The Spectator’s Notes | 8 November 2008

It is so important that the first black President is only half-black. The black side of Barack Obama’s heritage is the non-American bit. His black, Kenyan father was absent. His Hawaiian upbringing was white. One day, he recalls in his autobiography, his white grandparents, who were bringing him up, had a row. His grandmother (who died this week, just too soon to see her grandson elected), told her husband that she did not want to take the bus to work the next day. She asked her husband to drive her instead. He refused, and words were exchanged. Barack asked what was going on. His grandfather told him that she had been harassed at the bus-stop for money. He was annoyed with her because what frightened her particularly about the incident was that the aggressive panhandler had been black. Young Barack thought about this: his grandparents had ‘sacrificed again and again for me… and yet I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fears’.