Kimberly McClain DaCosta, BBC News, November 18, 2008
For some of us, the heralding of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States seems a rather uncontroversial claim.
Obama isn’t black. ‘Black,’ in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves
Not so for others. One well-known African American writer, Debra Dickerson, famously objected that Obama is not of the people properly defined as “black” on the grounds that because he is not descended from slaves.
Ergo, he is not black—at all.
The bulk of the people protesting against references to Obama as a black man, however, grant that he is “part” black (by way of his father), but assert that because he also has a white mother it is not “accurate” to call him black.
He is “in fact” mixed-race, they say.
Opposing arguments
My first reaction to questions about the “correctness” or “accuracy” of Obama’s racial classification is to undermine the premise of the question itself. The search for the “correctness” of racial identity presumes that a definitive answer can be found.
It presumes that race is a real entity, something fixed, or natural. It seems to deny what scholars have laboured for decades to demonstrate—that the criteria used to classify people in racial categories, the categories used in a given society, and the uses to which those categories are put—vary by place and time. They are, as academics are fond of saying, “socially constructed”.
Yet the predilections of the scholar fail to satisfy those who claim to know what race Obama “is”, for these are really statements about what the speaker thinks he ought to be.
When people insist that Obama “is” black, they point to his self-identification as such, and the assertion that when most people look at him, they see a black man.
Calling him “black” seems to acknowledge the connection between his rise and the struggles of a people.
When others argue that Obama “is” mixed-race, they point to the fact that he has a white mother, not only a black father, and was raised in an interracial family.
Calling him “mixed-race” seems to acknowledge that family, offering a corrective to centuries of denying our tangled genealogies.
De-stigmatisation
What I find most interesting about the question of what racial label to assign Obama, is that we are asking the question at all.
As recently as 20 years ago, the question of Obama’s racial position would be presumed settled before it was even asked.
In keeping with the one-drop rule—the practice of categorising as black anyone with any known African ancestry—Obama’s identification as a black person would be expected, accepted and unremarkable.
The person suggesting that Obama be classified as mixed-race would quite likely have been met with suspicion or a confused look (“What’s that?”) since for most of US history, in most places, mixed-race identity has not been collectively recognised.
In the last 20 years, however, the collective efforts of mixed-race people in the US to de-stigmatise interracial families and garner public recognition of mixed race identity have been fairly successful (for example, the US government now enumerates mixed race identities).
Stares
Even so, the question whether Obama is black or mixed-race reflects a basic misunderstanding of the experience of those of us who have grown up in interracial families, particularly those of us of African descent, born in the post-Civil Rights period.
We (I have an African American father and an Irish American mother) were raised on the front lines of racial change, where the new rules about interracial intimacy often clashed with the old—both in public and in our own families.
The affection we were so comfortable showing our white mothers at home drew stares, and worse, from both whites and blacks in public.
It was in our families where we first felt love and protection as well as the first sting of racial prejudice.
And many of us forged a black identity, one that was not at odds with being mixed-race, but arose out of our experiences as mixed people: from an awareness that the racial dilemma we were born into has its deepest roots in anti-black prejudice.
For us, being black and mixed-race are not mutually exclusive. We have learned to live with the contradictions.
Perhaps it’s time for everyone else to learn to live with them too.
Original article
(Posted on November 18, 2008)
Comments
Far from being a descendant of American black slaves, Barack H. Obama is a direct descendant of white slave owners. That said, if reparations come about, will he pay or get paid?
Please understand: I’m not criticizing AR in any way for running DD articles on this site. It is important that we be exposed to DD, after all, on the “Know Thine Enemy” principle. I merely wanted to point out how BORING AND UNNECESSARY op-eds like this one really are.
And how news org’s like the BBC really ought to find something better, livelier, and more RELEVANT to publish than such DD thumbsuckers as the above.
No, race is not “socially constructed.” It is scientifically provable, through DNA and a number of other tests that show consistent differences ON AVERAGE among the races. If, as people like this writer maintain, there is “no such thing as race,” then why do they turn right around and talk about “mixed-race people”?
