Quayle speechwriter called interracial marriage of Obama's parents 'unnatural'.

[RandySF]

Until I came across this article by Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, which I regard as factual — with all that that implies — the questions about Obama’s background that should have come naturally never quite rose to the surface of my mind. Barack Obama is the new man, of course. His mixed race is a symbol of that. Just like Tiger Woods — as we have read, endlessly. What’s to wonder about?

But maybe it’s not so simple. Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City — a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics. (During the Clinton Administration we were all introduced to then U. of Pennsylvania Professor Lani Guinier — also a half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby.)

I don’t know how Barak Obama’s parents met. But the Kincaid article referenced above makes a very convincing case that Obama’s family, later, (mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black Communist intellectual. And, according to what Obama wrote in his first autobiography, the man in question — Frank Marshall Davis — appears to have been Barack’s own mentor, and even a father figure. Of course, since the Soviet Union itself no longer exists, it’s an open question what it means practically to have been politically mentored by an official Communist. Ideologically, the implications are clearer.


http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/159088/obamas-political-origins/lisa-schiffren

[shenmue]

1. Ugh

Idiot.

[elleng]

2. OH FFS!

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967),[1] was a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

The case was brought by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated the state's anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored". The Supreme Court's unanimous decision held this prohibition was unconstitutional, overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

The decision was followed by an increase in interracial marriages in the U.S., and is remembered annually on Loving Day, June 12. It has been the subject of two movies as well as songs. Beginning in 2013, it was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions holding restrictions on same-sex marriage in the United States unconstitutional.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

6. The OP says 1958, which would be pre-Loving.

And I think people are making too much of the wording, given that it says something like 'at the time'. It's simply referring to how many Americans thought of that marriage 'at the time', not how they think of it now, when something like 1 in 7 marriages are 'interracial'.

So yeah, back then, there was a lot more anti-miscegenation sentiment floating around, whereas nowadays it's been relegated to the fringey right nutcases.

[Hekate]

14. Hawai'i never, ever, ever had miscegenation laws. Ever.

My family moved to the Territory of Hawai'i in 1957. The rate of intermarriage was phenomenal and people were proud of it.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

16. Guess what...

Most of us don't live in Hawaii, so wouldn't know that. And, btw, I didn't read the story closely enough to know that's where they got married.

So I think you could have skipped all of the condescending headsmack smilies.

[Hekate]

19. I thought Obama's biography was well-known among Dems, so I was being sarcastic to the author of the

.... article was quoted at such length in the OP. I was not aware that any Democrat did not at least know he was born in Hawai'i, nor how his mother got there (same as me: Mom and Dad moved there to work). Any of his major speeches as he was a rising star (such as the Dem Convention speech by the then-little-known Senator) referenced Kansas (i.e. the heartland of America, where his mother and grandparents were born, not some intellectual hotbed like New York City).

The current Governor of the State of Hawai'i, Neil Abercrombie, is someone I remember from his first campaign for the State Legislature from the district I then lived in. Abercrombie was a young professor at University of Hawai'i when he decided to go into politics. His published recollection of Obama Senior, who was a student at the same time Abercrombie was, is of a brilliant intellectual who could talk all night, of someone who genuinely wanted to return to his native home and transform it from a colonial backwater into a 20th century nation. He must have bowled that naive young girl right off her feet, but judging from many of her later decisions she was as solid as a rock.

I have gotten used to DUers not having much of a clue about the nature of the State of Hawai'i, but it's one of my real hot buttons when columnists and commentators with a national audience don't care enough about the truth to do some basic research. I tend to assume those writers went to college, but I wonder if they never bothered to interact with anyone outside their own fraternity or sorority, especially the really interesting foreign exchange students. What, that would be a bad thing?

I recommend Dreams from My Father, which he wrote long before he ran for President. It's a young man's memoir, and an exploration of the absent father. Despite the absence of his bio-dad, the child was lovingly reared by his mother, her mother, and her father, in an island state composed largely of Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Haoles (the generic term for white people). There were few African-Americans, and most of them were military, just passing through. He looked different. He formed a friendship with an older African American man, a friend of his grandpa's, because he was looking for what his own identity might be, just as any young man or boy would do.

