[expatpat]

Kenya is next to Somalia, so there are lots of Arabs there, just as we have lots of Mexicans.

[Sherman Logan]

FYI, Somalis are not Arabs. They speak a Cushitic language more closely related to various Ethiopian and other African Horn languages. Most of them are Muslim, but this does not make them Arabs, as most Arabs are thrilled to point out.

[jamese777]

“Kenya is next to Somalia, so there are lots of Arabs there, just as we have lots of Mexicans.”

---

Indigenous Somalis are not Arabs, they’re of the Somali ethnic groups. An Arab is someone whose native language is Arabic. The ethnic Luo of Kenya (Obama’s father’s ethnic group) don’t speak Arabic and ethnic Somalis don’t speak Arabic either. The Somali Language is Cushitic/Afro-Asiatic and the Luo of Kenya speak Luo languages that are Nilo-Saharan in origin not Arabic.
As long as Kenya remains in Africa, Obama is rightly entitled to call himself an African-American on his father’s side and a Kansas-American on his mother’s side!

[jblair]

I don’t know why, but that cracked me up!

[Ditter]

The pictures of Obama Sr. that that I have seen don't appear the least bit Arab. Arabs are light skinned next to the pure black skin of an African from Kenya. His father was a Muslim but that doesn't make him an Arab. His Indonesian step father was also a Muslim and that Muslim connection is what scares me the most about him. I am not troubled by his black heritage and I could easily vote for a black if he was a conservative.

[Clemenza]

Daddy is a LUO, not an Arab.