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November 17th, 2008
Reverend Soong-Chan Rah on Barack Obama
Posted by EugeniaRev. Soong-Chan Rah (formerly of MA, now based in Chicago) blogs about his reflections on Barack Obama in this very moving post at Sojourners:
I Am Barack Obama
by Soong-Chan Rah 11-05-2008
Whenever John McCain and Sarah Palin would ask: “Who is Barack Obama?” I would cringe. The implication to me was pretty clear. Obama is an outsider. Obama is not your typical American. Obama is not like “us.” He’s an Arab. A Muslim. A Terrorist.
I cringed because I am Barack Obama. Or at least my life mirrors his in many ways.
I too am a child of immigrants. My father also immigrated to the U.S. from a nation that begins with K and has five letters. I too have a funny sounding name. I too grew up in a single parent home. I became a Christian in a church that would be considered outside the boundaries of a typical white evangelical church. Obama and I graduated from the same undergraduate college. We hold graduate degrees from the same institution. We have both worked in community organizing. We’re both married to strong, independent women. We are both fathers of two elementary-aged kids. We both live in Chicago.
I am Barack Obama.
Read more at Sojourners, Jim Wallis’s blog on social justice and faith.
Posted in Asian Americans and Politics, Obama and Asian Americans |
November 19th, 2008 at 2:25 am
I really hope the days of painting people as outsiders will be a thing of the past but I doubt it. It seems that some politicians love dividing the nation