Yes, mixing races — “miscegenation,” as it used to routinely be called — tends to blur the differences. But that isn’t any more surprising than the fact that dumping some cream into black coffee makes it turn a lighter color. Just because the differences are blurred, it doesn’t mean they disappear. And it doesn’t mean they weren’t there in the first place.
What every white person who race mix fails to understand is that African genes are the strongest genes on the planet and their genes are more recessive. So the child will look more like the black parent and will be identified as black. Basically they are giving up their own heritage and can have no claim to the child. Its so amusing when the white parent gets upset because someone calls their child black instead of biracial. I do it all the time to piss them off.
Seriously now… does any of this kind of thinking actually make SENSE? If you’re dark-skinned. If you’re a descendant of dark-skinned Africans… those self-same people seen as the progenitors of what would become slaves in the New World. . ; YOU ARE BLACK! That argument detailed in the above article is little more than gibberish.
Obama is “Black” due to “one drop rule”. But is not “Black” in etnic sense. He don´t belong to the cultural tradiction of “American Blacks”. He was raised by Whites. His father is African. He simply “look” Black-American, because most of them show some degree of admixture. In Black Africa is simply a mixed-race.
Comrade McClain observes:
“And many of us forged a black identity, one that was not at odds with being mixed-race, but arose out of our experiences as mixed people: from an awareness that the racial dilemma we were born into has its deepest roots in anti-black prejudice.”
Ah yes, another confused mulatto attempting to define one of her equally mixed-up brethren in terms of the benefits of a deranged Marxist construct, that allows them an out for being only half white and thus not part of the “racist” dynamic, that the white side of their families perpetuated by not being of an equally tainted background from an earlier time.
How odd, that they can admit that on a personal or public level, both blacks and whites openly registered: shock, disgust, and even hostility toward the abnormal unions that produced them, but it is only the larger white society that is condemned?
I think it all stems from not the “reality” of “white privilege” or “racism,” but from a deeply held animosity that is directed at the whites in the “family,” for being what they most deeply desire to be themselves, white. Particularly, I think that when the union is between a nonwhite father and some mindless white whore (like those of Comrades Obama and McClain) these feelings are quadrupled, since somewhere deep inside they know that “mother” selected an inferior mate, and subsequently a utterly worthless father for them. Just look for example, at how astonishingly dedicated Comrade Obama’s father was to his son’s upbringing; or for that matter, his whole family back in Kenya. Think of all that they contributed to him, for all of his life and to what he is now.
And now think even more deeply about how not just his father’s immediate family, but the whole “extended family” that is Kenya, and even more broadly Africa, hopes to “enhance” his successes now?
Yep, making political “statements” and a ride on the gravy train that I was going to build for them in the future, is all that my parents were after when they had me. They made a point of this by having so little to do with me once I was born, that I had to be raised by my grandparents on my mother’s side only and the next door neighbors.
As always, God help us all!
It presumes that race is a real entity, something fixed, or natural. It seems to deny what scholars have laboured for decades to demonstrate—that the criteria used to classify people in racial categories, the categories used in a given society, and the uses to which those categories are put—vary by place and time. They are, as academics are fond of saying, “socially constructed”.
Yes, and the colors of the spectrum can be defined and classified in different ways. That doesn’t mean that the colors of the spectrum don’t exist, or are merely “socially constructed.”
“Obama isn’t black. ‘Black,’ in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves”
Stop defining our reality. Black is West African, East African, Carribbean, Afro-Latin, mixed, well you get the general idea. This piece is trying to change our perceptions of Obama. Despite what the media tells you the majority of the nation is not euphoric over his election win. The Whites who put him in office voted for an affirmative action quota. The media would have you believe you voted for a White guy.
