this article mentions he had to fully "embrace being african american" so he left his white girlfriend
Obama believed that he had a calling, Garrow writes, and in his case it was coupled with a heightened awareness that to pursue it he had to fully identify as African American.
Maranisss 2012 biography deftly describes Obamas conscious evolution from a multicultural, internationalist self-perception toward a distinctly African American one, and Garrow puts this transition into an explicitly political context. For black politicians in Chicago, he writes, a non-African-American spouse could be a liability. He cites the example of Richard H. Newhouse Jr., a legendary African American state senator in Illinois, who was married to a white woman and endured whispers that he talks black but sleeps white. And Carol Moseley Braun, who during the 1990s served Illinois as the first female African American U.S. senator and whose ex-husband was white, admitted that an interracial marriage really restricts your political options.
That really doesnt line up with him not loving his wife of several decades though
He just made a tough decision about who he wanted to be with, which many people do ---
If they drag you through the mud, it doesnt change whats in your blood