First Family Shows the Nation & World an Updated American Face
I was pleased to come across an article on NYTimes.com that discusses the extended Obama-Robinson-Soetoro-Dunham
families' roots.In the article, by Jodi Kantor, the new president's sister boils down the article's theme quite eloquently:
“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 last week. “I don’t think the White House has always reflected the textures and flavors of this country.”
My own family tree is pretty diverse: My mother is black, from Belize. Her ancestors include Africans, Scots, Spaniards, Mayans, and who knows what else. My father is white, from the Upper Pennisula of Michigan. His ancestors hailed from Bohemia, Germany, England, and who knows what else.
Growing up (I was born in 1969) I was painfully self-conscious about my parentage. I felt
"different," the last thing most kids want to be! So, this paragraph from the article resonated with me:
"As they convened to take their family’s final step in its journey from Africa and into the White House, the group seemed as if it had stepped out of the pages of Mr. Obama’s memoir — no longer the disparate kin of a young man wondering how he fit in, but the embodiment of a new president’s promise of change."
As an adult I've come to believe that my heritage is not only very cool, but it provides me with the best of many worlds.
In terms of journalism, the president's family history provides a jumping off point for oodles of stories that we can do in just about any community.
I'd sure love to hear from SPJ-ers who have done stories relating to diversity within families or are thinking about it.
I'll leave you with one more excerpt from the article:
Diversity inside families, said Michael J. Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford University, is “the most interesting kind of diversity there is, because it brings people together cheek by jowl in a way that they never were before.”
“There’s nothing as powerful as family relationships,” Mr. Rosenfeld said.