Way back before Obama was President, columnist Stanley Crouch had written an essay on Obama: Not Black Like Me.
The thrust of the article was that Obama might be of African descent, but that his ancestors did not experience American slavery...therefore he does not descend from a culture steeped in American notions of blackness. Surely, he might have been a victim of American racism, but his rise to power is not part of a genealogical continuum extending back to servitude.
It occurred to me the other day that if Barack Obama's father was a native of Kenya, then it is entirely possible that Obama's ancestors had actually sold other Africans into Western slavery. Apparently (according to that trustworthy source Wikipedia), Obama identifies his father as a member of the Luo ethnic group, which invaded Kenya during the 1500s -- right when the European role in the African slave trade was getting started. Whatever would an invading Luo do with captured Kenyans? I wonder...
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