He's Black. Accept It.

[Contrapuntal]

@Alessan

Where I come from, Jewish is a race.

OK.

As for converts, they’re like adopted children - in that while they may not look like their siblings, they’re still equally family.

Are they the same race as the family? Are their children?

Anyway, the person who said it thought he was complimenting me.

Your response was entirely appropriate, IMO.

[Odesio]

@Some_FNG

Odesio- Ok, without taking Nzinga, seated to the woodshed, I feel that it is an important distinction because the phrase “first black president” completely negates and ignores the history of African democracy. If we’re supposed to look forward to a new era in positive American engagement with the rest of the world, and a rebirth of positive American ideals then why would we want to invalidate someone else’s history? Because that’s what that phrase means to me. It reads, to me (apparently alone), that we Americans are the only ones who write history.

I guess I just don’t feel the need to put a disclaimer on every statement in a thread about the United States. The fact that many refer to Obama as the first black president elect within the context of United States history does not invalidate other histories nor is it an attempt to do so.

So if this makes me a stupid twit, then so be it. I have been called worse and yet I thrive.

You’re pedantic but you’re not a stupid twit.

[Nzinga_Seated]

@Monstera_deliciosa

Are you serious!? I took my user name from my favorite houseplant! I couldn’t be any more cornball if I tried.

I thought your name meant delicious monster in spanish, so I was gonna ask you why you are embracing your spanish side over your proud beautiful black side.

[BrainGlutton]

@Nzinga_Seated

ETA: BG, I had to google Garrison Keillor.

Can’t get much cooler nor cornier!

[Zelkova]

@Derleth

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

<more nitpicking>
No, he’s the first black President of the United States of America.

There have been lots of black American presidents before him. This guy, for example.
<end nitpick>

The practice of referring to the whole landmass comprised of North and South America as America is bizarre to me and, from a cursory glance at how the name ‘America’ is used, is far from generally accepted. The people who insist that ‘America’ can only correctly refer to the whole, giant landmass are unclear on the concept of what defines correctness in language: It’s common usage, not prescriptions from on high, and common usage seems to strongly favor using America to refer to the single country with the full name ‘The United States of America’.

(That, and just saying ‘the U.S.’ could just as easily refer to the United States of Mexico. ;))

I thought **Not Really That Bright ** meant that because the Liberian President Joseph Jenkins Roberts was born in the United States and lived there until adulthood, he could–very technically–be considered a black American president as well.

[Jack_Batty]

@wmfellows

Oh come on now, it was pretty fucking bloody clear that was bloody damned short hand for First Black American President. Jesus Fucking Christ on a Damned Pole, some of you people taking tedious idiotic nitpicking to real heights. Yes, it does making you a stupid fucking tedious twit.

Same for the comment on Jodi’s comment, I mean bloody fucking hell, I think someone with some basic sense can bloody well read into her comment the proper caveats.

Sheesh. Who took a shit in your snack pack? He’s just making a point.

[elelle]

So delighted to have the First Black President of the US here!

And also, the first Black African rooted President, too. My husband works for an organization that supports reproductive healthcare clinics in Africa, and other Third World countries. It has really been a hard row to hoe under the Bush administration. It’s been amazing to see the e-mails of delight and hope, especially from the Nairobi office. Kenya declared an official state holiday due to Obama’s election. It’s so great to see how this excites and heartens people all over the world.

[Zoe]

What is the “black radical background” referred to in the OP?

I certainly consider the President-elect to be a black man if that is how he chooses to be referred to. That is how I think of him. It is only on those dag-blasted official government forms that I would indicate half black and half white.

FTR, I’m going to return to capitalizing references to the President and President-elect. That style has fallen out of favor, but I rather think that it is appropriate for this particular gentleman.

[Nzinga_Seated]

@Zoe

What is the “black radical background” referred to in the OP?

I wouldn’t have used the term ‘black radical’ in GD, because I have no desire to try to define this term. Suffice it to say that he has expressed views and followed those that expressed views that I find similar to certain people that I know that consider themselves, ‘black radicals’.

It is still strange to my ears that someone would say, ‘if that is how he preferred to be referred to…’ but I am done going over and over that.

