Posted: Tue 25 Nov 2008 14:13 Post subject: Viewpoint: Is Barack Obama black?
Quote:
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
Not so for others.
One well-known African American writer, Debra Dickerson, famously objected to calling Obama black on the grounds that because he is not descended from slaves, he is not of the people properly defined as "black." 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.
VIEWPOINTS
Kimberly McClain DaCosta is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and Social Studies at Harvard and the author of Making Multiracials: State, Family and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line
Calling him "black" seems to acknowledge the connection between his rise and the struggles of a people.
When others argue that Obama "is" mixed-race, they point to the fact that he has a white mother, not only a black father, and was raised in an interracial family.
Calling him "mixed-race" seems to acknowledge that family, offering a corrective to centuries of denying our tangled genealogies.
De-stigmatisation
What I find most interesting about the question of what racial label to assign Obama, is that we are asking the question at all.
As recently as 20 years ago, the question of Obama's racial position would be presumed settled before it was even asked.
In keeping with the one-drop rule - the practice of categorising as black anyone with any known African ancestry - Obama's identification as a black person would be expected, accepted and unremarkable.
The person suggesting that Obama be classified as mixed-race would quite likely have been met with suspicion or a confused look ("What's that?") since for most of US history, in most places, mixed-race identity has not been collectively recognised.
In the last 20 years, however, the collective efforts of mixed-race people in the US to de-stigmatise interracial families and garner public recognition of mixed race identity have been fairly successful (for example, the US government now enumerates mixed race identities).
Stares
Even so, the question whether Obama is black or mixed-race reflects a basic misunderstanding of the experience of those of us who have grown up in interracial families, particularly those of us of African descent, born in the post-Civil Rights period.
Many of us forged a black identity, one that was not at odds with being mixed-race, but arose out of our experiences as mixed people
We (I have an African American father and an Irish American mother) were raised on the front lines of racial change, where the new rules about interracial intimacy often clashed with the old - both in public and in our own families.
The affection we were so comfortable showing our white mothers at home drew stares, and worse, from both whites and blacks in public.
It was in our families where we first felt love and protection as well as the first sting of racial prejudice.
And many of us forged a black identity, one that was not at odds with being mixed-race, but arose out of our experiences as mixed people: from an awareness that the racial dilemma we were born into has its deepest roots in anti-black prejudice.
For us, being black and mixed-race are not mutually exclusive. We have learned to live with the contradictions.
Hypocrites like DaCosta don't follow the same logic when it comes to white identity. Black-identified elites demonize Anatole Broyard and others who choose a white identity. There are no demands for "respect." Being white and mixed race are not mutually exclusive, as we said at "Interracial Voice" for years.
Perhaps it's time for everyone else to learn to live with them too.
Debra Dickerson is telling us that she doesn't consider the millions of Kenyan, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Somali and Uganda immigrants who are coming to America every year 'Blacks' (and most of these people are quite dark and pure African) based on the fact that they don't have West African slave blood?
Not saying that she is wrong, but I wonder what racial classification does she think a Kenyan like Obama's father falls under when we are not speaking of his nation of origin?
I think Obama's Kenyan father could "'pass" as a West African any day of the week......
Debra Dickerson is telling us that she doesn't consider the millions of Kenyan, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Somali and Uganda immigrants who are coming to America every year 'Blacks' (and most of these people are quite dark and pure African) based on the fact that they don't have West African slave blood?
Precisely. You point out the old conflict in U.S. folklore between Blackness as physical traits and Blackness as membership in an ethnic community. Many recent court cases and precedents support Dickerson's position. Indeed, until Obama's campaign, the traditional U.S. liberal stance has been that only descendants of slaves qualify for affirmative acrion, workplace discrimination suits, and other "race"-based entitlements. While conservatives have tended to include recent African or BWI immigrants as "Black."
Look at it the other way. If Blackness is physical traits, as you imply, then Jim Wright, Bliss Broyard, Walter White, Gregory Howard Williams, Adrian Piper, and countless other famous self-identified African Americans are lying or mistaken in claiming to be Black.
The fact is that virtually no USAmerican is consistent in this usage, switching nimbly back and forth between definitions as it suits their argument du jour. Site rules forbid such intellectual hypocrisy. Here, you must pick one definition or the other for any given post.
Debra Dickerson is telling us that she doesn't consider the millions of Kenyan, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Somali and Uganda immigrants who are coming to America every year 'Blacks' (and most of these people are quite dark and pure African) based on the fact that they don't have West African slave blood?
Not saying that she is wrong, but I wonder what racial classification does she think a Kenyan like Obama's father falls under when we are not speaking of his nation of origin?
I think Obama's Kenyan father could "'pass" as a West African any day of the week......
He appears to be 'Bantu' in Racialism lingo. Talk to any Ethiopian/ Somalian and they will tell you those of their countrymen (EA) who look like West Africans were slaves/servant/underclass in their region from West Africa. But I do not know if this is actually true.....there some data to support it though.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1761 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Wed 26 Nov 2008 19:24 Post subject:
Melani23 wrote:
girlfromthenc wrote:
Now I'm confused.
Debra Dickerson is telling us that she doesn't consider the millions of Kenyan, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Somali and Uganda immigrants who are coming to America every year 'Blacks' (and most of these people are quite dark and pure African) based on the fact that they don't have West African slave blood?
Not saying that she is wrong, but I wonder what racial classification does she think a Kenyan like Obama's father falls under when we are not speaking of his nation of origin?
I think Obama's Kenyan father could "'pass" as a West African any day of the week......
He appears to be 'Bantu' in Racialism lingo. Talk to any Ethiopian/ Somalian and they will tell you those of their countrymen (EA) who look like West Africans were slaves/servant/underclass in their region from West Africa. But I do not know if this is actually true.....there some data to support it though.
Naw...Obama described his build, he was tall and skinny and quite dark (in Obama's book).
The Luo tribe are Nilotic and his family told him they know they migrated from Uganda several generations ago.
Anthropologist would say that they originated in the Sahel...with the other Nilotic tribes.
He does not look African AMerican to me at all if he was on the street I would assume he was African. He is a black man. As Frank mentioned, I see black as a broad race, African AMerican, to me is an ethnic group.
this is all fascinating to me. i don't think the average white american makes any distinction between the terms black and African-American, except to think that African-American is now considered the more polite term to use.
'
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