Now this is me talking, and from my experience. Intermarriage was nothing new in Hawai'i; it's just that African-Americans were a distinct minority, and Africans nonexistent outside the East-West Center at the University. Obama Junior could have stayed and married a local girl and in another generation his grandchildren's personal history would have included a great-grandfather from that far off exotic place of Kenya, in addition to (let me just pluck one of my old neighbor's family from my memory) Japanese, Hawaiian, and Danish. Instead, Obama Junior went to the Mainland to discover what it meant to be an African-American man, which is, let me tell you, a different culture than that of the Islands. In marrying Michelle, he cemented his identity. However, Michelle has been quoted as saying, "I tell his friends: If you don't get Hawai'i, you don't get Barack." Think about what that means, now that you know the little I've shared with you.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

22. I'm aware he was born there.

I was not aware his parents had married there. (Reading rest of your comment now... done.)

Quite frankly, I don't read memoirs. If I'm going to read non-fiction, it's going to be technical texts and journal articles.

So I guess since I 'don't know Hawaii, I don't know Barack'. But I apologize for incorrectly inferring that the headslaps were condescension aimed at me, not sarcasm about the OP article.

[CBGLuthier]

21. I think they could have used ten more

[CBGLuthier]

20. I don't give a shit if it was 1858 calling two adult human beings marriage "not natural"

is bigoted.

No, it does not say that is how people thought. It says that the marriage was not natural. No fucking spinning it!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

23. I never said it wasn't bigoted.

I was suggesting that the writer was correctly noting that there was far more bigotry around half a century ago.

But since you think I'm just 'spinning', I won't bother to reply further, since you have made up your mind already as to what I am 'doing'.

[djean111]

3. No, she is saying it was unnatural for such a relationship to flourish.

She seems full of crapola, just looking at the titles of her other columns, and she may privately feel that such a relationship was/is not natural, but she is commenting on the flourishing of the relationship, not the relationship itself.

She is trying mightily to infer that Obama is a Commie.

[one_voice]

4. there is something..

unnatural about that jackass..

[rbrnmw]

5. what pos this person is.

She's as ignorant as any racist I ever met. The racist crazy party just seems to have so many tools like this Kincaid person.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. The birth of the birthers

This is an early example of RW media putting out early "I'm just asking questions" bait for their gullible readers to run with. You can see some of the ridiculous features here already - the time travelling implications of knowing a communist (shock! horror!) in the 1970s having some meaning for a marriage of 1961. Or that "an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks" has anything to do with a Kenyan at university in Hawaii.

Whether or not Schiffren always hates black people, she knew that many of her readers did, so she took the chance to stir up fear among them about the origins of a black man who might get elected.

[alsame]

8. They met at

the Univ. of Hawaii - I thought that was well known. I didn't realize it was a hub of Commie activity.

[TheKentuckian]

9. I hope the UN inspectors are on the way to check out this weapons grade stupid

[surrealAmerican]

10. That's not accually what the writer is saying here.

She's saying that there would not have been a lot of public acceptance of their marriage (likely true), and that they most likely would have met by being involved in communism (WTF).

[intaglio]

11. Please consider the source

National Review, founded by William F Buckley.

Please do not link to such right wing trash, so giving them the page hits. Despite what the moronic author of this foolish piece of garbage journalism believes Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia never enacted anti-miscegenation laws.

As to only "communists" enabling inter-racial marriages perhaps the author should consider whether Pearl Bailey and Louie Bellson or Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Jessie Walmisley or Sammy Davis Jr. and May Britt or George Schuyler & Josephine Cogdell or Jack Johnson and several of his wives or Frederick Douglass and Helen Pitts or Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter (married 1958) were communists.

The attribution communist to the President's mother and father is a tea party attempt to claim that the President was brought up a communist.

[whistler162]

12. Learn something new everyday......

Quayle had a speechwriter! WHO KNEW!

I doubt the couple my mom did work for, baby sitting and ironing, in the 1960's came together at any kind of Communist anything. More likely a church social or from friends at least in Central New York.

[SummerSnow]

13. So every biracial childs parents met through shady dealings? what a stupid fuck.

[Hekate]

15. "How did they meeeeeeet (whine)?" At the University of Hawai'i, dumbass.

Honest to gods, there are parts of Mainland culture I will never understand, and am I glad. Is Hawai'i that different? Apparently so.

[hatrack]

17. Remember the New Generation of sensible, rational conservatives we keep hearing about?

Yeah, y'know, the ones represented by the recast, reinvented, uh, . . . . rebranded (yes!) National Review?

[KinMd]

18. Does she know Clarence Thomas is married to a white woman?

....an investigation might be in order also