Kissin' Cousins?

The June 17 Book Review of the NY Times reviewed a book by Rachel L. Swarns entitled, AAMERCIAN TAPESTRY, The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama.  Surprise, surprise.  Mrs. Obama is decended from a white slave owner named Henry Wells Shields.  Of course the author wonders if the relationship was consensual, in other words was she raped.  Probably, but who knows, and here in 2012, who cares?  Rape or not, if the contact had not taken place, Michelle Obama would not exist today.  What did surprise, and even amuse me, was the reaction of the white decendants of Henry Wells Shields.  Some refused to meet with the author and/or give a DNA sample.  Some of them, like a Joan Tribble, agonize over the fact an ancestor owned slaves.  Why worry about something that happened 160 years ago, something which we, today, cannot change?  Mrs. Obama seems to have been neutral about this book; she didn't help, but she didn't hinder either.  An intelligent woman like Mrs. Obama would probably shrug off all this info anyway.  Who cares about a fourth cousin living in the suburbs of Atlanta?  My interest in ancestors is not because I have remarkable ones; I don't.  My husband's are a tad higher on the food chain.  What I do find interesting is when I look at The Kid and think about his great great grandparents, this is what comes to mind.  For two greats, we're talking about eight couples who never knew each other and would not have liked or approved of each other if they had met.  On my side - you would find Polish peasants, devout Catholics, subjects of Alexander III and a German baker and his wife (probably the bosses daughter) and Lutherans.  On my husbands' side - Mayflower and DAR types who returned to the Anglican church and a Presbyterian minister and his wife in Nova Scotia.  Yet they are all ancestors of one Nicholas Iain Francis aka The Kid.  In closing, when this book turns up on overstock, I'll buy it.  Right now, I'm not prepared to drop twenty eight bucks.