It is being reported that Barack Obama's white mother's family once owned slaves. I fail to see any importance in that. I would guess that his African father's family owned slaves. It might be a good thing if black Americans were forced to consider the ugly truth that those who sold black Africans into slavery were other black Africans, not whites. And that slavery continues in Africa. And has Thomas Sowell has documented, that whites are the ones who stopped the slave trade, against the policies of Aficans and Arabs.