Exactly.
-XT
Sounds like you have some Scottish in there, too.
I wish…but in point of fact I happen to be listening to Fiery Cross atm on unabridged audio, so just tossing around some idioms from the book.
-XT
Like all things, it is complicated. He goes through a lot of it in “Dreams from my Father”, and while I’m not entirely at peace with his answers, I think he also is not entirely at peace with his answers.
The short version is that a chunk of your identity is formed when you are a teenager. And a black teenager and a white teenager walking into a corner store are going to get treated differently. This feeling is magnified if you go to a prep school in a place with a fairly established racial hierarchy that black people just don’t fit into at at. So he grew up being treated like a black man. And when you grow up being treated like a black man, you grow up to be a black man. Race isn’t your genes, it’s how other perceive you.
This kind of blossomed when he got to college, and discovered that being black meant something, and that there were lots of other people going through the same things he was going through.
Complicating this, of course, is that he grew up between many cultures and did not have a normal family life. His role was always kind of shifting and ambiguous. So when he did what anyone would do- he found the social role he’d most easily fit into and took it on. An ambiguous identity is a lot of work, and he had a lot of stuff he wanted to do.
Such as in the case of Homer Plessey, for example, who was picked as a plaintiff because he could “pass.”
But the fact is that they weren’t treated the same way that black slaves were, so your point–whatever it is–is completely moot and 100% sigh-worthy.
I think part of it is also due to the fact that “white” Europeans are more homogenous in appearance than “black” Africans. Africa has much more genetic diversity than the rest of the world, and correspondingly more variation in appearance, so it’s easier for a part black individual to be matched to some sub-category of “black” than to a sub-category of “white”. For example, to my admittedly non-expert eyes, Obama looks more like the average Bantu of southern Africa than he looks like a European of any flavour.
In the US, Canada and many other areas, there is of course the affect of the whole historical black or white, with no possible intermediate status, issue which continues to colour the common perception of individuals in the present.
This is circular reasoning. Answering “Why is Obama black?” with “because he looks black!” doesn’t address the true meat of the matter.
Obama looks black because he shows some African-associated phenotypes.
Why does merely showing African phenotypes make someone look black?
Because history made it that way.
Well, you know, if you can’t keep track of the discussion it’s not MY fault. And you are wrong. Your original assertion was:
Which is what I was responding to. And in fact, society DID allow ‘white’ people to be treated just like chattle slavery in some instances. Had you qualified your statement I would have been fine with that…but categorically? No, you are wrong. Europeans treated their serfs JUST like slaves for centuries. Last time I checked they were white. In the early days of America indentured servants were also treated JUST like slaves…they were forced to work, sometimes for life, without pay, were subjugated to beatings at the whims of their masters and could even be killed…just like black slaves.
By and large there is no doubt that blacks suffered the majority of the pain from slavery, especially here in the US…but to categorically state that ‘society would never allow ‘white’ people to be in chattle slavery’ is wrong.
Sigh all you want.
-XT
-XT
Gee, really? Man…glad you put that part in. I doubt anyone would have realized this but for your contribution! So…he’s black because he looks black, and he looks black because of history? Glad we cleared that up…
-XT
SIGH
-XT
Why does this question keep coming up?
For real, every time I hear a white person ask this, it makes me want to scream.
He’s black not just because of the one-drop rule…
Not just because he’s self-identified as such…
Not just because he looks like he’s of African descent…
but because there is ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, NOTHING wrong with being black!
Inherent in the question seems to be bemusement that a person would choose to identify with the dreaded negro.
Obama is black so he can claim victimization by the White Man.
But who speaks up for the White Man? Why can’t we claim victimization? To not be able to claim victimization is itself a dehumanizing form of victimization. It’s unfair as well, since this country was founded on the victimization of white men by even whiter white men, the English.
It’s the unfair stereotypes against us white men that really hurt. Nowadays it’s accepted that white men can’t jump, but we all love swimming, don’t we? I can’t tell you how many times I go to a party and somebody whispers under their breath “Oh, Scylla? Don’t worry about him. He’s a white guy. Give him an inner tube and a microbrew. That’ll keep him happy.”
In this whole Presidential race the white man has been marginalized and ignored. It’s all been about black men and white women (which I have to admit is kind of hot.) Meanwhile McCain, bleached whiter than white by the purifying Arizona Sun is largely ignored.
We’re losing our representation. We’re down to a mere token 389 White men in Congress, an historic low.
In the immortal words of Stephen Colbert (who I’m plagiarizing,) it doesn’t take much of a revisionist squint to see a pernicious pattern of white male oppression.
The 19th amendment cut the value of white men’s votes in Half!
Now Barack Obama is running for President and he further erode our tenuous grip on representation. I say we don’t take it!
I say we all converge on Washington the backs of our riding lawnmowers to demonstrate for our rights. The Million Man Mulch
(shamelessly paraphrased and plagiarized from stephen Colbert’s column in the August Esquire)
:dubious: So, you are you a trained psycho-analyst or do you just play one on TV?
-XT
I dunno, but it does seem to make a difference.
However, they could not be sold as property. They could not be kept in slavery based on perceived race. Their children could not be claimed as slaves, automatically. Even if the occasional holder of debt was able to turn a period of servitude into perpetual slavery for an individual, it was not a common occurrence anbd it was not enshrined in law.
Conceded Tom (though I think indentured servants contracts could in fact be sold, and I think serfs in Europe could also be sold with the land they were bound to). I was merely saying that “Society would have never allowed “white” people to be in chattle slavery” was not an absolute…not trying to say that what blacks went through in the new world was comparable to what whites did. I realize there is no comparison to what they endured…and still endure even today.
-XT
He was, correctly, not identified as culturally black with the same degree of authenticity as those that have slavery in their ancestry as is implicit in the term African American at first.
Then, when he noticed it would work, he started his intonations and speeches referencing slavery and evangelical manner to pimp the black vote.
He’s only as black as he needs to be. He already described his real race in his own book: he’s Rorschach-colored. Folks project what they want onto him.
And he pimps it.
In that, he’s an excellent politician. (As he has also said about himself when speaking to the Jewish community: “I’m a darn good politician!” What was that about hubris going before a fall?)
Well, I can’t tell you why it keeps coming up, because I have never been involved in a discussion on it before. I can just tell you why I asked it, and BTW, I am white of European and Jewish descent. I asked it because it would be just as easy to refer to Obama in the press as “of both African and American descent.” Somebody, either the press or Obama himself, finds it convenient or advantageous to brush with broad strokes. Tiger Woods is often labeled as the great African-American golfer (not necessarily by himself), when he is 1/4 African-American. He is also 1/4 Chinese and 1/4 Thai–why isn’t he the great Asian-American golfer? Or even better, why not just ignore his race altogether and talk about golf?
Now, I understand quite well that politics is not golf. Every voter wants to elect someone who will be a champion for their interests, and there may some thinking that an African-American candidate may be able to build greater credibility with African-American voters than another Old White Guy.
That is really completely beside the point. You are creating a strawman instead of looking at what I am actually asking.