The election of Barack Obama to the American presidency is a historic first, i.e. someone of African descent is now our President. However, there is one misconception in the collective mind of black African-Americans which needs to be cleared up: He is not "one of you"!
Most black African-Americans are descendants from the American pre-Civil War slavery experience. However, the African slave trade to the United States came from West African countries. Barack Obama's people came from Kenya, an East African country. Africa is a huge continent, and odds are strongly against any possibility that slave traders from America transported any East Africans to the African West coast, by either land or sea.
Barack Obama was born in 1961, and his mother hustled him out of the United States to live first in Great Britain and then in Indonesia, all during the 1960s civil rights struggle in the United States. His birth certificate, the legal validity of which is still in doubt to this day, claims that he was born in Hawaii. Hawaii shares none of the experiences of racism and slavery of the former Confederate Southern states.
Hence, neither Barack Obama nor any of his African ancestors faced any of the American experiences with racism and slavery suffered historically by most black African-Americans. No, black African-America, from a historic perspective, President Barack Obama is not "one of you"!
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