Wednesday, January 21, 2009

First Family



Does this picture choke anyone else up?

This is taken from a great article in the NYTimes about Michelle and Barack Obama's families.

Here is the first paragraph:

The president’s elderly stepgrandmother brought him an oxtail fly whisk, a mark of power at home in Kenya. Cousins journeyed from the South Carolina town where the first lady’s great-great-grandfather was born into slavery, while the rabbi in the family came from the synagogue where he had been commemorating Martin Luther King’s Birthday. The president and first lady’s siblings were there, too, of course: his Indonesian-American half-sister, who brought her Chinese-Canadian husband, and her brother, a black man with a white wife.


3 comments:

Ed said...

Love it! I've really been thinking a lot about our kids and what kinds of discoveries they'll make someday about their heritage.

It probably won't be as dramatic as "Dreams From My Father," (a nice read) but they could conceivably take a picture this diverse someday. Between Jen's white family and my Mexican family, it could be quite a melting pot.

Yet another reason why I'm so thrilled this man's in office: he's an example of our growing diversity.

Belle said...

Now if you could just find some Asian or African American or foreign blood to throw in the mix! I was thinking about the Mormon church in the US--definitely more white than the population at large. I'd be interested to see statistics. It seems like there is not as much intermarriage in the church as the country.

Yes, I look at this picture and I see America. It's amazing that we have a president who can understand and represent that diversity.

Ed said...

Yeah, that was why once I learned his personal story, I was all in. I kept thinking, "he's just different enough from everybody else who came before him that he really could bring a fresh, and yet universal, perspective to the office of president."

As for the boys, you never know who they'll meet and where they'll go in life. Remember, our kids are gonna come of age when it won't seem weird that we have someone who looks like Obama as president.