Because Monika is from Sweden, she told CNN that she had not seen many black children or babies before, which was why she particularly remembers seeing this black baby in the nursery. When President Obama became a candidate in 2008, Monika noticed his birth date and hospital in an article and remembered that day in the nursery. She believes that baby she spotted was indeed President Obama. ###
As of the 2010 U.S. Census, there were 1,360,301 people living in Hawaii. Of those people, 24.7% were Caucasian, 14.5% were of Filipino descent, 13.6% were of Japanese descent, 8.9% were of Hispanic or Latino descent, 5.9% were of Hawaiian descent and 4.0% were of Chinese descent. Interestingly, 23.6% of the population identified themselves as belonging to two or more races, up 2% from the 2000 census. Of those people who identify themselves as belonging totally of one race alone or in combination with one or more other races, 57.4% are in whole or partially Asian, 41.5% in whole or partially Caucasian and 26.2% in whole or partially Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander.
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Needless to say, if she saw a coloured child on that day, it might have been any combination of the above...a polynesian/pacific islander offspring for example. I know the stats quoted above are recent, but a similar situation would have existed in 1961.
Her recollection is imo worthless.
Her recollection is imo worthless.
Monika Danielson is one account. You can dismiss it if you want, but it sounded perfectly credible to me.
Cindy Pratt, the furniture store owner's daughter, was also there at the time. According to Maraniss, she called the birth of little Barry "a scandal and a half". "Mostly in those days anything interracial was frowned upon. I remember we were all shocked. Today it wouldn't be anything. In those days it was kind of kept quiet or whatever." Maraniss continues, "For Stan to imply that the little boy was native Hawaiian was mostly an inside joke, but also a way to protect the family, even in Hawaii, where there were more interracial marriages than in any other state."
In view of that, it shouldn't be so surprising that Monika Danielson noticed one baby out of the ordinary in the hospital nursery out of the ordinary even for Hawaii in 1961. After all, most of the babies would have been asian-asian, white-asian, or white-white. But there was one who was white-anthracite-black!
That is all quite interesting, given the positive reception the U of H's first African foreign student allegedly received. The locals were
immediately taken by the one and only African student in their midst. "He was very black, probably the blackest person I've ever met," recalled [Pake] Zane, a Chinese-Hawaiian, who now runs an antiques shop a few miles from the university."Handsome in his own way," Zane said. "But the most impressive thing was his voice. His voice and his inflection -- he had this Oxford accent. You heard a little Kenyan English, but more this British accent with this really deep, mellow voice that just resounded. If he said something in the room and the room was not real noisy, everybody stopped and turned around. I mean he just had this wonderful, wonderful voice. He was charismatic as a speaker."
For him, Anarchist Annie was a push-over.
Good to see ya scrumming it up around these parts mate. Fair dinkum indeed.