He loves his white family, very much. He has expressed that, and I believe him, and think that is beautiful. So I hope no one thinks I am suggesting anything at all like that.

[fessie]

What I see in my white relatives is a tremendous fear that this black man is going to exact revenge on white America. I think that’s part of the “reinvention” of Obama, at least in Indiana.

Now, based on education, values, manners, money and success, the Obamas remind me of a few other black people I’ve met who were whiter than me. Which is insulting to black culture, I realize that, but it’s how I always thought of those co-workers; they’d succeeded at being “the white brand” much more than I had.

I appreciate the way the Obamas are reinventing “the black brand” for me, personally, as I watch them on TV. When Barack Obama speaks I hear the black preacher’s intonation combined with Andy Griffith’s careful word choices.

I don’t see any other black people in my daily life, really, just a few talky types on CNN and a handful of teenagers walking down the street. When we lived in Chicago it was much easier to remember how diverse America (black, white and brown) really is. One of the most interesting things I did there was work at a black shopping mall in a distant suburb. I’d see maybe 2 white people all day long. The first time I went there it was intimidating, but after a couple of hours I realized I was seeing just as wide a range of people as I would at any other mall in the Midwest.

[Heffalump_and_Roo]

@Nzinga_Seated

He has. When he was living, learning and loving on the hard streets of Chicago as a very young man, struggling to come to terms with his identity, no one was posting on boards that he was half black. He was just black. Period.

@Nzinga_Seated

Did you read the same book I read? *Married *into the black community?? No. He didn’t do that, BrainGlutton. He has been black all his life. He knew it. Toot knew it. All of his friends in Hawaii knew it. The idea of him marrying into a black family is outrageous.

This confuses me. Are you saying that Obama didn’t come to terms with his identity until he was 24 years old in Chicago? Don’t most people come to terms with their identity before then?

I would guess that when he was 24 years old in Chicago, no one was posting anything about him at all because he was unknown then. It’s only been in the past few years that he has become well-known.

Before the age of 18, Obama grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii. Those two places have a very different attitude about race relations than other places. If those two places shaped any of his attitudes about race, they may be different than people who grew up in say, Chicago. Does that make him any less black? I don’t even know what that means. (Wouldn’t that be measured by lineage or something?) I would guess, however, that differing expectations about race relations shapes what you believe about it.

[Onomatopoeia]

@Malthus

I apologize for the phrasing, then. Such was not my intention. I had heard that, as a general rule, any amount of Black ancestry made one “Black” in America for purposes of identity, but I’m quite willing to believe it isn’t true.

Does this then mean that a person with one White parent and one Black parent could be eithier Black or White, their choice? Will they be generally regarded by others as “Black” or “White” depending on which choice they make?

Take it from someone with a white and a black parent, we’re considered black. Also, one can consider him or herself anything if one finds comfort in delusion, but American society has other, not so open-minded, ideas.

[Shayna]

@Nzinga_Seated

Not black because he wasn’t descended from slaves?? This is a new twist on some craziness for real. A black man born and raised in the U.S. has to be descended from slaves to be black enough? That makes me have to say this

Get the fuck outta here. I have to say it straight out. I call bullshit on every one on this board that is acting all wide eyed talking about, “Why is Obama being called black”. I call bullshit. Accept that he is black.

You might have to cast your net a little wider than this board then.

Obama’s Black Problem: Part 1

. . .

While Democrats across the country fall over themselves just to touch the man, he is being eyed suspiciously **by the nation’s black leadership.
**
For the first time in history, America will have an African American seeking the world’s most powerful position – one who actually has a shot at winning, and you would think that black politicians, civil rights and religious leaders would be the loudest voices calling for him to run. But, no! We have folks playing coy, whispering behind the scenes, questioning his blackness, and in some cases, complete silence. This is nothing more than black-on-black hate at its best.

. . .

Obama: Enough with the ‘black enough’ talk

. . .

Obama’s blackness has come up plenty of times before. He’s often asked whether he’s “black enough” by the African American community and his stock response – the one he deftly delivered during the CNN-YouTube Democratic Presidential debate – has been to joke that folks never ask that question when he’s trying to catch a cab in New York.

