. I do miss him. At the end of his life we spent a lot of time together. And I learned a lot about his side of the family.”

Her mother grew up in the midwest. “She came from – er –?” Carey frowns. “Middle of America?” She brightens –”Illinois!” – and as such, she says wryly, “is among the whitest people I know”. Her father was half-African American, half-Venezuelan. “I’m a black woman who is very light skinned.” As a child, she was self-conscious of her mixed race, and it is still enough of an issue, in the US and elsewhere, that Carey is routinely accused of “trying too hard” in one racial direction or another.

“White people have a difficult time with [mixed race]. It’s like, my mother’s white – she’s so Irish, she loves Ireland, she’s like, yay, Ireland! Waving the flag and singing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. And that’s great. I appreciate that and respect it. But there’s a whole other side of me that makes me who I am and makes people uncomfortable. My father identified as a black man. No one asked him because he was clearly black. But people always ask me. If we were together, people would look at us in a really strange way. It sucked. As a little girl I had blond hair and they’d look at me, look at him, and be disgusted.”

She says she “needs to talk” to Obama about this. When he became president, she was overwhelmed and delighted, “but for years we never believed it would happen. There’s a group who will never get it, never want to get it. Because you have to lose the purity of both races and there are certain people who really don’t want that to happen. I think it starts with people teaching their children that it’s not OK, because they don’t want their kid to come home with someone of another race. I understand people want to hold on to their roots. But for me, I was a complete nonentity because of it. Maybe that was part of my drive to succeed. I’ll become accepted.”

And now? Oh, she says, sarcastically, “it’s in vogue now. So I’m sitting here thinking, now it’s cool, great.”

mariah-carey-cover-md

dear abby: biracial edition

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Dear Abby: Meaning of ‘African-American’ reflects nation’s past, present

by Dear Abby

Posted on Wed, Sep. 30, 2009

DEAR ABBY:: On July 23, “Wondering” asked why President Obama is considered to be African-American and you responded that the term “African-American” is used in this country as a label that describes skin color. However, in the U.S. the term is generally applied to black Americans of slave ancestry.

Before the Civil War we were African-American slaves, not considered fully human by the U.S. Constitution. After the Civil War and the outlawing of slavery, former slaves gained citizenship through amendments to the Constitution but were not able to exercise the full rights of citizenship. Most former slaves wanted to just be “Americans” with all the rights and privileges associated with it – but because of the color of their skin were discriminated against and given second-class citizenship.

The term “African-American” is the result of a search for identity by these new Americans, former slaves and their descendants. We were called by many names – most of them negative, such as “Negro,” “Colored,” “African,” the infamous “N- word,” “Afro-American” and finally, “black.” All of these at one time we considered negative because they didn’t represent self- identification.

The black power movement occurred when Black Americans changed the negative term “black” to the positive term “Black.” The musician James Brown coined the phrase, “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” Later other black folk began to adopt the term “African-American,” which brings us to the present.

We are a nation that has roots in all nations of the world. Truly, “we ARE the world.” We’re all American, either by birth or naturalization. The labels tend to divide us into groups which separate us rather than bring us together. The saying “United We Stand, Divided We Fall” is true. Let us all come together and all be blessed.

– Rev. Alton E. Paris, American

DEAR REV. PARIS: Thank you for your letter, which is both inspiring and educational. Many readers had comments about my answer, and they were all over the map. Read on:

DEAR ABBY: I am a white female with many African-American friends, and yes, I did vote for Obama. When Obama became president, most of my black friends said: “Finally! We have a black man as president. All this racism will stop. The white man is no longer in charge of things.”

To me, it was like it didn’t matter that his mother was white, he was raised by his grandmother who was white, and he is half-white. What I’m trying to say is, he’s a man of equal parts – not all black. So why do African-Americans make it sound like he is of all black heritage? Isn’t he of white heritage also? A lot of my white friends feel the same way I do.

– Nancy G. in Cleveland

DEAR ABBY: Please inform “Wondering” that according to Webster’s Dictionary, President Obama is mulatto, which is a person who is a first-generation offspring of a black person and a white person.

– William B., Clayton, N.J.

DEAR ABBY: When living in America, I am called an African-American. If I move to Africa, would I be called an American-African?

– Kenneth F., Saraland, Ala.

