Obama’s Ancestors
It seems that Obama’s ancestors – from mother’s side – owned slaves.
According to the research, one of Obama’s great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama’s great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.
Now that’s a big-big-big-big-big-deal isn’t it?
BTW: Jefferson owned slaves as well. As did George Washington. As did, etc.
How is this relevant?
A spokesman for Obama responded:
“While a relative owned slaves, another fought for the Union in the Civil War,” campaign spokesman Bill Burton said last night. “And it is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president of the United States.”
Then we have this:
The records could add a new dimension to questions by some who have asked whether Obama – who was raised in East Asia and Hawaii and educated at Columbia and Harvard – is attuned to the struggles of American blacks descended from West African slaves.
Un-un-un-un-un-believable.
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30 Responses to “Obama’s Ancestors”
OMG!!!
More stuff that Obama certainly could not control or be faulted for, but I’m sure Fox News will jump on the story.
Chris,
But the question is” why should his children benefit from racial quotas and Affirmative Action when his children probably benefited from slavery? When racial reparations are finally passed in the United States, will Senator Obama end up paying himself?
I would bet the slave owner was on hos white mothers side. Also note that their were only two, not two hundred. The wingnuts are going after Saudis today in the USA over slavery.
superdestroyer,
[snark]I didn’t know that Obama was the architect of racial quotas, affirmative action and racial reparations. Silly me.[/snark]
Hahahahahaha…first the AP went after Romney for something his Mormon ancestor wrote in 1852 justifying polygamy.
Now Obama’s ancestors from the same time period are exposed as slaveholders.
Is this payback from GOP sources for the AP hit on Romney?
At the same time, Bill Clinton’s indiscretions a decade ago are totally verboten…else they risk the wrath of Hillary!
And, of course, Rudy has been exposed as a serial transvestite! (Not our Bolshevik Rudi, of course…the other one…altho if Rudi the Red were there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that, of course
And the elections are over a year away! If this is a sign of things to come, hang on…it’s going to be a bumpy ride
I like Obama. But, I can’t help wondering what those in the black community who don’t consider him “black” enough because his father is from Kenya, he never suffered under Jim Crow, and because they think that his support among whites is due to white guilt over racism, are going to make of this!
Maybe Obama’s campaign can capitalize on that; make him the poster child for white guilt over slavery and racism! One wonders just how weird racial politics in America is going to get before it ever starts to get better.
Virtually all African Americans have slaveholder ancestors. Sexual assault of slaves was common and legal, and any children were raised as slaves themselves. We don’t blame children for the sins of their fathers.
MikeF – Rape and slavery OK, our grandfathers did it, not the grandchildren.
Mikef,
What you describe is absolutely true but it is a different situation than Obama’s; his black father was a Nigerian, not a descendant of African-American slaves, and the slave owning relatives were on his white mother’s side. That’s what leads to the characterization of him as being different than the African American community- he’s got things in common with the white establishment and doesn’t share the same heritage as the descendants of black slaves in America.
Not that any of that makes it any less silly to bring this up, but it isn’t the same situation that you described. I think superdestroyer has a point about reparations: when you see the silliness in Obama’s ancestors being used against him in a campaign, you can see also why white America shouldn’t collectively pay reparations for the sins of our forebears. Some of us weren’t even here then, and the descendents of those who were can’t be held responsible for things they had no ability to control.
No.
One of the reasons I like Obama, is that maybe he could help give racial relations in this country a fresh start-he doesn’t have the baggage that a lot of the rest of us have. I don’t believe in reparations, because it sets bad legal precedent-blaming the innocent for the sins of their forefathers. But thats not to say that I disagree with apologies by states or institutions that took part in this abomination of human rights.
Austin: exactly.
Chris,
Senator Obama is a politician from Chicago. The City Council of Chciago has supported race based reparations, in favor of affirmative action, and in favor of proportional representation. The City Council has gone to the point of requiring all city contractors to report on their past connections to slavary.
Maybe all politicians should be forced to report on their family’s connections to slavary, polygamy, and genocide.
I do not support the apologies either and the reasoning is the same. There is simply no one left alive today that was responsible for slavery, and just as the individuals alive today are the descendents of such people (they’re not the perpetrators themselves), the state governments are not the same governments that they were then either. In fact it sends exactly the wrong message to put the government in the position of issuing a statement from white America to black America; that’s like admitting that the govt represents the whites and not the blacks (which isn’t true of course).
My reasoning for supporting the apologies- is to enable us to move on as a society. Those who honored Rosa Parks by allowing her body to lie in state at the Capitol weren’t responsible for segregation- but allowing her that honor allows us to move beyond it.
Slavery alone is not responsible for the discord between the races, segregation and painful reminders are as well. States like Georgia, Virginia, and South Carolina have been slow to rid themselves of state symbols like state songs that still refer to slaves and flying the Confederate flag at the statehouse. I see no harm in taking positive steps to redress past wrongs if they allow us to move on, CS. Its a conscious decision to evolve as a society.
Superdestroyer- I’m sorry but even though Obama is from Chicago, he is not responsible for decisions made by the City Council of Chicago-only for the decisions that he makes as a politician. That reasoning is just ridiculous. Because if your saying that, then Mitt Romney is responsible for promoting gay marriage, because he’s a politician from Massachussets. Actually, he might be responsible, lol, but don’t tell the CPAC where he’s speaking this week-end!
