Black or Biracial: The Barack Obama Debate Continues
Image Design: Tor Myhren, for Grey Advertising. Source: LATimes .com “Let the Issues be the issue” / Nov. 4, 2008
It’s intriguing how so many people on this blog (and all around the country, really) are so obsessed with the fact that Obama is called the first “African-American” president.” Since his parents are black and white, they insist he should be called the “first biracial” president.
With an African father and an American mother, Obama is more authentic “African-American” than I am.
Besides, doesn’t he have the right to define himself?
Obama, in his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” described himself as a “prisoner” of his own biography:
“I can’t help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives.”
As a father of biracial children, I respect racial identifiers. Like Obama, my kids will ultimately decide what and who they are.
I find this debate both interesting and disturbing.
Would this be a moot discussion if Barack Obama, the president, were Barack Johnson, the light-skinned serial killer?
Would whites claim this Barack or insist the media define him as “biracial?” I suspect “African-American” would suffice. But the topic is open for discussion …
For added subject fodder, I’ve included these links:
CNN.com: “Behind the Scenes: Is Barack Obama black or biracial?”
Chattanoogan.com:”Proud Day for Biracial Americans”
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Sylvester Brown, Jr. often refers to himself as the "accidental columnist." He enrolled in college almost 25 years ago to pursue a career as a cartoonist. He ended up starting an award-winning newspaper and falling in love with journalism. Today, as a writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the "accidental columnist's" love affair continues. 
I have only one observation.
I didn’t read his book The Audacity of Hope. But I was wondering if he as a product of a Bi-racial relationship did he use his Blackness or Whiteness as mean to garner an education with all that Entails. This society/academia tends to go the distance when it finds a young African American that has the ability to do the work necessary to succeed required to gain a degree. Our colleges are full of student athletes that are African Americans, but degree rate is very low among them……
I’m really glad you brought this up, because I am sick and tired of people trying to tear down the historical importance of his election. I think it’s pretty simple:
If Obama were a grown man during any other time in America’s history, he would have been denied entrance to any number of schools, he would have been made to drink from the “Black’s Only” water fountain, he would have had to ride in the back of the bus, and he certainly wouldn’t have been admitted to law school. If he were a man 200 hundred years ago, he would have been a slave.
In other words, at any other time in history, Obama would be considered “Black” and that would be that. No special consideration would be granted to him because he had a white mother.
But now that he’s achieved arguably the highest obtainable position an American can have, he’s no longer black, huh?
It’s because there are still idiots out there that absolutely refuse to acknowledge that someone who at one time would have been the property of a white man, is now the most powerful person in the free world.
He’s the first African-American president folks, get over it. You can’t change the rules of the game halfway through…
Given that an untold number of African-Americans have white ancestors through unacknowledged racial mixing (think Strom Thurmond), it seems silly to draw this distinction.
From The Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus.
“bi”-having two; thing having two.
“bipartisan”- of or involving two parties.
“biplane”-having two sets of wings.
“biped”-two footed animal.
“bipartite”-consisting of two parts.
And then there are;
“BI-State Buses”- run in both Missouri and Illinois.
What’s interesting is, there were people who voted for Barack Obama who did not see his race, they saw someone giving them hope.
What’s interesting is, the millions of people who stood in twenty something degree weather in Washington, D.C. to see the inauguration of a new president, with out seeing his race.
What’s interesting is, you seem to try to fester racial discussions like this when the people have spoken and elected this man to office.
What’s interesting is you find this disturbing, and no one cares what you think.
What’s interesting is you say he is African-American, but he claims to be an American first. Why not American-African?
What’s interesting is you write for the Post Dispatch and should be for the Evening Whirl.
I work with a lady whose father was an American soldier who married a German native. He was black and she was white. My friend said that she feels bad that Obama did not stress the biracial aspect of who he is in the spirit of inclusion. She, for one, doesn’t like the fact that he identifies himself only as Black (or African-American). Me, I think he played the racial card all the way to the White House and the left wing liberals love him for it!
Why don’t we just drop this hyphenated bs. He is an American (or so we’re told). I am an American. I do not refer to myself of European-American.
Well he might be an American, but he won’t provide a birth certificate to prove he’s natural born - which by the way would disqualify him from being President. But you’ll never hear old Sylvester or any other left-wing, Hussein-entranced, media nut question that little inconvenience. They’re too busy fawning over the Messiah to question anything about him.
I think people in this country would do well to read more rather than listening to hearsay. Read Dreams From My Father. In that book, Pres. Obama talks about the factors that determined his identity. I have never heard Pres. Obama deny his biracial heritage, and how could he? His extended family is a microcosm of the world. However, in “Dreams”, he details life events that helped him find his niche/comfort zone. Obama could very easily have become an embittered man, much like some Blacks who have endured what he did. Thank God he didn’t!
For me, this discussion is disturbing. For as Sylvester opined, had Pres. Obama instead been a criminal or even a colleague at work who was thought to have received his job due to affirmative action instead of merit, no one would insist on him being called bi-racial. Remember, Pres. Obama has said that he, too, has had trouble hailing cabs just like full blooded Black folks. So, his tanned skin has presented the same types of barriers to him as mine has to me.
I’d grown weary of this fact of life, and now my wonderfully bright, engaging, and loving 12 year-old son is enduring similar issues. I pray that generations of Black children coming behind my son will not have their souls tainted by the sting of racism since they have witnessed someone who looks like them ascend to the highest office in the nation. As a parent, it hurts to witness the pain and to constantly help my son decompress from the nastiness that he experiences daily.
The ones who seem to be the most obsessed with Obama’s race are the liberals, who make a big deal about him being the first “whatever” President. As a conservative, I oppose Obama simply because he’s a liberal Democrat. But, since *you* bring it up, the fact of the matter is that he *is* biracial. And the African father was mostly out of the picture. The mother and grandparents who raised him were European-Americans. Obama’s upbringing, as a biracial child raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, not descended from slaves, raised by European-Americans–culturally, his upbringing does not resemble the typical African-American experience at all.
I dont care at all about his race. I judge him by his ideas, which are inherently Marxist. If indeed these are his real beliefs, we have seen the last of a free country.