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THE HUMOR OF MELVIN DURAI
Life can be so funny!
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Original, thought-provoking humor
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WEEK'S COLUMN:
(To see a photo of Obama with his mom, click on relevant
links and leave comments, go to http://N****ma.com,
where
this column was first posted.)
"OBAMA BELONGS TO ALL OF US" <a href="
http://www.n****ma.com/2008/03/column-obama-be.html">
Web
Column</a>
I have a message for my African-American friends: Stop
claiming Barack Obama as one of yours. He's not one of
yours. He's one of OURS. In case you haven't checked,
Obama isn't just black. He's half-black, half-white and
half-Asian. Okay, perhaps he isn't half-Asian, but his
step-father was Indonesian, he was raised partly in
Indonesia, and most of his clothes are from Asia. So don't
you dare laugh when you're driving through Chinatown and see
a bumper sticker that says "I'm Voting For Obama. He's
Almost Asian!"
If you're Hispanic, you can take pride in him too. Did you
know that Obama loves tortilla chips and salsa, and he once
sat through an entire Jennifer Lopez movie? Yes, the man
has gone to great pains to discover his Hispanic side.
When they make a movie about Obama, you'll see him flying to
the White House in a cape, with people gazing up and
gasping, "It's a black man! It's a white man! It's
Everyman!"
Obama identified himself with the African-American community
as a young man, partly because he felt a need to belong, and
that suits everyone just fine, because we love to put people
into neat categories. But his background is quite different
from most African-Americans. After all, there aren't many
African-Americans who could organize a family reunion and
harbor a slight fear that Dick Cheney might show up.
And there aren't many African-Americans who could fly to
Africa, host a dinner party for their extended family and
have hundreds of people showing up, most of whom are
actually related to them.
Obama's late father was Kenyan and his late mother was
Kansan. If he's elected to the White House, it will be a
momentous, historic occasion, because, as everyone knows,
America has never had a Kenyan-Kansan president. Yes, he'll
be America's very first K-K president, much to the dismay of
the KKK.
Obama has given credit to his white mother for raising him
after his father left, writing in his memoir that "what is
best in me I owe to her." But despite all that, it's his
father's race that seems to define him. "If you have one
drop of black blood, you're black," society seems to say.
But what if every drop of your blood is red?
Shouldn't we celebrate Obama's mixed heritage, instead of
glossing over it, instead of cutting off his mother's side?
The same can be asked about Tiger Woods. Journalists often
refer to Tiger as an African-American golfer, except in
Thailand, where journalists describe him as "the golfer
whose mother is Thai."
According to Wikipedia, Tiger's late father, Earl, was half
African-American, one-quarter Chinese, and one-quarter
Native American, while his mother, Kultida, is half Thai,
one-quarter Chinese, and one-quarter Dutch. That makes
Tiger one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter
African-American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth
Dutch. And that makes me glad I studied fractions in high
school.
Thanks to those lessons, I've figured out that Tiger is --
drum roll please! -- twice as much Asian as African-
American. But not many people know that. If they made a
movie about him, it would be called "Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Asian."
Tiger, quite smartly, considers himself "Cablinasian" (a
combination of Caucasian, Black, American-Indian, and
Asian). He's not just a great golfer, but also a great role
model, making so many people proud, especially those in the
Cablinasian community. You may not know this, but for ten
consecutive years, they've selected him as "Cablinasian of
the Year."
Tiger has a unique genetic makeup -- and so does each of us,
no matter our racial background. Obama owes his not just to
his father, but also his mother. That's why it puzzles me
that 92 percent of blacks sup****ted him in the Mississippi
primary, but only 26 percent of whites did.
Why such a racial divide over a candidate who's half-this
and half-that?
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(c) Copyright 2008 Melvin Durai. All Rights Reserved. <a
href="http://MelvinDurai.com">
MelvinDurai.com </a>
BLOG AND OTHER REPRINTS
The above column may be reprinted in other newsletters,
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website link and copyright information are included.
Melvin Durai is a Winnipeg-based writer and humorist. Born
in India and raised in Zambia, he has lived in North America
since 1982. Through the Internet, his column is read by
thousands of people in more than 90 countries.
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