But there’s a big difference between making public symbolic gestures to honor civil rights leaders (which I think is very appropriate and needed) and putting the current govt in the position of being the guilty party. Only the guilty can issue an apology. It’s like with ancestors; those who feel guilt over their ancestors being slave owners might feel the need to make a statement in order to make it perfectly clear that they don’t condone that, but they can’t actually apologize for something that they didn’t do. I guess if legislatures were to issue statements along those lines, to positively affirm that the current government condemns the policies of the past, it might be a good thing. I wouldn’t doubt that some of the civil rights legislation already contains that kind of language though.
As far as the flags, I’m a southerner now but a northerner by birth and for the life of me I don’t understand the South’s attachment to the Confederate symbols. I can only assume that they don’t feel it really represents slavery but rather is just a symbol of their history in general, but I feel that since some are offended they ought to give up their attachment to it.
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guess if legislatures were to issue statements along those lines, to positively affirm that the current government condemns the policies of the past, it might be a good thing. I wouldn’t doubt that some of the civil rights legislation already contains that kind of language though.
As far as the flags, I’m a southerner now but a northerner by birth and for the life of me I don’t understand the South’s attachment to the Confederate symbols. I can only assume that they don’t feel it really represents slavery but rather is just a symbol of their history in general, but I feel that
I think that would suffice, CS. I lived in Alabama for 8 years and I honestly felt, at least back then, that it was a symbol to many people of their resistance to any kind of change-just as there was resistance earlier to segregation. It was like they were thinking, yes we lost the Civil war, yes we had to integrate, but I still have this—they invested personal pride in the Confederacy, and didn’t care if it was hurtful to others because of its history. We all, black and white, need to move beyond our history.
Mikef said:
March 2, 2007 at 9:23 am
Virtually all African Americans have slaveholder ancestors. Sexual assault of slaves was common and legal, and any children were raised as slaves themselves. We don’t blame children for the sins of their fathers.
That’s not entirely true Mike. I have been lectured on more than one occasion that, as a White man, I have benefited from slavery despite the fact that my ancestors came long after slavery was abolished. The legacy privileges of slavery are constantly held up as a sin for which I should have to pay. The latest information on Obamas ancestry shows how foolish this concept really is.
The point of reparations and apologies for slavery is not that anyone today personally committed the crime of owning slaves. It’s that we all came to benefit from a society built largely on slave labor. Here’s how the logic goes:
My great grandparents were Jews from the Russian Empire who escaped all sorts of pogroms and economic deprivation and came to New York around 1910. They were able to find safe haven here, and succeed economically, because America was already, by 1910, a prosperous place. But how did it get to be so prosperous? How did it get to be the “land of opportunity” in 1910?
Partly by the wealth of industrialization and the expansion of capitalism in the late 19th century. But also partly by the large scale trade in exported goods going back to the early 19th century. In 1860, the largest export in this country was slave-picked cotton. Alas, without slave labor, there would never have been a cotton export economy, and the United States would never have been able to reap the wealth of it. Theoretically, the US could have gotten rich on some other mode of export or production, but it didn’t. New York, like the rest of the North, grew rich in part because of textile production that relied on slave-produced cotton.
As a result, my ancestors came to this country to take advantage of a nation made wealthy in large part by slave labor – even though slavery had already been abolished in the US for 45 years and in New York State since 1827. As for today, I wouldn’t have the opportunities I have if not for my great grandparents’ decision to immigrate to New York, a place made welcoming in part because of wealth created just 60 years prior from slave labor.
That’s the argument for reparations, at least. You can make the argument that the connections between slave labor and America’s economic and political power today is so tenuous that nobody today should be responsible – and remember, this is about responsibility not guilt. I am not guilty for littering the sidewalk in front of my house, but it is my responsibility to clean it up if I believe in a clean neighborhood. Anyway, this is how the argument goes. It has nothing to do with you personally owning a slave or having an ancestor who owned slaves. It’s a more collective sense of responsibility: slavery played a major role in making America rich. Should we make whole those who we, as a country, exploited to attain that wealth?
This is the silliest non-issue in the news. What is so difficult about surveying the world as it is, deciding how to chart a course in it, and moving forward without making excuses based on ancient history?
I agree, MichaelF, that Obama may be the perfect grounding rod and end the foolishness once and for all. He exposes the slave-owning and reparations debates as ridiculous.
After slavery ended we had Jim Crow laws in the South. In the North, while not on the books, there was de facto Jim Crow. The harm of slacery didn;t end with the Civil War. Soth Africa had their version of reparations, seems to work OK over there.
So how far back we will research our politicians?
Do you know that Hillary’s great – great -great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – great – grandfather sold the hemlock used to poison Socrates?
Just do as CS suggests and have the states that profitted from slavery issue a statement condemning their participation in it in the past- and get it over with. Hasn’t the government in Germany issued apologies for the Holocaust? No one in the government now was a Nazi. Its just making a gesture because its a gracious thing to do. Otherwise it just looks mean-spirited.
kritter,
Every state profited from slavery. The only question is how useful is it to talk of reparations at this point.
A more vexing issue is with respect to Native Americans. If we hadn’t poisoned, pillaged, massacred, cheated, defrauded and evicted the Indians, there would be no America as it exists today. I suppose Indian casinos are a small way to get back at white bumpkins who spend all their money there.
I don’t think I support reparations- its probably not possible to undo all of the wrongs of the past—too complicated to sort out at this point. Maryland is getting ready to pass a statement of regret-that I do support.
While I agree in theory with what Elrod is saying, as a practical matter it’s impossible to make restitution. In part this is because you could go back infinitum and find that the whole of human existence is one group benefitting unfairly by exploiting, enslaving or killing others.