. . . Obama then stepped onto the stage, answering his own question, and suggesting that perhaps the real issue is a basic mistrust **in black America of a black candidate.
**
“What it really does is really lay bare, I think, that we’re still locked in this notion that if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong,” he said, adding it’s the same sort of suspicion many blacks face when they attend a predominately white Ivy League institution.

And that’s when he issued this provocative challenge: Instead of asking Obama if he’s black enough, black journalists should dig deeper, and ask why there exists this mistrust in black America of a black man like Obama running for office?

. . .

[Nzinga_Seated]

@Shayna

You might have to cast your net a little wider than this board then.

Yeah. I got no problem with that. The media can kiss my ass with the bullshit they push concerning the black community. The black and white media, alike.

And I love Obama’s response in your cite…"…folks never ask that question when he’s trying to catch a cab in New York."

Indeed. This question is being asked now, by a bunch of bullshitters. Not by anyone that I know of in the black community, but hey…I can’t know them all, I guess. Perhaps it is a huge issue that has somehow escaped my notice.

[Shayna]

@Nzinga_Seated

Perhaps it is a huge issue that has somehow escaped my notice.

Sadly, I get the feeling from what I’ve read that it might be.

Redefining ‘black’
Obama’s candidacy spotlights the divide between native black culture and African immigrants.

. . .

Among African Americans, discussions about his racial identity typically vacillate between the ideologically charged options of “black” versus “not black enough” or between “black” and “black, but not like us.”

. . .

The complex history of black immigrant and African American interaction and distinction has been masked by a tendency in American politics to treat “black” and African American as interchangeable categories. It is further masked by an African American cultural politics that arrogates to itself the official word on racial matters. For black immigrants, African American culture can be as alien and as hostile as mainstream America.

. . .

But, from a black immigrant perspective, Obama’s run for the presidency carries the promise of spotlighting this “category crisis” at long last. There is the possibility of a conversation in which Africans in the U.S., along with other black immigrant groups, may emerge distinctly from the all-consuming category of “black.”

These issues have been present in scholarship and education for some time. Tensions between native and foreign-born blacks are rising in higher education because universities are reputedly using black immigrants, at the expense of the native-born, to diversify their student bodies. In this case, black immigrants are the primary beneficiaries of the blanket category of “black.”

. . .

But, from a black immigrant perspective, Obama’s run for the presidency carries the promise of spotlighting this “category crisis” at long last. There is the possibility of a conversation in which Africans in the U.S., along with other black immigrant groups, may emerge distinctly from the all-consuming category of “black.”

These issues have been present in scholarship and education for some time. Tensions between native and foreign-born blacks are rising in higher education because universities are reputedly using black immigrants, at the expense of the native-born, to diversify their student bodies. In this case, black immigrants are the primary beneficiaries of the blanket category of “black.”

Add to this a shifting academic terrain in which traditional black studies are threatened by increasingly popular courses and programs that have a diaspora or Africana slant and do not put African American history or experiences center stage. It’s now not uncommon to hear African American scholars and students complaining about the increasing presence of Caribbean and African blacks in black studies departments. Indeed, these kinds of tensions erupted at UC Berkeley two years ago and reflect the continuing struggle over the redefining of “black” in American life and thought.

As the numbers of black immigrants and their progeny grow to challenge the numerical supremacy of the native black minority, can a challenge to African Americans’ cultural dominance, racial assumptions and politics be far behind? Especially because black immigrants generally and increasingly differ from native-born African Americans in their views on race, racism and political affiliations. They also are less responsive to American racial traumas, which helps explain why some civil rights leaders are unsure of Obama’s loyalties to African American causes. Because his political “blackness” is independent of their sanction and emerges from outside their histories, it threatens their cultural and political authority.

. . .

Sounds like this guy’s book might be an interesting read, too.

[Chief_Pedant]

I don’t think it’s particularly argued that Mr Obama self-identifies as black or has adult exposure to black culture. Neither is it reasonable to argue that most Americans, including most American blacks, also identify him as black.

What is implied in the question “Is he black enough?” is this:

Given that he is half white genetically and was raised by non-blacks, is he representative enough of the black experience to be identified with them on a deeper level than that of an icon?

