Peter T. Chattaway
2008-10-25 01:26:11 UTC
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/10/24/colby-cosh-obama-s-family-tree-might-have-hung-him-from-a-limb.aspx
Posted: October 24, 2008, 8:31 AM by Colby Cosh
Ever since Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for the presidency,
American political observers have been arguing endlessly over whether his
race will be a net help or a hindrance to him at the polls November 4.
Strangely, though, there has been less discussion over the crude binary
characterization of Senator Obama as âblack.â
Even in the most progressive American circles, it seems, the âone-drop
ruleâ of racial categorization, a heritage of slavery, still holds sway.
For taxonomic purposes, a man with a white mother and a black father is a
black man. Obama discovered very early in life that he could not defy the
rules of this game. And if he wins the election, his own biography will
demonstrate that it is easier to succeed in America as a multiracial
individual who self-identifies as black than it is to live with a blurred
racial identity. Being âblackâ has enabled him to represent a dream of
racial conciliation for all Americans more easily than being a trans- or
post-racial figure would.
The strange part about this narrative is that Obamaâs black ancestors
arenât even African-American; he is the son of a dynamic, brilliant
Kenyan economist and politician he hardly ever knew. His black identity
comes from outside American history. And reporters have barely scratched
the surface of his white maternal ancestry, the part of him, so to speak,
that lies fully within America, complete with all the contradictions and
horrors of its past.
And hereâs another strange fact: It is easier to show Barack Obamaâs
descent from slave-owning American colonists than it is to establish any
genealogical connection between himself and American slaves. In many ways,
a WASP family-tree snob of the 19th century would probably be more
impressed with Obamaâs motherâs background than with John McCainâs
people. (Both candidates can claim direct descent from King Edward I.) A
2007 investigation by the Baltimore Sun found that Obamaâs direct
maternal ancestors included slaveowners from the time of William and Mary
right down to the eve of the U.S. Civil War, a war in which he had family
on both sides.
And the closer you look, the weirder things get.
Take the case of Joseph Samuel Wright (1819-1894), a man who shared an era
with Abraham Lincoln and who, like Lincoln, was born in Kentucky and
followed the fast-moving frontier west. Wright appears in the historical
record as a delegate to the Arkansas constitutional convention of 1868,
which met after the rebel state was readmitted to the Union. The federal
government had recently passed the Reconstruction Acts, which required the
refractory states to enfranchise liberated adult black men. At that time
those states still lived under the threat of military intervention by the
Union Army, and with Confederate combatants not yet allowed to vote, their
politics were dominated by anti-racist Republicans and by the hated
âcarpetbaggerâ opportunists from the North.
The constitution framed by the 1868 convention complied with federal law,
and arguably went further, outlawing race discrimination, introducing
public education for all, and counting blacks as equal to whites in
distributing electoral power. Joseph Wright did not take an active part in
the debates, but he was part of a group that subscribed to a memorandum
opposing the draft constitution on the grounds that it âenfranchises a
class of inhabitants totally incapable of self-governmentâ and âwill
deliver over to stolid and brutish ignorance the political control of the
State,â and âencourages the social equality of the white and black
races.â
This state constitution was ratified, but like all the immediate work of
post-war Reconstruction in the South, it was destined not to survive long.
Native Arkansas Republicans soon broke off from their party, which led to
the extraordinary sequence of events known as the âBrooks-Baxter War.â
By 1874, the state had two rival claimants for the governorship, each with
his own military encampment and army. In the end, the liberal-Republican
side of the contest lost, Arkansas blacks were subjected to what The New
York Times described as a âcold-blooded massacre,â and the egalitarian
1868 constitution was overturned.
But God will have his little jokes. Joseph Samuel Wright, who would have
been aghast at the idea of a black American president, eventually moved to
Kansas, where his descendants would include a great-great-granddaughter
named Ann Dunhamnow better known as the precocious, bright radical who
moved with her parents to Hawaii and had a baby named Barack Obama Jr.
