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Barack Obama is descended from the first person ever enslaved in the American colonies–an indentured servant who attempted to escape his indenture and was then enslaved for life. Not only that, this ancestor is distaff–on his mother’s side–the white side of his family.

Yahoo News reports that researchers have tied Obama to through ancestors of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, to John Punch, an African who is the first documented slave in the colony of Virginia.
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American blacks searching for their African roots are finding it’s not so easy. In the January 27th edition of the New York Times, Edward Rothstein says, "The astounding thing about American slavery is not that it existed–the enslavement of one people by another may be one of history’s universals–but that it persisted. It lasted into an era when its absence could be imagined and its presence could become an outrage."
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We tend to think of both Native Americans and African Americans as cultural and ethnic groups who have been treated badly by history. But one thing most people DON’T know is that Indians once kept SLAVES. Now the freedmen who are the descendents of slaves kept by wealthy members of the Cherokee nation are fighting to be accepted of members of the tribe.
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A new study of interracial marriages in the United States since the 1980s suggests that the racial boundary between blacks and whites continues to break down–but is not yet close to disappearing. And sociologists have some advice for single black women who want to marry: If a black marriage partner is hard to find, they should look for a white spouse, as there is no longer a significant social barrier to interracial marriage.
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