Posted on 12/13/2008 12:52:33 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
A perplexing new chapter is unfolding in Barack Obama's racial saga: Many people insist that "the first black president" is actually not black.
Debate over whether to call this son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan biracial, African-American, mixed-race, half-and-half, multiracial or, in Obama's own words, a "mutt" has reached a crescendo since Obama's election shattered assumptions about race.
Obama has said, "I identify as African-American that's how I'm treated and that's how I'm viewed. I'm proud of it." In other words, the world gave Obama no choice but to be black, and he was happy to oblige.
But the world has changed since the young Obama found his place in it.
Intermarriage and the decline of racism are dissolving ancient definitions. The candidate Obama, in achieving what many thought impossible, was treated differently from previous black generations. And many white and mixed-race people now view President-elect Obama as something other than black.
So what now for racial categories born of a time when those from far-off lands were property rather than people, or enemy instead of family?
"They're falling apart," said Marty Favor, a Dartmouth professor of African and African-American studies and author of the book "Authentic Blackness."
"In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois said the question of the 20th century is the question of the color line, which is a simplistic black-white thing," said Favor, who is biracial. "This is the moment in the 21st century when we're stepping across that."
Rebecca Walker, a 38-year-old writer with light brown skin who is of Russian, African, Irish, Scottish and Native American descent, said she used to identify herself as "human," which upset people of all backgrounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at wibw.com ...
“Lets ask Tiger Woods what race 0bama is. That would be entertaining.”
Tiger Woods says ‘multiracial’:
http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=3695226
And, Obama is not a descendant of a slave. In fact it has been said his tribe actually captured other Africans and sold them into slavery.
Race schmace!!
I’m afraid of two things: his mentality (or lack thereof), and his philosophy (or lack thereof).
There are plenty of african-americans who I’d vote for.
The Obamaloon is not one of them.
Jeez how could I forget?
Congressional districts are drawn to guarantee that a racial minority candidate will win a seat in the US House of Representatives.
There is just no way that racial politics is ever going away. There is too much at stake for those whos wealth and power depends on its continued existence.
I think there should be a new category: "U.S. Octavian." To qualify, all eight of one's great-grandparents would be born in the United States. Although some of my forebearers were Native Americans and some arrived in the 1600s, I would not qualify on all eight; but my offspring would.
Naah, you ain't Black! You be the Oreo Metro Woosie with big ugly flip flops!
Mix them together and they make brown.
Whose is your Daddy!
Let’s discuss his citizenship instead.
That’s far more important.
I don't know how accurate your remark is, but I certainly don't think we should be attempting to determine racial identity by standards that would have been applied by NAZIs or by the KKK.
He be Marxist-American.
He grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii. What do you think it meant to be "a black man" in those places? I say precious little. In prep school he became a hothouse afffirmative action orchid and started to get "treated like a black man" for the first time, with preferential admission to prestigious colleges.
From blacks or whites?
I say if it’s “Mutt” he wants, then Mutt he gets.
Baraq the Mutt.
Kinda rolls of the tongue, wouldn’t you say?
Good of you to selectively quote my comment. I said, “I little doubt he’s been treated as a black man all his life - for all the good and bad that implies.” In other words, it was probably an advantage at least as often as it was a disadvantage. I’m just saying that because the average person he encountered in life probably perceived him as black, I can understand that that’s how he’d see himself. Everything else is just hair-splitting.
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