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Each year, the University of Hawaii presents its Distinguished Alumni Awards. The UHAA Distinguished Alumni Awards pay tribute to those alumni who have made outstanding contributions to their professions and community, committed themselves to advancing the values and goals of the University of Hawai‘i and ensuring improvement in the quality of life for future generations. This year the president's Award is going posthumously to Dr. Ann Dunham Soetoro.
BA in anthropology, 1967, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
MA in anthropology, 1983, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
PhD in in anthropology, 1992, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Ann Dunham Soetoro, PhD, was an applied anthropologist who used her academic training from the University of Hawai‘i to better understand the culture, political system and values that underpinned the struggles – and successes – of the rural poor in Southeast Asia.
Soetoro’s research and consulting work took her around the world. She became a consultant for the U.S. Agency for International Development on setting up village credit programs, then a Ford Foundation program officer in Jakarta championing women’s issues. She later served in Pakistan as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank focusing on women’s welfare. In 1988, she joined Bank Rakyat Indonesia and helped develop the world’s largest sustainable microfinance program. Credit and savings services enabled poor people from rural areas to engage in cottage industries and emerge from poverty. As a pioneer in the field of microfinance, her anthropological research helped shape the bank's policies.
In August 1992 she earned her PhD in anthropology from UH, and shortly thereafter became a research and policy coordinator for Women's World Banking in New York. Soetoro returned to the U.S. after becoming ill in 1995 and was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Her life was cut short on Nov. 7, 1995, days before her 53rd birthday.
Her work lives on. In 2009, Duke University Press published, “Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia” – a condensed version of Soetoro’s 1992 dissertation on her 14 years of research in rural Java. Her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng called on Alice Dewey, Soetoro’s graduate adviser, and Nancy Cooper, a fellow graduate student, from the UH anthropology department to edit the work for publication. In addition, the Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowed Fund was recently established at the UH Foundation as a collaborative effort between UH Mānoa and the East-West Center to honor her legacy.
Barack Obama made a conscious decision to identify with his black roots instead of his white roots. That's a fact. He said it himself. So why is it "not healthy or normal" to point out that the President has something worthy of acknowledgement on his "white" side? Is there some reason he should run from his "white" roots?
Nothing....and I mean nothing.....comes from Barack Obama's lips without having been ran through the political filter between his ears. It was far more expedient for him to identify with his black roots because of the Affirmative Action environment in which he was raised. There simply was NO benefit to being a half-white guy. He knew that, he capitalized on it, and he won.
Indeed he's referred to as the "First Black President" even though he's half-white. Isn't it more appropriate to be considered the "First Bi-Racial President?" Of course it is, but that would never do well in America where black people would be the first to cry racism if "Bi-racial" was even a serious consideration.
I'll bet my next paycheck that there will be some sort of political hay made out of this honor bestowed upon his white mother. His white roots will be parlayed into something that's beneficial to him, even as he has shunned those white roots while in the political spotlight. I have no doubt about it whatsoever. That's how this President operates.
In most cases it's White Americans that make the decision to ostracize a mixed raced person that has a White parent and a Black parent. The "One Drop" was a social practice whereby a mix raced person was ostracized by White Americans. There is also the perception among many White Americans that a person has become somehow "Tainted" of they have a child with a person of another race particularly if that person is Black.
Don't blame Barack Obama for identifying with his Black side. In many cases it was White Americans that made him feel alienated from their community.
We are so fortunate to have a President who can relate to dual ethnicities, who is a man of the people, and who has lived his life with dignity and civility. His mother, who now is being feted, infused our President with the ability to gain knowledge, the will to succeed where others might fail; she encouraged him to become educated and to use his life to improve the world around him - many families could do well to follow her example.
We are so fortunate to have a President who can relate to dual ethnicities, who is a man of the people, and who has lived his life with dignity and civility. His mother, who now is being feted, infused our President with the ability to gain knowledge, the will to succeed where others might fail; she encouraged him to become educated and to use his life to improve the world around him - many families could do well to follow her example.
I've often thought, that had she lived to see her son become POTUS, and the more we got to know about her, that she would have actually been a very interesting person.
While the life she chose is not one I would have chosen, compared to some of the mothers of other, past presidents, she probably would have been a breath of fresh air.
I started a thread about this last year. His mom was very accomplished. His grandmother was the first female VP of her bank. His stepfather was an oil company executive. His bio-dad came from a wealthy family and attended Harvard.
Why doesn't he acknowledge his family's accomplishments? They allowed him to attend the most prestigious private school in Hawaii.
Yet generally when he mentions his family, it's about his grandmother being a "typical white woman" scared of young black men. Or his mom raising him as a single parent on food stamps, although his mom was married for all but a couple of years of his childhood.
I feel like he disrespects his families' accomplishments to make his seem greater. And I don't understand using them like that instead of celebrating their accomplishments.
I started a thread about this last year. His mom was very accomplished. His grandmother was the first female VP of her bank. His stepfather was an oil company executive. His bio-dad came from a wealthy family and attended Harvard.
Why doesn't he acknowledge his family's accomplishments? They allowed him to attend the most prestigious private school in Hawaii.
Yet generally when he mentions his family, it's about his grandmother being a "typical white woman" scared of young black men. Or his mom raising him as a single parent on food stamps, although his mom was married for all but a couple of years of his childhood.
I feel like he disrespects his families' accomplishments to make his seem greater. And I don't understand using them like that instead of celebrating their accomplishments.
Exactly so Obama was pretty much raised in a similar background as Mitt Romney, firmly upper middle class. So why is he acting as if he grew up in the hood?
We are so fortunate to have a President who can relate to dual ethnicities, who is a man of the people, and who has lived his life with dignity and civility. His mother, who now is being feted, infused our President with the ability to gain knowledge, the will to succeed where others might fail; she encouraged him to become educated and to use his life to improve the world around him - many families could do well to follow her example.
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