Black is black no matter how you slice it. There’s a woman at my place of employment that has White skin and straight hair but I can look at her facial features and body type and distinguish the fact she has some black DNA in her. The one drop rule makes alot of sense. Black genes are so strong I don’t even know if it’s possible they can be washed out even after ten generations. These people, from what I’ve seen are not the most productive people in society. I’m not saying this out of racism but out of love for mankind and civilization. Race mixing and high nonwhite births are causing civilization to regress not progress. The planet is literally fading into the Dark Ages and people aren’t making the connection. At some point we’ll start losing our technological capability and understanding of the sciences.
I do the same thing “biology”. I remember when I worked at the Post Office and a White co-worker brought pictures of her “bi-racial” children to work. All the spineless Whites were saying how cute they were and how “they look JUST like you”. I could’nt take it anymore and said “they don’t look anything like her, they’re BLACK, she’s WHITE”! The looks on their faces were priceless!!! I get the biggest rush cracking the faces of these “progessive” White people and do it any time I have a chance.
Typical non-white example of symbolism over substance. First of all, no one considers the designation “black” to only apply to descendents of slaves. That may loosely apply to the silly latter-day term “African-American,” but “black” simply means…well, black!
Race is an obsession for all blacks in the western world. Tell any American black that race doesn’t really exist and is but a “social construct” and they will laugh in your face. Only “enlightened” academics and modern whites buy into such utter nonsense.
Obama is in fact mixed race, or mulatto, 1/2 Kenyan (why “African?? we know where his dad came from!!) and 1/2 white US American.
Period.
It could be useful having a mixed race president in a country divided by race - all the rancor here at AMREN suggests that very strongly.
Meanwhile, he is like the rest of the US African American elite:
most are at least 50% white, many are octaroons, and they have more in common with their white colleagues than with the majority of blacks, who are not competitive in US society.
Whites should be looking to them to broker the compromise that will make life tolerable in the US again:
limited immigration (great for blacks!), merit not quotas, no forced integration, no compromise on crime, help for people who need it.
Decent but frugal public housing, not fake mortgages.
socalled leftist europe has no race quotas, but generous social programs for people in need.
A much better model.
What this proves is once again, that blacks look at the color of skin and DNA more so than any other ethnic group. Haven’t whites been accused of this for years now? Is this not against what MLK believed and spoke about? That people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Of course, Obama’s character and who he chose to associate with are questions that most likely, now, will never be answered.
Botton line - he was black enough for 95% of the black population to vote for him and certainly black enough for the deep pockets of rich elitists who funded his campaign and propelled him into the White House. If they couldn’t find a black, decesdant from African slaves, they would most certainly settle for a half black man, with far left leanings, to further their own agenda.
What I care about the most is what favors does Comrade Obama owe to all those rich deep pocketed elitists? That should be the focus of Obama’s administration and not whether his ancestors were shipped here 400 years ago or whether his family owned captured slaves.
The African Kenyan father Obama is from a continent who have been in the slave trade business hock their own to the world for 1000s of yrs so he cannot escape it.
The author of this article is herself a tragic mulatta. Mulattoes, for obvious reasons, don’t want to be “black” or only black. Still, at the end of the day, most of them realize the only group that happily accepts them is other blacks, so they eventually end up identifying with blacks.
While I hate losing whites to race-mixing, most whites who mix are at the lower end of white society, so we actually benefit from these whites removing themselves from our gene pool. Blacks benefit, too, as the white genes of the mulatto spawn work they way through the black gene pool.
He’s black the most important place, at least for me, his mind. He makes it abundantly clear at every opportunity. Genetics aren’t everything, at least for me. Obama is proof of the power of social conditioning and where the social engineers have all gone wrong.
“…socalled leftist europe has no race quotas, but generous social programs for people in need.
Do you think those “generous social programs” are paid for with money conjured out of thin air? the leftist European governments STEAL IT from their productive citizens, and give it to those who haven’t earned it.
That’s right, they STEAL IT under the threat of force. As in, “Give us your money or we’ll kidnap you and put you in a prison.”
You’d best get used to that idea, because it’s coming to a neighborhood near you soon.
While I hate losing whites to race-mixing, most whites who mix are at the lower end of white society, so we actually benefit from these whites removing themselves from our gene pool. Blacks benefit, too, as the white genes of the mulatto spawn work they way through the black gene pool.
