Friday, March 2, 2007

Barack Obama's Ancestors

So.

Barack Obama's white ancestors owned slaves. Interesting commentary from NewsBusters (disclaimer--this is an 'exposing and combating Liberal Media Bias' website):


Obama's white ancestors owned slaves. So says the research of William Addams Reitwiesner, "who works at the Library of Congress and practices genealogy in his spare time", and who is featured in this morning's edition of the Baltimore Sun.
Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.

But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now: it appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and Census records.

That's certainly a predicament. Not that I think it actually should be considered one: our ancestors were who they were--not who we are. I'm not at all surprised to read that Al Sharpton doesn't agree with me. We almost never agree on anything--and he never loses sleep over it. I don't, either.

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