National Post
colbycosh-***@public.gmane.org
Posted: October 24, 2008, 8:31 AM by Colby Cosh
Ever since Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for the presidency,
American political observers have been arguing endlessly over whether his
race will be a net help or a hindrance to him at the polls November 4.
Strangely, though, there has been less discussion over the crude binary
characterization of Senator Obama as âblack.â
Even in the most progressive American circles, it seems, the âone-drop
ruleâ of racial categorization, a heritage of slavery, still holds sway.
For taxonomic purposes, a man with a white mother and a black father is a
black man. Obama discovered very early in life that he could not defy the
rules of this game. And if he wins the election, his own biography will
demonstrate that it is easier to succeed in America as a multiracial
individual who self-identifies as black than it is to live with a blurred
racial identity. Being âblackâ has enabled him to represent a dream of
racial conciliation for all Americans more easily than being a trans- or
post-racial figure would.
The strange part about this narrative is that Obamaâs black ancestors
arenât even African-American; he is the son of a dynamic, brilliant
Kenyan economist and politician he hardly ever knew. His black identity
comes from outside American history. And reporters have barely scratched
the surface of his white maternal ancestry, the part of him, so to speak,
that lies fully within America, complete with all the contradictions and
horrors of its past.
And hereâs another strange fact: It is easier to show Barack Obamaâs
descent from slave-owning American colonists than it is to establish any
genealogical connection between himself and American slaves. In many ways,
a WASP family-tree snob of the 19th century would probably be more
impressed with Obamaâs motherâs background than with John McCainâs
people. (Both candidates can claim direct descent from King Edward I.) A
2007 investigation by the Baltimore Sun found that Obamaâs direct
maternal ancestors included slaveowners from the time of William and Mary
right down to the eve of the U.S. Civil War, a war in which he had family
on both sides.
And the closer you look, the weirder things get.
Take the case of Joseph Samuel Wright (1819-1894), a man who shared an era
with Abraham Lincoln and who, like Lincoln, was born in Kentucky and
followed the fast-moving frontier west. Wright appears in the historical
record as a delegate to the Arkansas constitutional convention of 1868,
which met after the rebel state was readmitted to the Union. The federal
government had recently passed the Reconstruction Acts, which required the
refractory states to enfranchise liberated adult black men. At that time
those states still lived under the threat of military intervention by the
Union Army, and with Confederate combatants not yet allowed to vote, their
politics were dominated by anti-racist Republicans and by the hated
âcarpetbaggerâ opportunists from the North.
The constitution framed by the 1868 convention complied with federal law,
and arguably went further, outlawing race discrimination, introducing
public education for all, and counting blacks as equal to whites in
distributing electoral power. Joseph Wright did not take an active part in
the debates, but he was part of a group that subscribed to a memorandum
opposing the draft constitution on the grounds that it âenfranchises a
class of inhabitants totally incapable of self-governmentâ and âwill
deliver over to stolid and brutish ignorance the political control of the
State,â and âencourages the social equality of the white and black
races.â
This state constitution was ratified, but like all the immediate work of
post-war Reconstruction in the South, it was destined not to survive long.
Native Arkansas Republicans soon broke off from their party, which led to
the extraordinary sequence of events known as the âBrooks-Baxter War.â
By 1874, the state had two rival claimants for the governorship, each with
his own military encampment and army. In the end, the liberal-Republican
side of the contest lost, Arkansas blacks were subjected to what The New
York Times described as a âcold-blooded massacre,â and the egalitarian
1868 constitution was overturned.
But God will have his little jokes. Joseph Samuel Wright, who would have
been aghast at the idea of a black American president, eventually moved to
Kansas, where his descendants would include a great-great-granddaughter
named Ann Dunhamnow better known as the precocious, bright radical who
moved with her parents to Hawaii and had a baby named Barack Obama Jr.
National Post
colbycosh-***@public.gmane.org