Iknow I’ll receive a LOT of backlash for discussing or even holding this view but…
Race has traditionally always been a strong tie to culture and a big issue in human societies. Darker people have been discriminated and treated as sub human by European colonists. Even among them, divisions were created between their complexion. The fairer ones were perceived to be mixed with Europeans and had more opportunities whiles the dark natives were perceived as poor.
This class system continued into the US. Darker skinned African Americans were kept as field slaves and lighter skinned ones were allowed to work in houses. Fast forward after slavery and we still have a class system among non whites.
For all those who dismiss this as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘racist’ keep in mind other cultures place a high value on social acceptance. The difference between a shade of color, tribe, gender can mean access to basic services. Oppressed minorities in poverty are very prone to a life of crime and find it difficult to succeed in life.
I just don’t understand why someone would get out of poverty only to endow their children with the very same circumstances that got them their in the first place.
If your premise is that by marrying a black woman he* de facto* reduced his kids’ chances for success, then look at the evidence in front of you. On what planet would the children of a US President and a professional mother not have every advantage? Their chance for success is extraordinarily high.
So, no. He didn’t lessen his kids’ chances for success.
It isn’t like Obama had such a bad background and was having to hand his babies over to someone to smuggle out of the country and have a fair shot at life.
I am assuming he was president of the law review at Harvard before getting married. That pretty much assured he wasn’t going to be raising his kids up in poverty.
I would argue even if you want to assume that racism is still so bad that it would have made a material difference in the outcome of his kids life - that the opposite is true. It cuts both ways.
I know from every standup comic that has ever addressed the topic that some black women don’t like it when black men date white women. I think one could argue that Obama would not have gotten the percentage of the female black vote that he did if he was married to a white woman. I’d also argue that there would be whites that would have been more uncomfortable with him as a person if they saw he was married to a white woman.
His image was a lot in why he won. While it is totally possible that he would have had an equally compelling story with a white woman he fell in love with - it’s hard to imagine it being that much better than it already was.
I think you would have gotten more serious answers if you left off the following from the end of your post
You really think can’t understand why Obama might just want to marry someone he loved vs trying to appease society by making his kids - what 75% white?!
He didn’t go back into poverty by marrying Michelle - nor was he ever at risk for it - and again - I’m not looking this up, but my guess is she probably made more than he did for at least a portion of their marriage pre senate.
But that gets diluted with additional generations, with more and more disadvantaged and marginalized descendants who face life stereotyped as minority and marry minority spouses,.
“Almost certainly” is less certain than what it would have been with a white grandmother., or a more favorable opportunity to be descended from other white spouses.
Honestly I think that you’re saying this from the perspective that he’s the president, and if he married a white woman he would NEVER be president because America wouldn’t like that.
Yuck. Part of the answer is that in matters of the heart, people usually look at each other as individuals instead of demographics. So aside from the uncomfortable wording, you’re not going to get a sensible answer if you ask the question this way. People don’t have children with a racial group; they have children with another person. (Also there’s the “who gives a shit?” question.) And I don’t think either of the Obamas came from poverty. Even if they had, Michelle Obama has a degree from Princeton and a JD from Harvard and she had a job at a prestigious law firm when they met. He had a similar CV. That kind of background is going to give your children a far, far better chance of success than the average person of any race.
Seriously!?
So you’re acknowledging that a man of mixed race has succeeded in overcoming the barriers of racial prejudice to make great achievements and gain great status, but still think he should make sure his kids are whiter than himself?
Heck, if you think that way, Barry should have just adopted the whitest kids he could find. Don’t want to pass on any disadvantages to them now, do we!?
You know, a wise and hopeful man once said: “I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. ”
He then went on to say “And I pray to god they don’t have to live in a world where people have fucked up ideas about breeding out races that they deem to be inferior.”
Being black is not some “circumstance” that makes people poor. You’re confusing demographics with causation. Changing the demographic characteristics of minorities (rich black kids like the Obamas) will do more to improve the situation than trying to get black men to marry white women.
Sasha and Malia have an extremely low chance of ever being impoverished. Even if their father wasn’t the POTUS, this would be the case.
Moreover, no one uses Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” as a how-to book on falling in love. People are attractive to who they find attractive. They love who they love.
This is assuming an awful lot of things that don’t seem to be necessary.
And here’s another way to look at it – one of the best predictors of success in life is whether one comes from a loving and stable home life. By marrying an educated, stable woman whom he loves (and who loves him), Obama was making this loving/stable home life much more likely. If he had rejected Michelle, he might be less likely to have a loving and stable home life in which to raise children.
Therefore, it seems the wisest individual path is to marry a stable, educated person with whom love is shared, regardless of race, to maximize the chances of having a loving and stable home life in which to raise children.
Then why were AA’s were segregated after slavery. I don’t think it was because they refused to assimilate as much as the government decided to deny them education on the basis of their skin color.
The Irish were in just as much a poverty as AA’s when they came to America; however their skin color and their close culture to the English enabled them to assimilte in a few decades.
African Americans were segregated after slavery in the U.S. because the white people in power (and perhaps the poor white people as well) wanted them to be held down politically and economically. Are you advocating for increased intermarriage to blur the distinction between races and achieve homogenized bliss? Perhaps we’re heading that way, but in the meantime, I would say African Americans are pretty well “assimilated” these days, despite darker skin tones. Back to your original question, it makes absolutely no sense to propose that the Obama daughters would be better off with a white mother than with Mrs. Obama as their mother. In fact, I can’t really understand the argument.
Because of horrible racism, which some people were willing to kill for and others (up to the government level) were willing to go to all sorts of lengths to enforce and perpetuate.
No, it’s not because they refused to assimilate. I think what Procrustus is saying is that being black doesn’t make you poor by itself. Black people are more likely to be poor than white people are, but you can’t just separate from other factors that are also related to poverty. That’s sort of the problem with the original question you asked: you can’t just divorce race from other things and say ‘the Obamas are black, so they have X likelihood of being poor, but if Barack Obama had married a white woman, their child would have Y likelihood of being poor.’ It doesn’t make sense.
They were poor and discriminated against, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t slaves.