I’m an Aussie, watching from a distance. I’m still inclined to believe most people in the US do not realize obama is not what he claims to be, he is not an african-american, he’s a lot of arab from his Kenyan-born father, a lot of white Kansas from his mother and a tiny bit of Luo Kenyan from a Kenyan great-grandmother...
http://kennethelamb.blogspot.com/2008/02/barak-obama-questions-about-ethnic.html
True Negro tribal members of western Kenya where his father was born have Christian names, not Arabic. His father’s decision to name him with an Arabic name is a matter of his father establishing his ethnic identity in Africa - it is done deliberately to separate him from the African tribes. He may live among them, but he is not one of them. His father’s message is that he is Arabic, not Negro.
Many will find these truths unsettling. I’m often asked, “But I thought his father was Kenyan. How could Mr. Obama not be African-American, how could his ethnic composition be so Arabic?”
The definitive clue to that answer is to look at his name, his father’s name, and the names of all his ancestors on his father’s side. They are all Arabic.
Researching his roots reveal that on his father’s side, he is descended from Arab slave traders. They operated under an extended grant from Queen Victoria, who gave them the right to continue the slave trade in exchange for helping the British defeat the Madhi Army in southern Sudan and the Upper Nile region...
Beckwith has much of that information up on his site, though that particular cultural commentary is new to me, and rings true. He has the best compilation of Obama background information on the web, in my book. You can find it here:
http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_more/obama.htm