Michelle Obama's Slave Roots

The much-ballyhooed front page New York Times story about the First Lady's slave roots played down the most fascinating aspect of the story: The "unknown white man" who fathered Michelle Obama's great-great-great grandmother.

As Mary Curtis wrote in Woman Up, there is nothing "startling" about this very American story. "It's the presentation of the Times story - all breathless naivete - that took me by surprise...Michelle Obama has white ancestors. Well, yes, so do most black folks in the United States."

Naturally, the new revelations have stirred the ubiquitous controversy surrounding Thomas Jefferson's sexual relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings, who bore him at least one child. Hopefully the skeptics will finally be silenced with a forthcoming book by historian Virginia Scharff due to be published by Harper Collins in 2010. "Jefferson loved only a few women, but his love for them shaped his life, his ideas, and his vision for the nation," Scharff said. "Up until now, their stories have been told separately. This book puts all the women--nominally black and white, but nearly all related by blood--in the same room, the same family, the same history. This is post-apartheid American history of the most revered, vexing, complicated Founding Father, and you can't tell the story without focusing on the women themselves."

While the recent findings of the five-generation trail of slavery and emancipation confirm that Mrs. Obama has a white forbear, it is the dark hint of rape and sexual exploitation that haunts the story and alternately titillates and repels. The same spectre runs through the Jefferson story -- as well as those of countless descendants from America's slaveholding days. Still, it is the exploitation and abuse with which Americans have not yet fully come to terms.