Some who question his “blackness” raise the issue out of sour grapes–jealousy?–perhaps. Some are petty bigots wanting to make sure those who idolize a hugely talented individual remember he represents their gene pool as well. Some are just curious why there would be such an overwhelming outpouring to embrace an individual as an icon when the individual’s personal experience was so atypical for the group.

[you_with_the_face]

@Chief_Pedant

Some are just curious why there would be such an overwhelming outpouring to embrace an individual as an icon when the individual’s personal experience was so atypical for the group.

Call me the crazy one, but Obama’s experience doesn’t strike me as being that atypical. Especially relative to any other well-educated black person, Obama is not off-the-charts unusual. So what he was raised by whites? That’s hardly a rare occurence given the non-rarity of interracial relationships and the non-rarity of single parenthood. Maybe back in the days of Different Strokes was such a phenomenon novel, but nowadays it’s common to see white women walking around with brown-skinned kids in tow.

But really, his childhood has little to do with his bio today. A Chicagoan, married with kids to a black woman, member of a black church, community activist background, with a casual familiarity with urban culture…how is any of this so atypical to the experiences of black people that his popularity should be a mystery?

[monstro]

As anyone who listens to the Tom Joyner Morning Show knows, Obama is a regular guest on the program. After listening to him and the rapport he has with Joyner and his co-hosts a few times, you understand that the guy is more than “black enough”.

The “He’s not black enough!” stuff is bullshit, and yes, I believe it was largely a media-hyped trope.

Does he have the typical “black” experience? No. But Dumbya doesn’t represent the typical “white” experience. Neither does McCain. That doesn’t stop white people from identifying with them and seeing them as one of “theirs”. Obama’s experience is more similar to most black people’s compared to previous politicians, including Bill Clinton’s. That matters a lot.

His political leanings help, of course, as does his partnership with a sista from the southside of Chicago. If Barack was an ultra-conservative married to a blonde-haired white woman and he self-identified as a white man with a tan, I don’t think he’d have much love from black folks. But then again, if Colin Powell (who’s a moderate Republican married to a black woman) ran for president, I don’t think black people would be questioning his blackness. He wouldn’t be as popular as Obama, but it would be because he wasn’t deemed “black enough”.

I think people–both white and black–have a stereotyped view of black lives. If we aren’t living in the ghetto, carrying out-of-wedlock babies on our hips, and flashing gold teeth, we are somehow “inauthentic”. Really, my blackness has been questioned more by white people than other black people. You ever want to make me angry? Say I’m not really “black”. Especially if you think you’re being complimentary.

[Terrifel]

@monstro

Does he have the typical “black” experience? No. But Dumbya doesn’t represent the typical “white” experience. Neither does McCain. That doesn’t stop white people from identifying with them and seeing them as one of “theirs”.

Actually, since you brought the subject up, I personally have no problem with revoking their white person status. Could we maybe trade one of them for O.J.?

[Shayna]

@monstro

I think people–both white and black–have a stereotyped view of black lives. If we aren’t living in the ghetto, carrying out-of-wedlock babies on our hips, and flashing gold teeth, we are somehow “inauthentic”. Really, my blackness has been questioned more by white people than other black people. You ever want to make me angry? Say I’m not really “black”. Especially if you think you’re being complimentary.

Like Alessan, I have also been told that I don’t “look” Jewish, apparently meant as a compliment as well, so believe me, I get the annoyance at having that kind of back-handed bullshit expressed to your face.

I also hope you don’t think I espouse the idea that Barack Obama isn’t “black enough” because I’ve posted a few links that seem to support the existence of that allegation, because, if I haven’t made it perfectly clear, I don’t.

But I also think some – some – of the anger directed at the people on this board is misplaced. The idea that Barack Obama might not be considered “black enough” didn’t originate here. And mostly what I see on this board is genuine people trying to figure out from whence that ridiculous claim came. Just as it does to you, to many of us, it comes across as an absurd allegation.

But there does seem to be some recent historic evidence that the concept of “black enough”, or a “different” kind of black experience, is out there and, perhaps, growing, especially with more and more immigration of blacks from other nations. I think it’s an interesting sociological phenomenon that might deserve further conversation. It’d be nice if we could find a way to do so without the knee-jerk anger, though. I don’t think any of us here have bad intentions just because we’re trying to understand something we can’t possibly have any experience with.