Posted on 04/24/2011 12:55:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Most narratives about the parents of the president of the United States have been dominated by Barack Obama Snr.
The elder Obama — said to be brilliant, charismatic and self-destructive in roughly equal measures — serves as a fascinating figure for American writers seeking to analyse the president’s unique background and early influences. Obama Snr does stand at the centre of Obama Jnr’s 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father.
But Barack Obama Jnr barely knew his father, who left the family when his son was two years old and who died in a drunk-driving accident in Nairobi in 1982 at age 46.
President Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was a far more formative force in his life, even though she too died young — of cancer at age 52 in 1995. And now Ms Dunham’s remarkable life is being examined in detail in a soon-to-be-published biography, A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother, by Janny Scott, a reporter for The New York Times.
Excerpts from the book were carried in the Times’ Sunday magazine.
Ms Scott’s account reveals that the future president was apparently a frequent target of racist abuse during his boyhood years in Indonesia.
He had moved there at age six with his white mother following her divorce from Obama Snr in the mid-1960s and her remarriage to Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian she had met while studying at the University of Hawaii.
In one incident recounted by Ms Scott, the young Obama, then known as Barry, dodges rocks thrown at him by Indonesian children who also hurl racist insults at the boy. The book quotes Elizabeth Bryant, an American who knew Ms Dunham and her son in Indonesia, as saying recently that expatriate Westerners “were floored that she’d bring a half-black child to Indonesia, knowing the disrespect they have for blacks.”
Ms Bryant recalls offering on that occasion to intervene on Barry’s behalf. But his mother told her: “No, he’s OK. He’s used to it.”
The apparently relentless anti-black racism Barry experienced is further demonstrated in comments made to Ms Scott by Joseph Sigit, an Indonesian who was working at the US embassy when Ms Dunham was teaching English there.
She would occasionally bring her son to work with her. “Our staff here sometimes made a joke of him because he looked different — the colour of his skin,” Mr Sigit says in the book — “with no evident embarrassment,” Ms Scott writes.
Ms Dunham, who defied the strictures placed on women in the years before the 1970s US feminist movement, was sure her son would grow up to attain greatness.
Benji Bennington, a friend of Ms Dunham’s from Hawaii, says in the book “sometimes when she talked about Barack, she’d say, ‘Well, my son is so bright, he can do anything he ever wants in the world, even be president of the United States.’”
Obama is ashamed of his “white half”, which he abuses every chance he gets.
This must be the mandatory “victim card, so please vote for me again waaaaaaaahhh” article from the Dummycrats.
Tough $hit, Kenyan.
ALL white Americans have “suffered racist abuse” since the onset of Affirmative Action.
To this author, I say: “BOO-FREAKIN’-HOO.”
My God, white people have strewn the ground with flowers before his feet. There is no evidence that he has deserved any of his success -- everything he has achieved has because someone felt compelled to do a favor for the little black kid.
And he cries "racism"? Typical of Holder's People.
Sorry, we no longer accept the race card at this establishment. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Ok, Barry, so take it out on the MUSLIMs who abused you, not the Americans who took you in, gave you and your wife affirmative action promotions, and out of guilt, voted you their President.
Abuse at the hands of Indonesian Muslims doesn’t justify following Wright, or putting people like Van Jones or Eric Holder in positions of power where they work out anti-white agendas. White have helped you!
We used to have names for girls like Stanley Ann that boinked every black guy in town.
And it wasn't "feminist"
I can proudly say I never voted for him and never will.
His talent--he's a performance artist. A chocolate Elmer Gantry.
I don’t know what happened to Obama as a child, but he has no right to work out his psychological issues with the country at stake.
Oh, just waaaahhhhhhhh.
His mother must have really been a selfish bitch to put her child into a position of being bullied and humiliated daily.
..and combine that with the fact is is not of our culture. He knows more about Islam . Indonesia and Kenya than America and its culture. The sooner he retires to what he knows, understands and loves the better off we will be.
He is Americas greatest sin.
“racist abuse”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxauqa7rJgI&feature=related
It seems to me that Obama and his wife have been given every advantage that this great country has to offer.
Revenge is America’s greatest sin. I wish Abe would have lived much longer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.