Obama, so quietly that the president asked him to speak again. “I want to know if my hair is just like yours,” he told Mr. The White House photographer, Pete Souza, was surprised, too, as the photo’s awkward composition attests: The parents’ heads are cut off Jacob’s arm obscures his face and his older brother, Isaac, is blurry. In interviews, he and his wife, Roseane, said they did not know what the boys would ask. When the pictures were taken and the family was about to leave, Mr. Philadelphia asked for a family photograph with Mr. Three years ago this month, his father, Carlton, a former Marine, was leaving the White House staff after a two-year stint on the National Security Council that began in the Bush administration. The boy in the picture is Jacob Philadelphia of Columbia, Md. As skittish as White House aides often are in discussing race, they also clearly revel in the power of their boss’s example. Obama remains a potent symbol for blacks, with a deep reservoir of support. Yet the photo is tangible evidence of what polls also show: Mr. Obama for not directly addressing young blacks or proposing policies specifically for them. Obama has avoided discussing race except in rare instances when he seemed to have little choice - responding to the racially incendiary words of his former pastor, for example, or to the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Florida. The image has struck so many White House aides and visitors that by popular demand it stays put while others come and go.Īs a candidate and as president, Mr. Obama looks to be bowing to a sharply dressed 5-year-old black boy, who stands erect beside the Oval Office desk, his arm raised to touch the president’s hair - to see if it feels like his. But one picture of President Obama remains after three years. WASHINGTON - For decades at the White House, photographs of the president at work and at play have hung throughout the West Wing, and each print soon gives way to a more recent shot.
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