Wednesday, January 21, 2009

"A Technicolor cast"

From an article by Jodi Kantor in the New York Times, Jan 20th, 2009 (emphasis added):

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 Barack and Michelle Obama 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 Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.

2 comments:

  1. It is an American story. Col. Powell said that he reminds his party that in 20 years the minorities in this country will be the majority. Republicans need to prepare for that or risk being irrelevant.

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