Obama's Race Discussed

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.

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.

“Because too many Americans have a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo of racial tension.”

I am not getting any financial benefit.

Probably because I’m part “Dumb Swede.” Half-cast. Swede is probably the smart side, too.

” Don't the anthropologists and geneticists say that we are all descended from “Lucy” and African hominid from several million years ago? They claim that Homo Sapiens Sapiens came out of Africa. Doesn't that make us ALL African-Americans?”

I’m not an anthropologist, so don’t count on me to either confirm or deny, but I think that it’s anything but settled who our distant cousins are, or from whence, exactly, they came. There remains, it seems, room for dispute. And, I think you’re talking apples and oranges if you try to make any close connections between “Lucy” and modern Man. If there be any connection at all, it is separated by more than 61 thousand intervening generations, and countless migrations out of, and back into, the continent.

If you’re suggesting that we all share a common humanity, then I’ll drink to that.

People can debate this all day and all night if they want to, but (gasp) I agree with Obama on this one. Whatever his ethnic breakdown, presence or absence of slave blood, etc., Barack Obama would appear black to most people who saw him walking down the street. I little doubt that he’s been treated as a black man all his life - for all the good and bad that implies. If he wants to call himself the first black president, I have no quarrel with that. It’s when he starts discussing healthcare that I have a problem....

That's basically my take on this too. Some sources say his father was 3/4ths Arab and 1/4th Black. It doesn't look like that from photos I've seen of him but then again genetics is a funny and inexact science at times. I know throughout history, Arab traders made it as far as South Africa, Zanzibar and of course Kenya. Obama does display an Arabic trait of being very maladroit, tall and thin if you will, much like the Arab Osama bin Ladin does. So basically if that is the case, Obama is half White, 3/8ths Arab and 1/8 Black, or if you use the old term of the South prior to the Civil War, an "octoroon." If I never saw him before and you showed me a picture of him, I would say, yes, he is Black. Many other people would say the same thing, so yes, in a defacto sense, he is our first "Black President." Many times, perception can be reality.

Myself, his color doesn't mean much to me as President. I still stand by my vote in the 2000 PA Presidential primaries where Alan Keyes would have been better than G.W. Bush and in 2006, I chose Lynn Swann for our governor.

My main problem with Obama is that he will take this country in a direction that I, many others here and elsewhere do not wish to go. Obama could be named Barry Harry Olgethorpe, a WASP, if he had the same political views I would still oppose him.

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