Posted by at 9:15 AM on November 19
I take your logic. So, don’t you think that White men of relatively higher status intermarrying with Oriental women is somehow the greater threat?
”(“What’s that?”) since for most of US history, in most places, mixed-race identity has not been collectively recognised.”
She’s obviously never been to Louisanna or even taken a winter vacation to one of the British Caribeean islands. Maybe she should spend a couple weeks in the black neighborhoods of Chicago and take a good look at the ivory pale to darkest brown complexions of the inhabitants.
What a load of total drivel. What is the point of this nonsense? He is mixed race and looks black. That makes him black. He certainly identifies with black. This moron should read Obama’s books where he goes on and on about how he rejects his Mother’s race and identifies with his black african father’s race.
And to think the British taxpayers have to pay for the BBC. If BBC had to survive on viewership like the rest of the channels, it would have gone bankrupt decades ago.
Churchill started the BBC back in the 1920’s. He learned enough about the Russian bolsheviks to understand that they planned to establish radio stations and other media outlets for commie propaganda with the long term view of conquering the rest of Europe and America.
Churchill thought that a British government controlled radio network would be able to with stand the commie influence.
But the commies just applied to work in the anti communist government network, BBC. As soon as one commie made it to the personnel department, the rest just poured in.
This article is typical of the utter nonsense written by lefty feminazis. They think they are so macho and professional. But their outpourings are just irrevelant, ignorant drivel.100 years ago Ladies Home Journal had more intelligent and revalent articles.
The man was elected President of the United States. What he does for the next 4 years is vastly more important to both America and the rest of the world than the exact shade of his skin.
“When others argue that Obama “is” mixed-race, they point to the fact that he has a white mother, not only a black father, and was raised in an interracial family.”
Obviously this ignorant fool has not read Obama’s books. He was not raised in an interrracial family, but by a white family, his mother’s.
So let me get this straight. The black, African who did not get captured and sold into slavery is not black, but his son who was sold into slavery IS BLACK?
Jeez, what drivel.
“How odd, that they can admit that on a personal or public level, both blacks and whites openly registered: shock, disgust, and even hostility toward the abnormal unions that produced them, but it is only the larger white society that is condemned?’
The real horror for mulatto children is the vicious hatred they encounter from BLACK,NOT WHITE CHILDREN AND BLACK, NOT WHITE TEACHERS at school when the blacks learn that their mothers are white.
Ward Connelly, Jennifer Beale, and Halle Berry’s white parents had to transfer them to white schools to escape the hostile cruel way the black children treated them at school.
But of course no matter where they go to school, they are subjected to the anti white propaganda of the commie public schools. “Your Mother is the epitome of evil because she is white.”
It can be quite a shock for a young child to go from a sheltered home with a loving white mother to a black school where his or her mother is hated by the other children because she is white.
Perhaps the fear expressed in this article is that even though Obama may have black skin, underneath it all he does not fall into the usual black-as-victim pigeonhole. So when he enters the White House he will not be beholden to the usual race hustling propaganda.
Tom S
Sir, I don’t see that anything is to be gained by your rubbing peoples noses into it. They’re fully aware of what they’re doing.
Tom Iron…
seems like everyone, because of the media is completely obsessed with race and blackness. thats all thats ever reported. i say disregard black, dont talk about race, dont acknowledge it, dont be bothered with it. stay completely away from blacks, dont make eye contact, dont say hi, dont speak, dont allow yourself to be drawn into conversations with them. complete and total indifference on the subject, and definitely no contact with them will make all of this go away. tell people this is 2008, not 1840. slavery and blackness is a non issue. dont let anyone show you any pictures of bi-racial children. qualify that up front before you look. when you see them in restaurants, dont even look at them. get that blank look on your face that cannot be penetrated. they dont exist.
