By Chalan Moon



Curiosity serves the interest of those seeking knowledge and truth.

Discovery relies on initiation. One decision can snowball into

revelation of either devastating or miraculous proportions. The pursuit

of knowledge and foresight takes one step and becomes addicted.

And so it was that I discovered just how misinformed our country is. In perusing Facebook

groups that my friends had recently joined, a distinct pattern

developed: Barack must be our president to avoid more Bush rhetoric,

and McCain/Palin suffer from the puppetry of Karl Rove. You've heard it all. But where were the McCain groups? I knew that the 'I Hate Barack Obama' advocates were out in the digital world, fevently regurgitating the rhetoric they heard from Fox News and Sean Hannity.

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I opened Pandora's Box.

It only took one peek into one group

before I started messaging people that had posted particularly

malevolent and/or ill conceived comments. One person wrote, at length,

that if Senator Obama

were to be elected president, we would have our first Arab-American

president, not Black. They went on to give detail about the senator's

heritage and how 'Baracka' and 'Hussein' are Arabic words. My message

was respectful, but my tongue is sore from repeated biting. I informed

her that she was partly right on the Arabic origins of his name, but

completely wrong on his heritage. Courteously, like a teacher might

explain, I detailingly informed the individual that Senator Obama's

father was from Kenya and the national language

of that country is Swahili. Swahili is a very unique language in that

it has shared trading routes with Arab speaking communities for

centuries. Through language borrowing, Swahili

borrowed many words from Arabic for things the people of Swahili

speaking countries did not have. In all, approximately 50% of Swahili

is borrowed Arabic words, but the borrowings abide to Swahili grammar,

not Arabic.

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I then told her that an 'Arab' is defined as someone with Arabic as

their first language and being from a nation with Arabic as its official

language. It has nothing--nothing--to do with Islam, or being Muslim.

This confusion surprises me. It's no different than assuming that

Americans are evangelical. Furthermore, I reminded her that a name is

hardly relevant to a candidates ability to preside. If anything, it

highlights racist undertones.

So, my call is to you, the reader. Stop these people by being the

voice needed. And if you do so, don't insult them. Resist calling them

names. That is typically their game and we can be better than that.

Inform the world with polite smiles throughout and their anger will

only reveal their vulnerability.

Please contact these people and let them know where they are wrong.

Provide them with links to websites where they can find referenced

data. It is all our responsibility to run this nation. It has never

just been up to one man. The current turmoil rests on the shoulders of

the world.

The cited website of the Facebook user: http://www.arcadeathome.com/newsboy.phtml?Barack_Hussein_Obama_-_Arab-American,_only_6.25%_African

The address of the Facebook group (there are several): http://www.new.facebook.com/wall.php?id=2363253979&page=1&hash=0d5b5843b61991893f2903ccd281f79c