Well. for most liberals it's not who was a slave but who owned them. The black is usually assumed to have descended from a slave..... not have been descended from slave owners. But Obama could probably rightly claim that it was his white ancestry that was to blame and this would leave his black ancestry off the hook. Although foreign blacks have been shown to have used slaves in some foreign countries.

I wasn't trying to make a case for slave ownership versus having slave ancestry. Unless people are aware of their family history through acceptable proven records, there aren't many who had ancestors in the US before 1860 who can say with absolute certainty that there were no slaves or slave ownership in their history.

Many of my ancestors were Quakers, many of whom did not believe in slavery and did not own slaves. In my direct line, I have two families that may have held slaves. They were from the southern branch of my family. The remainder of my early ancestors were mainly northerners..... mostly from PA, NJ, DE and a few from MD. Maryland was the only state among them that held slaves.