“Is Barack Obama Black”
These questions about Obama are a moot point to me. They simply are superceeded by the fact that Obama is a racist. Can someone tell me how a person can attend a church for twenty years, where the preacher rants and raves about “evil white people” as part of the weekly sermons, and yet not be have a racist label attached to him. I assume his wife attended also. As I stated in another post, any white person running for the presidency who attended a similar church with a similar preacher who ranted about “the evils of black people” wouldn’t have made it to square on in his quest for the presidency. He would be dropped as a candidate so fast, most people woudn’t even remember him in a week. These are the facts that should spark questions about Obama—in my opinion. McCain was the ultimate buffoon for not bringing this up regularly. He really didn’t deserve to win, just on the amaturish way he ran his campaign. What kind of a President would he have made anyway?!
“I take your logic. So, don’t you think that White men of relatively higher status intermarrying with Oriental women is somehow the greater threat?
Posted by at 11:40 AM on November 19”
Who says they are? The great majority of them don’t seem to me to be very masculine, somewhat out of shape or dorky. I suspect if they had dated within their race they would end up with the kind of fat White low class trash women you see with black men. I guess they figured it was better to have a small petite Asian woman.
Is Obama black? It all depends on how you define “black”.
The point is that all humans are strictly speaking hybrids—being chromosomal mixtures of their parents(23 chromosomes each). This is nature’s way of ensuring that the orgnanism is more genetically equipped to survive in nature’s variable environments.
Scientifically speaking there is a single human species given that any 2 fertile individuals of different sexes can easily produce offspring. Different species arise when the organisms have separated over a long period of time and have evolved in organically different directions.
In the case of humans the phenotypical differences one observes are simply due to selective mechanisms that derive only partially from the environment. Phenotypical and average genetic differences may be due to “bottle necks”, assorted mating, or just sheer accident. For example, in the case of Africa one might want to consider the case of the very tall Dinka or Masai and that of the very short Twa(pejoratively referred to as “Pygmies”). Obviously these differences in height are just as important as differences in pigmentation or hair type.
Yet the scientifically innocent public would not argue that the Masai and the Twa are different races.
In the case of Obama. Were one to lay out his 25,000 genes end to end and do the same for his chromosomes how would he be classified. Obviously he would be seen as male and his genetic pattern would fit neatly into groups found in Africa such as the Touareg, North African Berber and some of the groups in West African nations such as Mauritania, Niger and Chad.
The fact that Obama’s mother would fit into some European group is really irrelevant for purely taxonomic purposes. After all, it was the well known geneticist Cavalli-Sforza who argued that Europeas were hybrids of Africans and Asians to the extent of a 40% to 60% mix.
But the reality is that the vast majority of individuals are ignorant of genetics and describe individuals on just a socially derived idea of “race”. In this regard Americans would simply view Obama as “black”. In European nations like France and Germany he would be immediately assumed to be North African.
“The man was elected President of the United States. What he does for the next 4 years is vastly more important to both America and the rest of the world than the exact shade of his skin.”
The whole point, to them, the most import of anything, is the shade of their skin(s). obsessed with it.
These are the facts that should spark questions about Obama—in my opinion. McCain was the ultimate buffoon for not bringing this up regularly. He really didn’t deserve to win, just on the amaturish way he ran his campaign.
Like most whites, McCain was fearful of appearing to be disrespectful or “insensitive” to our sacred minorities, and he was terrified of being called the R word.
Tom S: Sir, I don’t see that anything is to be gained by your rubbing peoples noses into it. They’re fully aware of what they’re doing.
Sorry, I have to agree with Tom S. And with “Biology” too.
But I don’t think they are getting “a rush” from embarassing the onlookers (as you seem to misunderstand). It’s not about the onlookers who are cooing over the mulatto baby. It’s about the mother who produced it. What they are doing is rubbing the white mothers’ noses in what they have done. Why give them encouragement and support??? Why make them feel good about it? They ought to feel ashamed. I don’t think you read Tom S. correctly.
“But the reality is that the vast majority of individuals are ignorant of genetics and describe individuals on just a socially derived idea of “race”. In this regard Americans would simply view Obama as “black”. In European nations like France and Germany he would be immediately assumed to be North African.”
