The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Untimely Death of Obama's Grandmother

I was saddened this evening to read about the death of Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, or as anyone who has read Dreams From My Father might remember her, "Toot."  Toot was an ordinary woman who raised an extraordinary family and who increasingly lived race in America in a way few have. Living in Texas after the war, Toot shooed her daughter and a black playmate inside the house when children screamed "nigger lover" outside her picket fence; in Hawaii, she opened her heart to an African son-in-law, when intermarriage was still illegal in more than half the country. As we all know, she went on to raise an African-American grandson who was to become the first black nominee for president of the United States. Toot became a symbol of race's emotional complexities—and a literal embodiment, some thought, of selling one's own grandmother for political gain—when, in his speech on race, Obama discussed her discomfort with black people who were not her grandson. She died on the eve of what may well be his election. Regardless of its outcome, I, for one, feel bereft that she will not get to see tomorrow.