A First Family like this nation has never seen before
The presidency of Barack Obama ushers in a first family unlike any in our nation’s history, writes Jodi Kantor of the New York Times.
Her story carries this headline: THE FIRST FAMILY, UNLIKE ALL ITS PREDECESSORS, IS A PICTURE OF DIVERSITY. It begins:
“The president’s elderly Kenyan stepgrandmother came, bearing a gift of an oxtail fly whisk. Cousins journeyed from the South Carolina town where the first lady’s great-great-grandfather was born into slavery, while the rabbi in the family came from the synagogue where he had been commemorating Martin Luther King’s Birthday. The president and first lady’s siblings were there, too, of course: his Indonesian-American half-sister, who brought her Chinese-Canadian husband, and her brother, a black man with a white wife.
“When President Barack Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, he was surrounded by an extended clan that would have shocked past generations of Americans and instantly redrew the image of a first family for future ones.
“For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Obama and his wife, Michelle is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak 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. Very few are wealthy, and some – like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.
“‘Our family is new in terms of the White House, but I don’t think it’s new in terms of the country,’ Maya Soetoro-Ng, the president’s younger half-sister, said in an interview last week. “I don’t think the White House has always reflected the textures and flavors of this country.’”
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Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
I watched the Inauguration again last night and was it was interesting to see the amount of diversity both on the stage and within the Obama family — a watershed moment. CNN also posted a story about the image of a Black First Family and what it symbolically means to African American relationships: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/15/obama.family/index.html
OK. I see how this is interesting. I understand the milestone we have reached and the pride many people feel with this event. I hope that by reaching this point, we can start looking more at what people can do and not what they look like. I’m happy for their family and for the people that support them.
What we have to do is stop being blinded by his color and judge him by what he brings to the table. During the campaign, the media was blinded by his color. How else can you explain the lack of vetting Mr. Obama went through? We still don’t know if he is truly eligible for the office, but that’s been shooed away. With his grandma there, the Times could have asked her if she was there to witness his birth. Of course, that will never happen and it is a shame to not have cleared that whole issue up sooner. Instead of achieving racial equality, we are once again in a position where the rules are different for different colors of skin.
This is great time in our history of the country. We, all Americans should now invoke Dr. King’s request of all people. Judge me not by the color of my skin, but by the content of my character. I truly hope that because of his skin color we don’t become blind to incompetence.
I recall that just a few years ago there was a short burst of energy to amend the Constitution to allow Arnold to run for president. Is all this
angst over the “other side” might have slipped one under the radar-or is it something else?
One of the great things about Americans in general is that we are (for lack of a better term) mutts. Although the racial makeup of Obama’s family is definitely different than those that preceded him, the mix of lots of different nations is a common thread in everyone’s family. Celebrating diversity is celebrating America.
……………….While I realise that this is a very important and justifiably proud moment in history for African Americans, I begin to wonder when (or IF) the press will start to objectivly cover the Obama Presidency and Administration.
As a Libertarian, I did not vote for him or Senator McCain, but I do wish President Obama all of the good luck and blessings in the world. (Frankly, between the two I would rather have Obama, as I had very serious reservations regarding Senator McCains temprament, and the fact that he could have been in charge of our Armed Forces)
Perhaps in a week or so, the media will come out of it’s euphoric/honeymoon trance and start to do it’s job.
It’s strange that, up until this very second, Obama has been called the first black President, yet he is half white, making him the first bi-racial President. Now this story is saying there is a lot of diversity in the family.
Perhaps calling him the first black President was a way to get him elected? Now, calling him diverse is a way to get all the different races to buy into him.
publicschooled — if they had amended the Constitution to let Arnold run for President, then at least it would have been by the books. Ignoring the Constitution to get your candidate in is quite different, and quite unconstitutional.
This country was founded and built by European Americans. That’s not racist, it’s fact. In 1980 we were 80% of the population and now were 65%. Just look at all the racial/ethnic problems worldwide to understand the long term consequences of this social experiment. Not only do you have tension between white and blacks but you have even more tension among latinos and blacks. Trust me, I lived in LA for a couple of years. Just wait until the Muslims population reaches a significant size. Diversity = Chaos.
In Response to AmericaResolve,
It’s questionable that this country was founded or built by European Americans.
It was TAKEN from Native Americans and it was BUILT on the backs of my ancestors, African-Americans.
And your statement is racist.