President Barack Obama hugged his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, at her December 2003 wedding to Konrad Ng, third from right, in Hawaii. From left, his daughters, Sasha and Malia; his grandmother Madelyne Dunham, seated; Konrad's parents, Joan and Howard Ng, and brother Perry Ng; and Michelle Obama. Photo: Maya Soetoro-Ng/IHT
This photo and accompanying story in the International Herald Tribune portrays a picture of diversity that is almost one hundred percent perfect. Barack is mixed, having a white American mother and black African father. But his extended family branches into Africa, Canada, Indonesia, China and slave-period America. President Obama cannot be pigeon-holed. His is a story of multiple narratives that defy geographic bloundaries.
A few quotes from the story:
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"The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish."
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Collectively, the family speaks "English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Low Country."
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Present at Obama's inauguration on Tuesday were "his Indonesian-American half-sister, who brought her Chinese-Canadian husband, and her brother, a black man with a white wife."
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The "Obama-Robinson family's move to the White House seems like a symbolic end point for the once-firm idea that people of different backgrounds should not date, marry or bear children."
-- OBERT MADONDO
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