by Mary Mostert (author homepage)
Source:AmericanDaily
Barack Obama and I have a lot in common, in some ways. Both of our fathers were from Africa. Barack’s father was a Kenyan and my father was a South African. Both of our fathers came to the United States for their college educations and both of our fathers married American women they met in college. Both of us were abandoned by our fathers at a very early age, when they returned to Africa to our wealthy grandfathers. I was 14 months old and Barack was 2 years old when our fathers returned to their homelands. And, both of us have half brothers and sisters in Africa.
However, I found we also have some very profound differences when I bought and read his books. In his introduction to his autobiographical “Dreams From My Father” which he wrote in 1995 he stated “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen” because she was white..”
That is a breathtakingly racist statement! After all, it was his white mother and his white grandmother and grandfather, who raised him and who helped him to get a good education that enabled him to be accepted and access scholarships to prestigious universities, after his father abandoned him at age two . Yet, he recently identified his white grandmother as “racist” when she asked her husband for a ride to work after being harassed by a black man she thought was about to hit her. And, he has written two books that, in effect, are mostly about race. He states that he is convinced that “almost every single socioeconomic indicator, from infant mortality to life expectancy to employment to home ownership” among blacks “continues to lag far behind their white counterparts” because of “racial attitudes.”
Yet, it isn’t “racial attitudes” of others that cause infant mortality, shortened life spans and failure to own one’s home. All are largely caused by personal and individual choices. The reason for a higher percentage of black babies dying in their first year isn’t race, but their Mother’s choices. The #1 Cause of death among babies is low birth weight, mostly caused by pregnant women smoking. Statistics show that black women are more apt to smoke during their pregnancies than white women.
Also, babies exposed to drugs or alcohol are at high risk for low birth weight, premature birth and death. Statistics show that black women are approximately four times more likely to use drugs or alcohol during pregnancy than white women.
The 2008 Presidential race has revealed some surprising double standards in the media. For example, frequent polls were conducted last year about Mitt Romney to determine if people would vote for a Mormon for president . The Associated Press, Fox News, CBS News and many other media sources showed such interest in this subject that it considered it newsworthy to point out that Romney’s “great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists.”
Romney was urged repeatedly to “explain” his religious beliefs by the media, in spite of the fact, as his wife pointed out, he actually was the only Republican candidate running who only had had one wife!
Yet, I have not seen a single report in any of the above news sources pointing out that Barack Obama is the son and grandson of polygamists. In fact, Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Sr. whom he idolized in his book “Dreams of My Father” already had a wife and two children back in Kenya when he married Ann Dunham in 1961 while a student at the University of Hawaii. He did not divorce his first wife, Kezia, mother of his oldest son, Roy and only daughter Auma. Barack, the presidential candidate, was born six months after their marriage and when he was two years old, his father left Hawaii and his American wife and child to attend graduate school at Harvard.
When Barack Sr. returned to Kenya, he arrived with Ruth, his third wife, also a white American woman. Ruth gave birth to two sons, David (who died in 1987) and Mark. While still married to Ruth, he also continued his marriage with Kezia. Before his death at the age of 46 in 1982, Barack Sr. fathered two more children born to Kezia. Counting a half sister born to his mother and her second husband, Lolo Soetero, Obama has seven half brothers and sisters resulting from his father’s polygamy and his mother’s second marriage.
Why is polygamy in Romney’s family among adults over 100 years ago newsworthy, but current polygamy in the family of a Democrat running for President of no interest to the media?
Obama did not criticize or condemn the polygamy and the irresponsible behavior of his father. I can understand Obama’s curiosity about his father, since I experienced the same kind of curiosity when I was a teenager about my missing father in Africa. However, I cannot understand what appears to be his emotional attachment to African culture and dismissal of American culture.
He appears to have chosen to identify himself almost entirely in African terms rather than in the culture of his homeland, or his American mother and grandparents. For twenty years he has belonged Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago that describes itself as “a congregation which is Unashamedly Black” and composed of “an African people.”
Where, exactly, does Obama’s choice of African culture over American culture stop? Polygamy is certainly a widely practiced cultural habit in Africa. In fact, Sarah Obama, who is introduced in a YouTube video as his “Kenyan grandmother” was the third wife of his Kenyan grandfather. She was 16 when she was married to Hussein Onvango Obama, who was 43 at the time. She helped care for Obama’s father when his own grandmother abandoned her children.
Today in the USA, as we see from what is happening in ElDorado, Texas, the forced marriage of a 16 year old to a man of 43 is considered child abuse. If Obama’s grandfather lived in Texas today, his African culture of polygamous marriage to a 16 year old would have landed him in jail.
Frankly, it really disturbs me that Obama not only has “ceased to advertise” his white mother’s race, or even her existence, but seems to have adopted his black Kenyan step-grandmother as an important figure in his life and political campaign, while calling his white American grandmother who helped support and raise him as a “typical white person” and “a racist.” I, for one, will forever be grateful to my own American mother who made a very difficult choice back in 1931, to remain in the United States so her four children, including the two born in South Africa, could be raised as Americans, with American values, education and freedoms.
I see Obama’s choices as not only racist choices but as favoring the increasingly chaotic and unsuccessful cultures of the African continent over the amazing opportunities and freedoms we have because our American mothers’ chose to return to the United States after living abroad and seeing the shortcomings of another culture that failed to offer we would have in the United States of America.
BannerofLiberty (Mary Mostert)
****************
It should go without saying that when we discern the distortions, evasions and insults in Obama’s speech and now the extraordinarily juvenile animations (as in, cartoon character) with his followers’ reaction to believing he was ‘flipping off’ Hillary, we would have had a miserable, whiny four years with such an angry, pessimistic individual. I believe Americans are more intelligent than he allows us credit for and his credibility is ’shot out’.
I am none-the-less astounded at the low-class, not to mention immature, exhibition of Obama’s campaign. As memory serves, I think my siblings and I were around 13-15 when we did the ’scratch the face, flip you off, so Mom won’t notice’ antic. We were too cool. As adults, we are truly cool enough to know “that’s not cool”.
Recently, I came across Mary Mostert’s website and have enjoyed my visits there to read her analyses of international news and “news you probably haven’t heard”. Mary also wrote an excellent piece “Obama Insults Pennsylvanians while Ignoring their Economic Miracle“, among others.
Definitely a site to expand your mind! ~WfI
*****************
