Have I rightly discovered a connection between Barack Obama Senior and the Sidney Poitier character in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”

October 24, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

Yesterday at Facebook, I posted this

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with the caption: “Guess who came to dinner? A thoughtful portrait of perhaps the most influential graduate student of the late 20th Century….”

Then today I made this more explicit posting the photograph a second time and saying

“Subroto Roy notes that when a 23 year old Barack Obama Sr came to the USA and met Ann Dunham to become the most influential graduate student of the late 20th Century, it was more than a half dozen years before the great Sidney Poitier acted in “Guess who’s coming to dinner?” — and those half dozen years were crucial in the Civil Rights Movement…”

And on the same lines I posted yet again, saying

“Subroto Roy  wonders if the meeting of Barack Obama Senior with Mr and Mrs Dunham was a bit like this portrayal in a famous film more than a half dozen years later”

attached to a photo of the Sidney Poitier character meeting with the Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn characters

poitier

and finally I have posted a fourth time a short while ago saying

“Subroto Roy notes, in reference to his analogy of the 1960 meeting between Barack Obama Sr and Ann Dunham and the characters in the 1967 movie “Guess who’s coming to dinner”, that in both cases the meeting occurred in Hawaii, and the parents of the girl were on the West Coast…. Hmmm…. coincidence? Or did the writer of the movie adapt from a real tit-bit of news?”

Perhaps I have discovered something here, perhaps not.  Either way, American popular culture and American politics have had a felicitous confluence.

Subroto Roy

Postscript 1:

I forget the details of the movie but seem to recall the Sidney Poitier character had to rush off to serve a good cause in….. Africa….

Postscript 2:

There were 17 American States which forbade inter-racial marriages at the time the movie was made in 1967; in 1960 there may have been more though Hawaii,  which became a state on Aug 21 1959, to its credit was not one of them. Thus there is a third possibility beyond coincidence and the writer of the movie hearing about real news, namely, the fact that Hawaii never had “anti-miscegenation” laws, a fact that could help explain both events.

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Posted in America's Civil Rights Movement, American democracy, American history, American politics, American popular culture, American society, Ann Dunham, Barack Hussein Obama Senior, Barack Obama, Facebook, Film and cinema, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, Hollywood, Martin Luther King Jr, Sidney Poitier, State of Hawaii. Leave a Comment »

Didn’t Dr Obama (the new American President’s late father) once publish an article in Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics? (Or did he?)

January 25, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

As an impecunious undergraduate working and paying my way through the London School of Economics in 1973-1976, I spent many long hours poring over academic journals in economics at what used to be the old British Library of Political and Economic Sciences.   If memory serves me rightly, I did come across at that time a new article published by a Barack Obama in, I think, Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics, which used to be quite an eminent journal at the time.  (All academic economics journals  have since  that era tended to suffer from  dullness, corruption and unreadability of varying degrees, especially after the end of the Cold War.)

The Obama article may have been co-authored with one or more others but I feel quite sure I recall it because of the pleasure I received from the  novelty of the African name in a (stuffy) American journal.    Dr Obama’s affiliation may have been given as the University of Hawaii — where, ironically enough, I was to have much experience later, as has been told elsewhere here.

During President Obama’s electoral campaign, I had given this information to an American journalist with a request to follow it up as I am unable to do so myself, not having access to stacks of the QJE.

It would be interesting if my memory has served me rightly here after some 34-35 years, and a Barack Obama article was found in the QJE of the early 1970s.  A lot of negative things have been said about President Obama’s late father (amounting almost to defamation) and any good  he may have  accomplished may have become interred with his bones.  Of course if I am right, the new President would owe me one as he probably has not known of the existence of the article himself.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata

Postscript:  It is possible the QJE article by Dr Obama, if it exists, was dated in the mid or late 1960s; if I came across it around 1974 as I think I did, it would still have been considered “new”.   So any intrepid young person who follows up on this by looking through a stack of QJE’s on my behalf may kindly include the mid or late 1960s.  Of course Dr Obama went from Manoa to Harvard so the likelihood that he published his economics research in the latter’s house journal is also high.

Posted in Africa, American academia, Barack Hussein Obama Senior, Barack Obama, Harvard University, London School of Economics, University of Hawaii. Leave a Comment »