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I find the following comments by Ali Mazrui, a reknown Kenyan professor very thought provoking:
"Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama are icons of the post-racial age which is still unfolding. But they are very different post-racial icons. Mandela was very much a child of the struggle against racism at its height, whereas Obama attained maturity when racism was on the decline and the civil rights movement in the United States had already attained some of its most important achievements.

"Indeed, Obama was born nearly a decade after the Supreme Court decision, Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954, which struck down school segregation in the United States. Obama was born in the 1960s when the civil rights struggle was at its most earnest, voting rights for Black people were expanded.

"The racial system of Jim Crow was under sustained attack, but the country was not yet dreaming about a post-racial America .

"Obama's parents Ann Dunham, the white woman from Kansas and the Black man from Kenya were married during the last decade when the United States still had laws against inter-racial marriages what they called "anti-miscegenation" laws.

"By a strange coincidence, young Barack saw his Dad for the last time at just about the time when the Supreme Court had just struck down anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional. The case was between the state of Virginia and an inter-racial couple coincidentally bearing the surname Loving [ Virginia versus Loving]. Young Barack was ten years old when he saw his Dad for the last time and after an interval of eight years before that last encounter.

"The racial system in the United States was being dismantled bit by bit. The deracialization of America had begun. A post-racial America awaited Obama's potential leadership as the first Black President of the United States .

"A major precondition of Obama's preparation for the American Presidency was his being abandoned by his African father.

"His parent's divorce probably destined to be counted by historians as one of the most significant matrimonial breakups in history.

"Why? Had Barack Obama Senior remained married to younger Barack's mother, and had the boy been brought up by both parents, the boy would have become more of an African and less of a full-blooded American.

"His credentials for becoming an attractive candidate for our Presidency would have been drastically reduced.

"If Barack does become the first Black President of the most powerful nation on earth, and if the breakup of

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