DEAR ABBY: Many biracial children are considered to be part of the ethnic group they resemble the most. While some may consider it disrespectful to say that someone is of one race when he or she is really biracial, this is the world we live in. We do, truly, “call ’em like we see ’em”!

– Devyn B., Fayetteville, N.C.

Posted on Thu, Oct. 1, 2009

Dear Abby: Is President Obama black, mixed-race or just American?

DEAR ABBY: “Wondering in Goldsboro, N.C.” asked why President Obama is considered to be African-American when he’s biracial.

While your response was accurate, you missed an opportunity to educate your readers by failing to give the historical context as to why most people refer to him as African-American.

There was a time in this country when “blacks”/African-Americans were considered to be only three-fifths of a human being.

Also, if a person had one drop of “black” blood they were considered black.

Although as a society we have progressed intellectually and in our understanding of what a human being is, we continue to hold on to archaic beliefs about skin color that not only pigeonhole an individual, but may force an individual to choose what so-called racial group that he/she identifies with most.

I can clearly see that the conversation regarding “race” and skin color must be continued in this country.

Though we’ve “come a long way, baby,” we still have a long way to go in understanding this country’s deep-rooted responses to skin color.

– Living in America

DEAR LIVING: I think if one digs deep enough, we will come to the realization that there has always been a component of economic exploitation and perceived economic threat that is, and has been, at the root of racial discrimination.

(But that’s just my opinion.)

Read on:

DEAR ABBY: In Obama’s book “Dreams From My Father” he calls himself a black man of mixed descent.

His decision to do that is as much a political decision as it is a personal one.

Most people of color of mixed race in our society have felt we had to choose to be the darker color because we can never be white.

In our society, most people who do or don’t know of Obama’s mixed background would treat him as a black man. (If you saw him walking down the street, would you say, “Hey, that guy’s half-white!”?)

By embracing his political identity he supports and strengthens all black people in the U.S. by standing proudly as one of us.

– Nicole in Marin, Calif.

DEAR ABBY: African-American does not denote skin color, but an ethnic culture, a term that describes those of us who are descendants of captive Africans in America.

It holds the same level of pride as it does for those who pronounce they are Italian-American or Asian-American.

– Michelle in Maryland

DEAR ABBY: You write that the term African-American is used in this country as a label that describes skin color.

I believe you are correct, and that’s the problem.

“African-American” identifies origin or ancestry, not skin color.

Furthermore, if the anthropologists are right, then – going back far enough – we are all African-American.

– African-American Member of the

Human Race in New Jersey

DEAR ABBY: Why can’t we all be called just plain Americans if we grow up in America and are citizens of America?

I think a lot of people have wondered this.

– Sandy B. in Harrisburg, Pa.

DEAR SANDY: That’s a good question and one that I hope will one day be put to rest – if not by our children, then by our children’s children.

– Sincerely, Abby

black mask

birthers

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A couple of days ago I came across a well written letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Daily News addressing “birthers.”  I’ve been trying to ignore the birthers.  Too crazy to waste time on.  But of course I do have an opinion, and Rev. Weathers echoes it.

THERE are many who aren’t going to agree with my assessment of the questions about the citizenship of President Obama.

But the questions say to me as an African-American that whatever President Obama does will not be accepted by a certain faction in this country because of his race.

Hawaii became part of the U.S. in 1959. President Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. The state of Hawaii has confirmed that Barack Obama was born in the state, which answers the question and places a period at the end of the story. Yet we still have some on the extreme right who continue to perpetuate this propaganda because they have never accepted the fact that America has elected its first African-American president.

If the critics of President Obama don’t believe he was born in the state of Hawaii, they have a right to sue Hawaii for falsifying records and committing fraud. Would they go this far? No, because they know they don’t have a case. The birthers’ story illustrates that they will not accept President Obama because of the color of his skin.

Rev. Dr. Wayne M. Weathers, Philadelphia via

obama buttons

back to the beers

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Old-ish news, I know, but I wanted to follow up.  At first there didn’t seem to be much to say about President Obama’a beer gathering with Sgt. Crowley and Professor Gates.  And Joe Biden.  But I found a couple of interesting if not insightful commentaries, one from Gates himself…

After Beer, Skip Gates Offers Substance

By MIKE SECCOMBE

…Nuance, that’s what’s been missing. And that was what those who attended his talk on Sunday got from Skip Gates.

