Inauguration day and Ethnic Diversity

Here is interesting quote from the today’s New York Times

“The president’s elderly step grandmother brought him an oxtail fly whisk, a mark of power at home in Kenya. 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.
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”

So many of us, if we look, will find our own family quite diversified. My maternal Great-grandfather was of the Lake clan of Scotland. He married my Trinidadian Great-grandmother. My fraternal Great Grandmother was from the Yoruba clan of Nigeria. Her daughter, my Grandmother, was a slave in Wilmington North Carolina. She was a product of her Yoruba Mother and her English slave master. My offspring have further diversified the family. I have a Jewish Daughter-in-law and a Polish/German daughter-in-law. That’s just me. I haven’t mentioned the ethnic diversity that my 3 wives bring to our children.

Inauguration day

How joyous. How wonderful. It is so hard to contain my joy and pride. We Americans have restored the rule of law and a Government by the people. We have harnessed the power of our collective political will.

There has been a consistence question among certain groups. The question was, who is this guy Obama and where is he getting all this money? They were suggesting a wider secret conspiracy. They just could not believe the people would support with their hard earned dollars the man they wanted. But we did. We gave our 10.00 and our 25.00 dollars until Obama collected more citizens’ funds than any political campaign in our history. We gave willingly because we believed in his dream of an open free and fully democratic America living the values of our constitution.

Linda and I held each other and cried great tears of joy and celebration when President Obama was sworn in. We cried again when cried again when the minister giving the Benediction quoted lines from the Negro National Anthem “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears” and I realized that the opening stanza of the anthem was so very appropriate to that day.

“Lift Every Voice and sing till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of liberty

Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea”