11-11-2008, 06:05 AM
Thanx, KapohoCat, for telling it straight. Also, all these people trying to make an issue of Obama's being from Hawaii or Chicago...
I've lived longer in Hawaii than anywhere else, more than half my 64 years now. But I'm also from England (born there during WWII to an American serviceman and young English woman), lived there off and on in my childhood enough to be able to travel there as an adult and drive around London knowing where I was going. From 18 months of age, I was also raised in the deep southern U.S., attending more than a dozen schools in states from Virginia to Florida to Alabama and Texas, my father being from North Carolina with a career in the U.S. Air Force. Lots of kids grow up like that; it's no big thing.
Living and working here, I also have a great appreciation for the history of the Native Hawaiians, as I'm sure Obama does. As he's not Native Hawaiian, while articles indicate he is sympathetic to their cause, I'm sure many would have thought it presumptuous of him to launch his political career from Hawaii. So to make his mark as a young man, he had to find his place in the world, and that's why he went away to school, traveled in the world and found his place in Chicago. And let's face it, Black people have not been treated with respect in Hawaii over the years, altho' I see that's been changing for the better in the past decade.
So, yes, Obama is from Hawaii making him Hawaiian, the way KapohoCat defines it. Yet he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders. May the universe bless him and keep him and his family safe.
I've lived longer in Hawaii than anywhere else, more than half my 64 years now. But I'm also from England (born there during WWII to an American serviceman and young English woman), lived there off and on in my childhood enough to be able to travel there as an adult and drive around London knowing where I was going. From 18 months of age, I was also raised in the deep southern U.S., attending more than a dozen schools in states from Virginia to Florida to Alabama and Texas, my father being from North Carolina with a career in the U.S. Air Force. Lots of kids grow up like that; it's no big thing.
Living and working here, I also have a great appreciation for the history of the Native Hawaiians, as I'm sure Obama does. As he's not Native Hawaiian, while articles indicate he is sympathetic to their cause, I'm sure many would have thought it presumptuous of him to launch his political career from Hawaii. So to make his mark as a young man, he had to find his place in the world, and that's why he went away to school, traveled in the world and found his place in Chicago. And let's face it, Black people have not been treated with respect in Hawaii over the years, altho' I see that's been changing for the better in the past decade.
So, yes, Obama is from Hawaii making him Hawaiian, the way KapohoCat defines it. Yet he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders. May the universe bless him and keep him and his family safe.