He did not come across as an angry black man, but as a wry and funny one. The cop who busted him, Sgt. James Crowley, was no racist redneck either, apparently, but a wry and funny guy too.

“This is not a joke,” Professor Gates told his audience. “I mean, we really hit it off at the White House.

“I said to him: ‘I would have sworn you were six feet eight inches tall.’

“And he said: ‘I used to be. I’ve lost two or three feet in the last two weeks’

“How can you be mad at a guy like that?” he said.

He wants to know Sergeant Crowley better. Maybe a family dinner. Maybe a baseball or basketball game.

It has been a stressful couple of weeks. Professor Gates has not been back to his Cambridge home since the arrest and the university has recommended he move house. He has been forced to shut down his public e-mail because of “crazy, wacko messages like ‘you’re a racist and should die.’ ” He has had to change his phone numbers, which were published in the police report. There have been bomb and death threats.

But did he want to overstate his trauma. He was in jail for four hours, not four weeks, months or years. Unlike so many black and brown victims of racial profiling in this country, he had the best lawyers — Charles Ogletree and Alan Dershowitz.

Beer Summit

Obama’s brew-ha-ha

Clarence Page

…Fox News star Glenn Beck said Gates-gate revealed Obama’s “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” After being reminded that Obama has numerous white staffers, Beck whipped around in a double-reverse. “I’m not saying that he doesn’t like white people,” he explained. “I’m saying he has a problem.”

Then he said, “This guy is, I believe, a racist.”

“Racist,” I have noticed, has become the sort of taboo tag to whites that the N-word traditionally has been to blacks. Black leaders partly brought this on themselves. Overusing the R-word robs it of its power and it is easy to overuse. Beck and his like are saying that whites can play that game too, even against the half-white and scrupulously evenhanded Obama.

Judging by my far-right e-mailers (some of my most faithful readers, thank you very much), Gates is a “racist” for loudly asking police to leave his house after he had established his identity. Having known Gates for about a decade, I think he was simply overly tired from a trip to China.

And I, my conservative critics say, am a racist for writing that Crowley knew all along that his arrest would not stick (which it didn’t) and that he had the power to defuse Gates’ temper simply by leaving Gates’ home. Instead, Crowley apparently chose to teach Gates a lesson for committing an unwritten offense to police etiquette: “contempt of cop.”

Can’t we all get along? Reports of a “post-racial” America after Obama’s election to theWhite House were greatly exaggerated. If anything, we are a transracial country. As Judge Sonia Sotomayor‘s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings illustrated, we Americans suspiciously watch one another across racial, ethnic, gender and cultural lines as we uneasily shed our white male supremacist past.

We alert our cultural antennae and react sharply to any signs of preference shown to any group besides the one to which we happen to belong. That’s nothing new for women or nonwhites. Men and whites are still getting used to it.

slanderous

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A couple of days ago I came across this crazy comment on an article about health care and the uninsured.  I wasn’t going to post it, but I keep thinking about it so here it is.

via

Responses to “Uninsurance in the 300-400 Percent of Federal Poverty Line Bracket”

Davis Says:

—-

T.S. Eliot: “white trash” is a white person who fornicates with a non-white.

—-

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA’S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST EUROPEAN AMERICANS.

Obongo has supported:

(A) Reparations. Redistributing money from European Americans (whites) to blacks, mestizos, and Asians.

(B) Criminalizing white parents who refuse to let their children practice miscegenation.

(C) Using “hate crime” laws to silence any criticism from European Americans.

(D) Using Third World immigration to overwhelm European American majorities.

(E) Maintaining anti-white affirmative action programs

(F) Creating a mandatory “America Serves” community-service program to indoctrinate and deracinate young European Americans
—-

Here comes my favorite part…..

From sociobiology email list: “Children of mixed, white-black, marriages identify 99% of the time as black and detest European Americans (whites). Why? Whites have recessive traits, so mixed-race children almost always look black (eye color, hair texture, nose shape, lips, skin color, etc.). Obama wrote: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.'”

obama flag ray of light

Davis, Davis, Davis.  Come on!

On another note, I’m eagerly awaiting the report on the President’s beer date with Gates and Crowley.  I find it so fitting that this black and white man is getting together with this black man and that white man to bring us all to some common ground on this issue.  This is a perfect example of how Obama’s “unique experience” is helping him (and us) address the larger struggle.  I’m just sayin’.