andrel wrote:
> The main point of course is that if someone is claiming Obama is any 
> color at all and that that is relevant, is that the person who does it 
> is a racist.

Well, unless the person who is making the claim merely that his election 
showed that the country isn't as racist as it once was. I.e., if you're 
attributing anything to Obama himself due to his skin color, that's racist. 
If you're attributing something to the voters due to Obama's skin color, 
that's not necessarily racist.

> I am not totally familiar with US history, but I think that most (all?) 
> presidents before him were from an upper middle class background. 

Not exactly. Of course, by the time you're president, you have to have 
enough money to advertise to get elected. But quite a number of presidents 
were born into families too poor to effectively support themselves.

Abraham Lincoln in a one-room log cabin doing homework on the back of a 
shovel with chalk because he couldn't afford paper or a blackboard is the 
most famous example.  Some recent presidents started out rather poor too.

Of course, yes, you don't get to be president without any money to spend on 
a campain.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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