strange situation at the Barak Obama talk page Recently I added a single reliably sourced word African to the list of Barak Obama s mother s ethnic origins near the beginning of the Barak Obama article My basic point is that if the article mentions Obama s mother s single Scottish ancestor who was born 400 years ago as well as Obama s Irish and Swiss ancestry then there shouldn t be a problem with an equally brief mention of her African ancestry My one word addition to the article was first modified and then deleted so I opened a talk page here The discussion has taken a disturbing turn and seems to have hit a nerve of racial discomfort among some wikipedia editors In particular the suggestion to delete the entire list of ethnic origins as a way to avoid adding the word African strikes me as a potential public relations black eye for wikipedia which is why I am making this post here