Barack Obama's personal story, unlike Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech you quote above (which has itself become appropriated by conservatives opposed to affirmative action and the like), doesn't remind the audience of "the sons of former slaves." As Obama emphasized, "His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant [in Kenya]" -- a servant not to the Americans but to the British. Obama's father came here not as a slave or servant, but as a foreign student with "a scholarship to study in a magical place; America which stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before," as he rhapsodizes.
Cf. "HARVARD'S BLACKS ARE MAINLY IMMIGRANTS OR BIRACIAL": <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040628/014016.html>. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>