Obama is not black, he is brown, as most American "blacks" are. I've worked with black sub-saharan Africans, and they are jet black. A black you just don't see in America.
My daughter has apparently got a bit of coloring from a great grandmother who was Cherokee. She is darker in complexion than one of her friends who's father is Puerto Rican. Guess which one will be considered a minority.
As justice Roberts said, if we desire that people stop being discriminated against by race, we should stop discriminating by race.
Or maybe burnt sienna, or raw umber. What difference does it make what precise shade he is? The fact is that strangers perceive him as "not white." He grew up with that and knows what it feels like to be treated like a black person. I'm not saying that he's not capitalizing on his skin color. I'm just saying that in terms of his life experience, he's a black man.