'now I was family, I reminded myself; now I had responsibilities.'
***
ACTION, AND SOMETIMES 'INACTION' SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS
As word of yet another Obama relative living in poverty echoes across the land (that's called sarcasm - we would know nothing about brother George, Uncle Omar, and Aunti Zeituni were it not for the European (UK) press):
http://bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?articleid=1128958&format=comments&cnum=1
... it would serve us well to recall both Barack Obama's "Am I my brother's keeper?" refrain and especially this passage where we first heard about Zeituni Onyango.
From Obama's first book, Dreams fom My Father:
What is a family? Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me? Or is it a social construct, an economic unit, optimal for child rearing and divisions of labor? Or is it something else entirely: a store of shared memories, say? An ambit of love? A reach across the void?
... In Africa, this astronomy of mine almost immediately collapsed. For family seemed to be everywhere: in stores, at the post office, on streets and in the parks, all of them fussing and fretting over Obama’s long-lost son. If I mentioned in passing that I needed a notebook or shaving cream, I could count on one of my aunts to insist that she take me to some far-off corner of Nairobi to find the best bargains, no matter how long the trip took or how much it might inconvenience her ...
If Jane or Zeituni ever fell ill, if their companies ever closed or laid them off, there was no government safety net. There was only family, next of kin; people burdened by similar hardship ...
Now I was family, I reminded myself; now I had responsibilities. But what did that mean exactly? Back in the States, I’d been able to translate such feelings into politics, organizing, a certain self-denial. In Kenya, these strategies seemed hopelessly abstract, even self-indulgent. A commitment to black empowerment couldn’t help find Bernard a job. A faith in participatory democracy couldn’t buy Jane a new set of sheets. - From Dreams from My Father
Pretty words, no? But where are the sheets for Jane, and why has Aunti Zeituni been living in a public housing slum a a hop and a skip outside the ivied walls of Harvard?
Is Obama's idea of "responsibility" forcing us to dig down into our pockets and take care of people who demand redistribution of wealth including his own family too?
Is this what the Democrat Party, who elevated Obama to the pinnacle of the presidency, stands for today?
And am I to be punished for even asking?
ACTION, AND SOMETIMES 'INACTION' SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS
As word of yet another Obama relative living in poverty echoes across the land (that's called sarcasm - we would know nothing about brother George, Uncle Omar, and Aunti Zeituni were it not for the European (UK) press):
http://bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?articleid=1128958&format=comments&cnum=1
... it would serve us well to recall both Barack Obama's "Am I my brother's keeper?" refrain and especially this passage where we first heard about Zeituni Onyango.
From Obama's first book, Dreams fom My Father:
What is a family? Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me? Or is it a social construct, an economic unit, optimal for child rearing and divisions of labor? Or is it something else entirely: a store of shared memories, say? An ambit of love? A reach across the void?
... In Africa, this astronomy of mine almost immediately collapsed. For family seemed to be everywhere: in stores, at the post office, on streets and in the parks, all of them fussing and fretting over Obama’s long-lost son. If I mentioned in passing that I needed a notebook or shaving cream, I could count on one of my aunts to insist that she take me to some far-off corner of Nairobi to find the best bargains, no matter how long the trip took or how much it might inconvenience her ...
If Jane or Zeituni ever fell ill, if their companies ever closed or laid them off, there was no government safety net. There was only family, next of kin; people burdened by similar hardship ...
Now I was family, I reminded myself; now I had responsibilities. But what did that mean exactly? Back in the States, I’d been able to translate such feelings into politics, organizing, a certain self-denial. In Kenya, these strategies seemed hopelessly abstract, even self-indulgent. A commitment to black empowerment couldn’t help find Bernard a job. A faith in participatory democracy couldn’t buy Jane a new set of sheets. - From Dreams from My Father
Pretty words, no? But where are the sheets for Jane, and why has Aunti Zeituni been living in a public housing slum a a hop and a skip outside the ivied walls of Harvard?
Is Obama's idea of "responsibility" forcing us to dig down into our pockets and take care of people who demand redistribution of wealth including his own family too?
Is this what the Democrat Party, who elevated Obama to the pinnacle of the presidency, stands for today?
And am I to be punished for even asking?