Look what turned up in a bit of genealogical research turned up -- Barack Obama comes from a family of slave owners.

Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.

But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.

The records - which had never been addressed publicly by the Illinois senator or his relatives - were first noted in an ancestry report compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library of Congress and practices genealogy in his spare time. The report, on Reitwiesner's Web site, carries a disclaimer that it is a "first draft" - one likely to be examined more closely if Obama is nominated.

According to the research, one of Obama's great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.

And yet somehow, were any sort of reparations program to be passed, I as a white man whose family tree includes no slave-owners, would be expected to pay reparations to Obama and his family, despite their slave-holding heritage.

But then again, even if his white mother's family hadn't owned slaves a century-and-a-half ago, Obama's ancestral hands likely still would not be clean on this score.

What the Sun may not realize is that almost certainly some of Obama's African forebears also owned slaves --- and that his current family members in Kenya may know quite a lot about modern-day slave trafficking. Human slavery is not just a historical anomaly in Kenya, the Sudan, or even Saudi Arabia. It is happening at this very moment. But apparently reminding its readers of that painful fact would not serve the Baltimore Sun's goal of hyping Obama as the new JFK, the White and Black Man's Hope.

Slavery is a horrific thing. But it would be far better if our media didn't cover up today's victims of African and Middle Eastern slavery --- when the world can still do something to save them.

I'm curious, will the media pursue this story? Or will it again bury an unflattering story about Obama's roots, just as it did when it was disclosed that Obama's daddy was a polygamist, a much closer connection than Mitt Romney's great-grandfather.

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Posted by: Greg at 01:08 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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