You apparently don’t know anything about North Africans. I’ve been to Europe several times and the Berber or North African populations there by and large have White skin, caucasian features (some semitic) and some even have blonde hair. Jesse Jackson’s skin tone is a shade lighter than Obamas but no one would disagree that he wasn’t black.
4:37 PM
I have been to Morroco(30 million) and that’s a big sample of North Africans. I have also met Algerians, Libyans and Tunisians. I stand by my observation on Obama.
During the last U.S. election campaign Egyptians(population 82 million) were interviewed as to whom they liked for the next U.S. president. They said that they liked Obama because “he looks like us.
OCCAM your post sounds like the ravings of a black afrocentrist who thinks Africa is one big chocolate continent.
http://mathildasanthropologyblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/berberchildwh1.jpg
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/notmaddyDM2609_468x896.jpg
http://www.farsideafrica.com/pics/morocco/atlas/kasbah_toubkal2/large/berbers.jpg
“In Europe, AfricanAmericans are quite distinguishable from Africans, even at a distance, by physique, dress, and occasionally overall facial structure.
I can’t speak for Madrid, but in Paris I’ve noticed that they’re starting to blend all blacks together indiscriminately into “African-Americans”. They have African American beauty products, African American clothing styles, beauty parlors, shops, music, food, etc. It’s the blacks themselves who are doing this. They see themselves as all being part of one big African Diaspora.
Even from the wildly enthusiastic adulation that they give to Obama, it’s very clear that they see him as one of themselves.
Oh, incidentally, although American, I am often mistaken for a European by people who ask me for instructions etc. As long as I keep my mouth shut, they don’t know the difference.
“OCCAM your post sounds like the ravings of a black afrocentrist who thinks Africa is one big chocolate continent.”
I wouldn’t say he was totally wrong. A few pictures of very white Berbers are not representative of the majority of North Africans. Look at Anwar Sadat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_El_Sadat
It clearly states in the very article that you referred above that— “His father was Egyptian, and his mother was Sudanese.”
How would Obama be viewed by this nation if he looked as white as his mother?
I have been to Morroco(30 million) and that’s a big sample of North Africans. I have also met Algerians, Libyans and Tunisians. I stand by my observation on Obama.
During the last U.S. election campaign Egyptians(population 82 million) were interviewed as to whom they liked for the next U.S. president. They said that they liked Obama because “he looks like us.
Posted by OCCAM at 3:39 PM on November 21
I agree that Obama can pass for a North African as there are indeed many who have his look. In fact there is a Tunisian actor who starred in a movie with Denzel Washington about a terrorist attack in NYC (this was prior to 9/11) who looks strikingly like Obama. It should be noted that Obama’s African half is from East Africa, not West Africa, which also probably makes it easier for him to pass for North African since many East Africans actually have Arab ancestry and/or simply have facial features that are more “Caucasoid-like” than most West Africans.
I actually used to think that North Africans were largely just Mediterranean whites and not much else before I understood the full extent of the trans-Saharan slave trade and actually saw a larger sample of North Africans as opposed to the upper classes or a select few. There are many North Africans who do actually resemble southern Europeans or lighter-skinned Levantine Arabs (i.e. Palestinians, Lebanese, or Syrians), especially the coastal Berbers and people who are simply just Arab/Berber in ancestry. However, I’d also agree that a plurality have noticeable sub-Saharan admixture which distinguishes them from other Mediterranean populations.
It can be said that the North African Moors/Saracens of medieval times were to an extent a different group of people from the current inhabitants of North Africa. Few sub-Saharan Africans were present in North Africa during the 10th-14th centuries or so, after which the slave routes opened up. Over the course of centuries, the Arab and Berber men took many a black slave for a wife or concubine. Under Islamic law and Arab culture, the children born to such unions were regarded as free Arab Muslims. Consequently, they were absorbed into the North African population and altered the gene pool somewhat.
I don’t know which countries were most heavily affected by the trans-Saharan slave trade but Morocco and Egypt seem to be the prime candidates based on what I’ve read and what I’ve seen from the people.
