Friday, January 23, 2009

America's First Black President - Thomas Jefferson?

With all the focus on Obama in the news, I came across something interesting the other day. Apparently Obama may not actually be the United State's first President of colour. As everyone already knows Obama is actually of mixed racial descent, having a Caucasian mother and an African father.

Obviously though, Obama is the first visibly black President. If you're interested in seeing more but too lazy to google it yourself here's a link to the article I read in the Toronto Sun:

http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/mike_strobel/2009/01/21/8093571-sun.html

Hopefully we'll see a day where a person's ancestry and racial make-up is a total non-issue, not even worthy of mention in a newspaper or blog. We're not there yet, but I think we're on our way. My own children are a beautiful blend of Caucasian (my father thinks we may have some Native ancestry too) and East Indian.

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The big positive in this bit of trivial "news" is that it seems one of America's "Founding Fathers" and key contributors to the U.S. Constitution may very well be of mixed racial heritage as well. Perhaps we would do well to take the advice of Warren Beatty in his role as Senator Bullworth in the movie of the same name. If you haven't seen it, (it's awesome) the Senator is interviewed on T.V. and has this to say about race relations:

"Everyone has got to keep ####ing each other till we're all the same colour."

America may owe its foundation to the practice.

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