Can Chicago Do Business With Obama?

Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page writes today:

"Now the Baltimore Sun reports that Obama's ancestors may have included slaveholders. Again, the Conventional Wisdom is turned on its head. Who knows? At this rate, Obama could be the first presidential candidate to owe reparations - to himself!"

In October, 2002 the Chicago City Council passed the Slavery Era Disclosure Ordinance. The Finance and Human Relations committees "passed an ordinance that requires any companies doing business with the city to give an account on whether or not they profited from slaves--or lose their contracts." Full article...

Chicago Alderhatter Dorothy Tillman is the one who proposed the ordinance. She said, "We want to know what was your role in slavery, what did you do, was your company built off the backs of slaves...If [businesses] answer wrong [sic], they can no longer do business with the city."

And what about Barack Obama's presidential campaign, a business that is being run out of Chicago? Obama's mother is white, and

According to the Guardian Unlimited (March 4, 2007):

"Obama's ancestors on his white mother's side appear to have been slave owners. William Reitwiesner, an amateur genealogical researcher, has....traced Obama's great-great-great-great-grandfather, George Washington Overall, and found that he owned two slaves in Kentucky: a 15-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man. He also found out that Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Duvall, also owned a pair of slaves listed in an 1850 census record. They were a 60-year-old man and a 58-year-old woman." Full article...

Obama's family - half of it, anyway - benefited from slave ownership. So a direct descendant of George Washington Overall, a man named Barack Obama, is now running for President. Could it not be argued that Obama's gained an unfair advantage for the family, thereby giving Obama an unfair advantage over other white kids? Or over other black kids? Or whomever? (Do you find this confusing too?)

Let's see if Dorothy Tillman and her Hats call the Obama campaign offices and demand to give an account on whether or not their principle product - and therefore themselves - have profited from slaves in any way. I know that the Obama campaign probably will not be a contractor to provide services to the City of Chicago.

But what if Obama becomes President? Wouldn't he then be contracted to provided services to all of us?