The multi-faceted Mr. Obama

Much touted unity candidate’s peculiar associations

With so much swirling about Barack Obama’s connection to the Muslim faith, his suddenly defamatory middle name of Hussein and close relationship with the dashiki-wearing minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, of his black nationalistic church, his campaign has been working overtime to staunch the stories. The recent circulation of a photo showing Obama wearing traditional Kenyan tribal garb, has added to what has been a confusing hodgepodge of information and misinformation.

Although Obama is now separating himself from the black supremacist, anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan, questions abound. Farrakhan has endorsed Obama, and maintains a longstanding warm association with the questionable Rev. Wright

Investor’s Business Daily editorializes that in 1991, when Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he pledged allegiance to something called the Black Value System, which is a code of non-Biblical ethics written by blacks, for blacks.

It encourages blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders. Such racial separatism is strangely at odds with the media’s portrayal of Obama as a uniter who reaches across races.

The code also warns blacks to avoid the white “entrapment of black middle-classness,” suggesting that settling for that kind of “competitive” success will rob blacks of their African identity and keep them “captive” to white culture.

The Examiner provides another vantage point with Obama fights false links to Islam.