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little mixed girl
Joined: 11 Jun 2003
Location: shin hyesung's bed~
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 Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:52 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
obama is 1/2 black.
call me when they elect the first black president. |
Little mixed girl,
I've always enjoyed and often learned something from your posts. This one puzzles me. On this forum, you have a unique insight that the rest of us don't. I am curious why some people don't think Obama is 'black enough'.
I know his dad was from Kenya and his mother is white. That means his father's family did not have the same experiences as American blacks. However, it seems to me that as Obama was growing up and living in America, he himself would have received the same treatment as other black Americans when he went into a 7-11 since the clerk would not have known his personal history.
I do not mean to challenge you. I am asking for your insights. |
i'm mixed, but not part indian (india), yet many indians think that i am indian.
i've had many people in the US ask me where i learned english, when i came to america, etc.
the indians in my area are pretty well-educated and pretty well-off, and probably because of that, the people around me expected me to fit into that too (as they assumed that i was indian).
with all that, does that mean that if i were elected president, that i could be the "first indian president"?
obviously not.
now, i'm sure you'll say "but obama does not have people mistaking him for a race which he's not mixed with".
my point is that just because you look a certain way, it doesn't mean you are that way.
i am not saying that he is not part-black, but i, as someone who identifies as mixed, would prefer that obama could be our first "mixed president" or first "multiracial president".
how does the back side outweigh the white side?
while some people may think of his running as progress, that he (and any other multiracial individual) is identified by only one part of what they are, says to me that people still have a long way to come when they think about race in america.
[edit]
if he is elected president, there will certainly be people that will praise him as the first black president. but at the same time, there will be people who wonder why a non-mixed black man couldn't have been president.
halle berry was called the first "back women" to win an oscar, but she's half-white too.
to many black people (and other minorities) this sends the message that if you are half-white, you can get ahead in society, but non-mixed minorities have limited opportunities.
there are is a lot of pressures that are put on half-white people in asian, black, and native american communities. (ie- the pressure to prove that you belong, etc)
anyways, to wrap up, the media would do well to call him a "multiracial candidate" than a "black candidate", imo.
| stillnotking wrote: |
| How many black Americans don't have white people in their ancestry, somewhere? |
and how many whites are there that don't have some black in their ancestry?
i don't get how people seem to think that all...ALL black people in the US are mixed in some way, but whites have some how avoided this.
oh wait, every white person has a great-great-great native american cherokee grandma.
but not a black one.
except hilary clinton. |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:28 am Post subject: |
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That was pretty well-said, little mixed girl.
Nice one. |
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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:39 am Post subject: |
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I take your point, LMG, but the fact is that half-black Americans have always been considered "black", both by themselves and by society. It is a genuine milestone to elect a man who self-identifies as "black" to the Presidency.
Racial arguments never take place in a vacuum. Of course it's not fair to say that Obama is black instead of white, but that's the way it is. Heck, it's not even clear that race is an empirically meaningful concept at all from a genetic standpoint, but try telling that to the white lunch counter owners of the 1950s. |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:33 am Post subject: |
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| stillnotking wrote: |
I take your point, LMG, but the fact is that half-black Americans have always been considered "black", both by themselves and by society. It is a genuine milestone to elect a man who self-identifies as "black" to the Presidency.
Racial arguments never take place in a vacuum. Of course it's not fair to say that Obama is black instead of white, but that's the way it is. Heck, it's not even clear that race is an empirically meaningful concept at all from a genetic standpoint, but try telling that to the white lunch counter owners of the 1950s. |
I never hear Obama self-identifying himself as 'black'. I hear him speak at every opportunity about his white grandmother, his white mother, his Kenyan father, etc.
I also wouldn't agree about 'thats the way it is' in regards to black/white and the American viewpoint of anything that isn't white white is considered black in the white/black spectrum.
There is a non-stop continuous argument between 'Americans' and 'Latinos' on this. Latinos I will include Brazilians, Dominicans, Cubans, etc. which are majority considered 'black' in the U.S. But in their own respective countries, they are considered anything but black, generally there is a wide range of other descriptive words for everything imbetween.
In that respect, the United States has a long ways to go before it even recognizes how many of its citizens are mixed and don't necessarily fall into the 'either/or' category.
