The German weekly magazine Stern has a good article on Barack Obama's half-sister Auma (thanks to reader Axel for sending it). The piece is available only in the print edition, but Der Spiegel picked it up on its Web site.
The Obama family tree is rather complex in that it spans three continents; Wikipedia has a good diagram. Barack and Auma share the same father; he was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, she in Kenya. The two didn't meet until both were in their twenties - in Chicago. Barack wrote about their first encounter with each other in his first book Dreams from My Father. Picking her up from the airport he remembers realizing:
"somehow, that I loved her, so naturally, so easily and fiercely, that later, after she was gone, I would find myself mistrusting that love, trying to explain it to myself,"
From 1980 until very recently Auma spent most of her time in Germany. From 1980 to 1987 she studied German at the University of Heidelberg. She then was accepted into a graduate program at the University of Bayreuth where she studied the relatively new field "interkulturelle Germanistik". According to Spiegel she wrote her dissertation on "die Arbeitsauffassung in Deutschland und literarische Reflektionen darüber" (the concept of labor in Germany and its reflection in literature).
And Auma didn't spend all her time in Germany studying in the library. In the mid-1990s she was invited by German television to speak about the some of the vicious attacks on foreigners that were taking place in the country at that time. She worked for the local newspaper in Bayreuth and organized seminars for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. She found part-time work as an interpreter at trade fairs, and was chosen among thousands of applicants for admittance into the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. In the capital city she lived in the multi-cultural neighborhood of Kreuzberg and, according to Stern, joined a "glamorous clique" of successful black women from the arts and business.
After a stint in London, an unsuccessful marriage, and the birth of daughter, Auma returned to Kenya, where she is now a field director of the UN program CARE. Undoubtedly she will play a role in the Obama administration with respect to US-Africa relations. Today Auma has mixed feelings about her time in Germany, the country that supported and educated her during her formative years. She told her brother:
Die Deutschen täten "immer so, als seien sie Afrikanern gegenüber besonders liberal, aber wenn man dann an der Oberfläche kratzt, sieht man, dass sie immer noch die Einstellungen aus ihrer Kindheit mit sich herumtragen. In deutschen Märchen kommen Farbige nur als Kobolde vor. So etwas vergisst man nicht so einfach". (Germans always like to think that they have a very liberal attitude towards Africans. But when you scratch the surface you can see that they they still carry around the prejudices of their childhood. In German fairy tales black people always appear as the bogey man. You don't forget things like that so easily.)
Shows you how much of a fake the whole Obama Inc. is, that false claim about "black people" in "german fairytales".
Btw. the title of her thesis is very funny, I'm sure a jet-setting stipendiate really needs to write such things :)
However, there are no black people in "German fairytales" because the brothers Grimm collected and redacted a body of really ancient folk yarns. Only german Americans would have been running plantations then, but I heard they were very small in this line of business too.
It's just stunning how the US-Americans for the sake of their global colonization try to put a racial/racist perspective onto everything.
Posted by: antonymous | July 29, 2008 at 12:03 PM
Auma is Kenyan, not "US-American".
Are you saying that racial prejudice only exists in America and not Germany?
Posted by: David | July 29, 2008 at 12:23 PM
"However, there are no black people in "German fairytales""
You are also very ignorant when it comes to German fairy tales. I guess you never read "Die weisse und die schwarze Braut"
"Da zürnte der liebe Gott über die Mutter und Tochter, wendete ihnen den Rücken zu und verwünschte sie, dass sie sollten schwarz werden wie die Nacht und hässlich wie die Sünde."
As a Germanist, Auna knows her Maerchen.
Posted by: David | July 29, 2008 at 12:34 PM
She sounds fascinating. Of course racism is not limited to children's tales in German. There is a good deal of racist material available in English, too.
Posted by: Hattie | July 29, 2008 at 05:11 PM
No, the problem is that corrupted scientists like her need to invent things like "racism" to get attention.
These people do not realize that they are merely perpetuating the old and false, but also formerly scientific theories about "race" while ignoring everything else.
A black/white dichotomy in a fairytale where everything is symbolic and went through multiple layers of tradition is only "racism" to a very narrowminded person.
Should we just call them Puritans? But this is a similar problem as the synthetic "leftist antisemitism" that is being invented by Nazi apologists.
Posted by: antonymous | July 29, 2008 at 06:47 PM
Hattie - are you by any chance caucasian?
Posted by: Sarah | September 24, 2008 at 11:12 AM
Scratching the surface? Yes. Auma Obama deconstructs what the stereotypical media had portrayed of the family of the late Dr. Barack Obama, as a former goatherd who went to Harvad by accident. Auma like her father worked for her PhD and this should be sufficient to dispel the goatherd theory that the western media so likes to advance about anything African. In my lifetime, I have seen a lot of golddiggers in Africa from the west. Isn't it time we realized that at least all people are potentially equal? Why don't they talk about the opportunities of becoming rich by going to Africa? It has most of the time been what an African gets when they go to the west!
Posted by: Shirley | November 19, 2008 at 08:43 AM
I just saw her on the idiot box (TV, German first channel ARD, ad-free)
She is 100% normal, unlike most mental US americans who are full of small-minded hate and chauvinism.
So what if she has a cushy job? The way she speaks german... nearly flawless ... means that she has worked a lot over a long time.
Just one indication.
Unlike her brother she doesn't kill people without trial or hearing.
Barack, like nearly every other US president would be hanged if the Nuremberg laws were applied.
The world is about truths. Not about innuendo.
If you are interested in reality, then learn about the Strategy of Tension (aka Rule By Fear)
The average US-american is shitting his pants of terrorism and economic meltdown. That is fully intentional.
http://tangibleinfo.blogspot.com/2010/10/strategy-of-tension-explained.html
Posted by: Arto Jutu | October 13, 2010 at 04:18 AM
Well....the problem is...when one of us goes to Germany....the only way we get REAL attention is to involve ourselves in petty race issues....I don't know so much about German fairy tales I'll give you that.....but the truth is....there are at least a dozen Kenyan fairy tales that scare children with tales of ghostly white children....and no one even blinks an eye....something is only bad when you say it is bad I suppose....otherwise no scrutiny...and no problem..
Posted by: Charles | December 02, 2010 at 09:42 AM
Well....I do find it kind of hard to believe that someone would go all the way to Germany from far away, and then critique a whole culture based on some nursery ryhmes in a few fairy tales from over one thousand years ago...that she would do that seems like a fairy tale in itself..
Posted by: Milton Bowman | December 02, 2010 at 08:42 PM
All that you have said comes across as the height of stupidity. That lady, Auma is speaking about life from her perspective of testimony. Its either you accept it or reject it and stop criticising the person rather than her view.
Posted by: Aleh Ayaba | January 31, 2012 at 06:18 AM
Regardless of other opinions, I see Auma as a well educated,intelligent,and wonderful humanitarian.So there.
Posted by: Susan | February 28, 2012 at 09:21 PM
there is nothing called UN CARE program. She worked for CARE the INGO as a project manager on sports for social change
Posted by: kano | May 06, 2012 at 02:53 PM