Wednesday, January 21, 2009

What is 50%?

I was a very disapointed person yesterday. Our 44th President was sworn in and I did everything I could not to catch a moment of it.

There are a lot of people that are very excited about him, but I am not one of them.

I just have one question for the man - What is 50%?

To me 50% is half of something. Not matter what it is, it takes two halves to make a whole. And right now I only see Obama as half a man.

To me he is only half a man because all you hear about is his African side, never the other. As a person of mixed-heritage, it offends me deeply to have everything placed on one half of your life.

To me it's hard to claim something you never lived. If his parents separated when he was 2 years old and then divorced later, where did he learn about his African heritage?

If he saw his father once before he died in 1982, when did he have time to help him understand what it meant to be Afican in more than skin tone?

I am half Indonesian and half Scandinavian with a few others sprinkled in. I grew up on Lefse and Goulash, as well as the food my father brought with him from Indonesia.

I have always been proud of my mixed heritage and the ability to learn from both sides. Why do we only hear about the side he never had much of a chance to learn from?