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SNK - Generally I agree with your posts, but gotta disagree with this one. |
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Insidejohnmalkovich
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
Location: Pusan
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:09 pm Post subject: |
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| White means being wholly of northern European ancestry. Everything else is everything else. When I read history of the British empire I noticed that they called many different ethnic and regional peoples "black" including East Indians. I wonder if that is still true today in Britain. In rural Canada people still say "halfbreed." |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Tiger Beer wrote: |
| stillnotking wrote: |
I take your point, LMG, but the fact is that half-black Americans have always been considered "black", both by themselves and by society. It is a genuine milestone to elect a man who self-identifies as "black" to the Presidency.
Racial arguments never take place in a vacuum. Of course it's not fair to say that Obama is black instead of white, but that's the way it is. Heck, it's not even clear that race is an empirically meaningful concept at all from a genetic standpoint, but try telling that to the white lunch counter owners of the 1950s. |
I never hear Obama self-identifying himself as 'black'. I hear him speak at every opportunity about his white grandmother, his white mother, his Kenyan father, etc.
I also wouldn't agree about 'thats the way it is' in regards to black/white and the American viewpoint of anything that isn't white white is considered black in the white/black spectrum.
There is a non-stop continuous argument between 'Americans' and 'Latinos' on this. Latinos I will include Brazilians, Dominicans, Cubans, etc. which are majority considered 'black' in the U.S. But in their own respective countries, they are considered anything but black, generally there is a wide range of other descriptive words for everything imbetween.
In that respect, the United States has a long ways to go before it even recognizes how many of its citizens are mixed and don't necessarily fall into the 'either/or' category.
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SNK - Generally I agree with your posts, but gotta disagree with this one. |
SNK is right. In America, the phenotype matters more than the genotype from a cultural standpoint.
Obama has worked hard to identify himself as black. Its just that he's embraced his all-American identity on the campaign trail. As he should, being a black man with an international background with a white mother is an electoral asset.
Obama is black because thats what people see. Obama is black because some people look at his skin color and say, "He's black."
Is he white? He has white ancestry but is not white. If this sounds backwards to you it should. But that is America today. |
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citizen erased
Joined: 06 Apr 2008
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| Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 1:40 am Post subject: |
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| ive been for obama the entire time but i think this 76% figure will decrease as november gets closer. |
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little mixed girl
Joined: 11 Jun 2003
Location: shin hyesung's bed~
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 6:03 am Post subject: |
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| stillnotking wrote: |
I take your point, LMG, but the fact is that half-black Americans have always been considered "black", both by themselves and by society. It is a genuine milestone to elect a man who self-identifies as "black" to the Presidency.
Racial arguments never take place in a vacuum. Of course it's not fair to say that Obama is black instead of white, but that's the way it is. Heck, it's not even clear that race is an empirically meaningful concept at all from a genetic standpoint, but try telling that to the white lunch counter owners of the 1950s. |
i don't think that most people who are half-black or half-anything for that matter in the US have collectively decided to identify one way.
people that were half-black 30 or 40+ years ago may have identified as black if they looked black, but more importantly, because the US government didn't recognize mixed people as a group.
and think about it. white people especially, were not willing to accept a half-white person as "one of us".
you need to remember that before saying that all black/white people have decided to identify as black only.
during WW2, japanese-americans were interned in camps, and those who were 1/4 japanese were considered "japanese" by the US government.
people who are of obama's generation who are mixed, weren't given much of a chance to identify as mixed. people of my generation (people born in the 1980s and since) have been taking more steps to let those in the US know that we are mixed and identify as such.
as i said in my percious post, i have had people think that i'm native hawaiian, indian, pakistani, hispanic, heck i've even gotten korean and japanese before too.
but, just because i've been around people who would swear up and down that i'm indian, doesn't make me indian.
but, based on your argument, if someone identifies me as, and relates to me as an indian, i will be indian.
it doesn't make sense to ignore a whole part of someone's racial make-up.
we're not talking about hillary clinton with her distance slave relative. we're talking about a guy who is 1/2 white with a white mother.
what if obama identified as white?
why is that option not allowed?
you may or may not be married to a korean woman, and might have a kid with her.
would you be comfortable with your kid being seen as a "foreigner" in korea, even if the kid was born and raised in korea and speaks fluent korean?
just because some people see things in one way doesn't make it right. |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 7:08 am Post subject: |
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| Insidejohnmalkovich wrote: |
| White means being wholly of northern European ancestry. Everything else is everything else. When I read history of the British empire I noticed that they called many different ethnic and regional peoples "black" including East Indians. I wonder if that is still true today in Britain. In rural Canada people still say "halfbreed." |
There are still people born and raised in urban Georgia in the USA who refer to 100% Korean as "N~." Yes, those who do so are bigoted jackasses. |
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