Subscribe
Why is Obama called "Black" and not "White"
Something is getting under my skin about racial references to Barack Obama. He is being called the “Black” candidate for President.
My question is: is he really black? Why is he called “Black” and not “White”?
He is as much his white mother’s offspring as he is the child of a man from Kenya.
Why one label over the other?
The heritage of racism I suppose.
Our former systems of slavery and segregation depended for their supposed moral legitimacy to a great extent on notions of racial essence – that there were such things as races with powerful and deeply embedded psychological drivers that conditioned those born to parents of the race.
The theory fell apart, of course, whenever there was a mixed racial marriage. One then needed a second theory about which parent’s racial drivers of character would trump the other’s genetic contribution to the offspring.
So in the United States of America , thanks in part to the pseudo-scientific writings of Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, we came up with what has been called the “one-drop rule” This rule held that one drop of “Black” blood in one’s ancestry was so powerful that the possessor of the “drop” was to be considered “Black” and not “White”, or “Indian”, or “Italian”, or “Chinese”, etc., etc., etc.
So by this racial calculus, Barack Obama is to be considered “Black”, not “White”. One half of his being is sacrificed to the other half. That to me is really sick.
Why can’t he be both? Why do we still need such racial pigeonholes with all the hurt and evil that they have done over the centuries?
Why can’t he just be an American?
Or simply, a person.
Mixed marriages have long been suspect – they muddy up the solidarity of in-groups and are resisted by defenders of group cultures and identities. Christians marrying Jews; Muslims with Hindus, Tutsis with Hutus, Japanese with Poles; Catholics with Lutherans, Germans with Norwegians, Chinese with Tamils – the list of suspect cross-cultural alliances goes on and on.
And of course, people from different backgrounds don’t look exactly like one side or the other.
But, in this country, to support segregation we had to develop rules on “passing”. A person who looked entirely Caucasian but who actually had some “Black” ancestry was not permitted to “pass” and take advantage of white privileges. Looks here were trumped by the “one” drop rule.
If by some chance Barack Obama had been born looking more Caucasian than he does, would he be any better or worse as a President?
Humanity needs to grow up in this regard and overcome its benighted history of deeply rooted tribalisms.
My take on this issue comes from my own marriage. When learning of my engagement, one grandmother commented “Two thousand years of WASP blood down the drain.”
My children inherit two different cultural traditions: one several hundred years old. The other 4,000 years old. So which are they?
Actually, neither. The facts of their parentage make them special and “none-of-the-above”. They are not American WASPs, though they take from those values and cultural patterns; not are they Vietnamese, though they have some Vietnamese aspects to their personalities.
They don’t fit traditional racist categories for thinking about people and neither does Barack Obama.
Fortunately our Census now recognizes the presence of culturally “multi-dimensional” citizens. You can mark yourself down on the Census as being of a rainbow genetic background if that is your situation and that is how you identify.
This, to me, is progress.
Now it is up to our media in this presidential campaign to strike a big blow for human freedom and find some why to talk about Barach Obama that doesn’t bow in fealty to old prejudices and misconceptions.
Comments
Obama
Such willifully ignorant naivete is something one reaonably expects from a child, not an alleged adult. The day self-congratulatory liberals and blatant bigots alike don’t look at Oboma and see his brown skin first, the way neither of them even notice they have white skin, then speak this driveling p.c.-babble, right alongside the self-deluded likes of Tiger Woods, about being culturally multi-dimensional. Whatever entrenched, institutionalized racism Obama either fought his way through or managed to skate his way around didn’t have a damn thing to do with his white half. In the event that Obama wins, the assassin’s scope won’t trained on his white half or however much of him is a democrat or anything else. It likely will be trained on his black skin. Whatever dues he has paid — despite his privileged station — he wouldn’t have ever thought about except for that skin he carries on his back. And it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with bowing in fealty to prejudice, misconception or anything else (your vocabulary is impressive, now if only you can learn to engage brain before operating mouth). It’s a common sense fact of life that Barach Obama is a black man. Whatever you may be — and I pray to God you’re not black, not even a half, a quarter, an eighth or any of those other ridiculous measurements Woods so indignantly cited — and why is it these measurement freaks always seem to have somebody white on their arm (‘cause they’re running from the fact that they’re black, that’s why) — anyway, I hope you’re not even a little bit black, because we already have too many of us who don’t recognize what they see in the mirror — whatever you may be, get over yourself and look real life straight in the eye.
dh
Dwight: I think you have
Dwight:
I think you have confirmed the point I was trying to make – we in the United States and I suppose most of humanity as well – make great consequences hang on external features of personal identity. My question as a consequence is: “Is that always wise and just?”
You tell us that the consequences are real and most of us, I think, know that. But should we leave it that way?
Black and white
I find it really fascinating to compare the United States’s attitude towards race with Australia, where anyone with an Aboriginal (there also called “black”) heritage who had even one Anglo ancestor was embraced as white. In Australia, there was a historical incentive to embrace as many people as white as possible to grow the population. In the United States, there was a historical economic incentive to categorize anyone with any African ancestry at all as black because it meant that other people could take advantage of their labor.
Alas, what this means today is that anyone with any visible signs of having African ancestry is treated by the larger society as though they are black, with all of the associated disadvantages (some advantages, but mostly disadvantages) that it accrues to them. Most of the African-American population in this country is in fact biracial. Just compare the skin tone of any African American to the skin tone of any African in the countries that slaves came from. While I admire the author’s commitment to a race-free future, black is nevertheless one of the salient categories that describes Barack Obama in the context of the United States’s racial landscape today.
Emily: Thank you for that
Emily:
Thank you for that fascinating observation about Australia and the “one drop rule” there. Your point makes our American racial tradition so much more arbitrary it seems to me.
As the mother of a child
As the mother of a child with one white parent and one black parent, it has come to my mind more than once the seeming inequity of her automatically being considered black by society. I will never think it’s ‘right’ or ‘fair’, but I’ve resigned myself to some degree of acceptance. On a good day, I’d like to think we have or at least are starting to as a society moving past the “single drop” doctrine, but still consider those who “look” remotely black as black above and beyond all else. Look at Halle Berry, Barack, Mariah Carey, and a host of others who aren’t immediately springing to mind, with white mothers who are never thought of as anything other than black. My beautiful daughter falls into the same fate.
Dear Anonymous: Yes. We
Dear Anonymous:
Yes.
We have several friends in the exact situation you describe. You are far from alone.
Fallacy of nationalism as well...
I became a genealogy nut a few years ago and traced ALL the branches of my family back to the first immigrants, and in some cases obtained extensive information from sources in Germany, Denmark and the Czech. Republic.
What’s interesting about Germany, for instance, is that it didn’t even exist as a unified nation until the 1870’s. On my Czech lineage, I learned that the ancient peoples of Bohemia were known as the Boii, probably a celtic tribe that may have intermarried with Slavs. England is a hodge-podge of Scandinavian, Germanic (Saxon), Celtic, probably Roman and other groups. The Norse Vikings from Sweden may have founded the (now Slavic) Rus (Russian) state. Large numbers of Germans also settled Russia.
I’ve come to conclude that there is no such thing as singular ethnic/national identity — and you wouldn’t want it anyway (interbreeding).
Paul: Your point is so
Paul:
Your point is so well-taken. I’ve long wondered over the psycho-social origins of the need for “purity” in ethnic consciousness. All over the world so-called races or nationality groups are most often amalgams of different peoples, cultures and traditions.
Post new comment