Murrican
Nov 19th, 2008, 04:47 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7735503.stm
It shouldn't matter to any one, yet it does, to some. To both his proponents and opponents. Colour matters, or it doesn't or shouldn't. In our normal lives, speaking to the regular denizens here, I'd wager colour, ethnicity and originin matter not a whit. They once did, and they do to others, but I sure doubt they'd matter to anyone here (I sure hope). It's the gray stuff between the ears and how you use it that matters to the modern person (despite online behaviours). I hope that's what the 2008 US election cycle changed once and for all. The end of stereotypecasting and all the baggage.
Last updated at 12:37 GMT, Tuesday, 18 November 2008
Viewpoint: Is Barack Obama black?
By Kimberly McClain DaCosta
Harvard University
Is Obama black? It depends on who - and when - you ask. For some of us, the heralding of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States seems a rather uncontroversial claim.
"Obama isn't black. 'Black,' in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves"
- Debra J Dickerson
Colorblind, Salon.com January 2007
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/01/22/obama/
Not so for others. One well-known African American writer, Debra Dickerson, famously objected that Obama is not of the people properly defined as "black" on the grounds that because he is not descended from slaves.
Ergo, he is not black - at all.
The bulk of the people protesting against references to Obama as a black man, however, grant that he is "part" black (by way of his father), but assert that because he also has a white mother it is not "accurate" to call him black. He is "in fact" mixed-race, they say.
Opposing arguments
My first reaction to questions about the "correctness" or "accuracy" of Obama's racial classification is to undermine the premise of the question itself. The search for the "correctness" of racial identity presumes that a definitive answer can be found.
It presumes that race is a real entity, something fixed, or natural. It seems to deny what scholars have laboured for decades to demonstrate - that the criteria used to classify people in racial categories, the categories used in a given society, and the uses to which those categories are put - vary by place and time. They are, as academics are fond of saying, "socially constructed".
Yet the predilections of the scholar fail to satisfy those who claim to know what race Obama "is", for these are really statements about what the speaker thinks he ought to be. When people insist that Obama "is" black, they point to his self-identification as such, and the assertion that when most people look at him, they see a black man.
It shouldn't matter to any one, yet it does, to some. To both his proponents and opponents. Colour matters, or it doesn't or shouldn't. In our normal lives, speaking to the regular denizens here, I'd wager colour, ethnicity and originin matter not a whit. They once did, and they do to others, but I sure doubt they'd matter to anyone here (I sure hope). It's the gray stuff between the ears and how you use it that matters to the modern person (despite online behaviours). I hope that's what the 2008 US election cycle changed once and for all. The end of stereotypecasting and all the baggage.
Last updated at 12:37 GMT, Tuesday, 18 November 2008
Viewpoint: Is Barack Obama black?
By Kimberly McClain DaCosta
Harvard University
Is Obama black? It depends on who - and when - you ask. For some of us, the heralding of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States seems a rather uncontroversial claim.
"Obama isn't black. 'Black,' in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves"
- Debra J Dickerson
Colorblind, Salon.com January 2007
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/01/22/obama/
Not so for others. One well-known African American writer, Debra Dickerson, famously objected that Obama is not of the people properly defined as "black" on the grounds that because he is not descended from slaves.
Ergo, he is not black - at all.
The bulk of the people protesting against references to Obama as a black man, however, grant that he is "part" black (by way of his father), but assert that because he also has a white mother it is not "accurate" to call him black. He is "in fact" mixed-race, they say.
Opposing arguments
My first reaction to questions about the "correctness" or "accuracy" of Obama's racial classification is to undermine the premise of the question itself. The search for the "correctness" of racial identity presumes that a definitive answer can be found.
It presumes that race is a real entity, something fixed, or natural. It seems to deny what scholars have laboured for decades to demonstrate - that the criteria used to classify people in racial categories, the categories used in a given society, and the uses to which those categories are put - vary by place and time. They are, as academics are fond of saying, "socially constructed".
Yet the predilections of the scholar fail to satisfy those who claim to know what race Obama "is", for these are really statements about what the speaker thinks he ought to be. When people insist that Obama "is" black, they point to his self-identification as such, and the assertion that when most people look at him, they see a black man.