He is probably more white than black, having been raised by his white mother and white grandparents.

He is more human being and strong man than all of the above! The right needs to try and paint him as the radical black man because they must tap in to the racist reserve that they have used forever. They can't win on the issues. The MSM has to help paint him that way or else they can't give the so called "maverick" a leg up in the race.
All of these labels are such B.S... You know why?

1) The troops who are dying and suffering on behalf of all of this sickening bunch of chicken-hawks policies come in all colors, shapes, sizes and geographic areas.
2) Last time I checked, foreclosures, gas prices, healthcare costs has no color stamped on them...

When you can't debate the issues...you hide behind division's skirt!!!

I moved this, it really didn't belong in "Introduce Yourself". You'll get more responses here.

rottmom

Hey, I am 1/4 American Indian, 1/4 Welsh, 1/2 German Jew, does that make me more white than Obama? Ahhh hell I admit I am a mutt. Did you notice that most of my ancestors got their butts kicked?

Same thing I often wonder.
But there are (at least) two components to your identity. There is who you see yourself to be. And there is who others see you to be. (Kind of like with names: there's what you call yourself, there's what your family calls you, there's what your friends call you, there's what everybody else calls you.)
And in this country, if you look like Obama, you are black, regardless of your ancestry and who raised you or how you were reared. End of story.

Sad, but true. In this country if you "look" African at all, then you are "black." It's an age old story that mixed race people struggle with every day. So ridiculous, I think, because "race" does not exist scientifically, only culturally.

We need to move beyond race. That will be a happy day!

Hey, folks - I obviously don't know Goldbrick - a new member with post # 1 here. He/She may be a great guy/gal.

But I do want to offer an observation. I have seen this same basic post pop up REPEATEDLY throughout all of the 3-4 boards I participate in. In short, "Why doesn't anyone talk about the fact that Obama is half white?" It has been offered by a variety of different posters - I think it's come up here at RRMB perhaps 3-4 times from different posters in the last two weeks. In every single instance that I can recall on every MB I visit, the posters of this message have had three things in common.

A. The subject post is without exception the new member's 1st post.

B. The posting member virtually never sticks around to make it to posts # 4 or 5, and they literally NEVER make it past # 10.

C. Any additional posts the member DOES manage to put up before disappearing are filled with what is at least arguably racist propaganda. Usually it's not arguable at all - there's just bigoted spew until the member stops returning or is banned.

Maybe this will be completely different for Goldbrick. But those are my observations up until this latest.

But I don't know all, see all or remember all. Does anyone remember exceptions to this observation?

Beyond that, WTF is up with this? Be damned if I can understand how the "Obama is half white" argument helps, hurts or has a dang thing to do with the racist tripe that typically follows.

Obama's black?

Ya know, it beats me, bushwa...

I'm still trying to figure out how people are being allowed to start topics on their first post.

Has this been addressed? I may have missed it.

Rottmom? Randys? Anybody?

Why is this even relevent?

Okay, this is only my personal opinion, but it's because most of Obama's base is made up of wealthy white liberals who could most charitably be defined as self-hating, and ridden with white guilt.

Think about it. Such a base, that lives in a perpetual spirit of guilt over events they had no part in whatsoever, can easily be cajoled into repeatedly making contributions to Obama's campaign.

It's their act of contrition, whether they understand it as such, or not.

I think they hit on that when it came up previously - the need to allow new members to create threads or there be NO new threads. Where could newbies post their requisite 15 posts if, when we all came back, everyone started as newbies and NO ONE could start a thread?

I proposed they just let me start all the new threads for a few weeks, but WhoseMarie remembered my October, '07 debacle of "Why I like boobies, boobie, boobies" thread, and Rottmom threw my infamous, "Euphemisms for excrement" thread back in my face. It seems Libertas still has his nose out of joint over my, "Why New York Sucks" thread.

In the end, they rejected my entirely reasonable proposal and instead chose to let EVERYBODY create threads right off the bat.

I suspect things will get back to the 15 post starter-status just as soon as Manzo or whomever has the time to sit down and make the necessary tweaks.

....and your point is?......

I think Obama has an amazing, and enviable background (which I won't recap). I think that because he had to struggle with issues of identity, culture, at an early age because of his DNA, travels, and mother, and because he is obviously quite bright, that he is very "socially mature", in the specific sense of Robert Kegan. I think that Obama is at the "interIndividual" stage of social maturity. I think he is socially mature enough to be able to function outside culture.
But that doesn't mean he doesn't want community. And that need/desire, I believe, caused him to "choose" a culture to be part of, even though he didn't "need" one from an adult development perspective. So he chose black, for community. Obama transcended each of the cultures of his upbringing, but returned to one voluntarily. That's different from being raised inside one, and not transcending.

Well put Laura. You must agree though that Bushwa is one of the best posters on any message board and so are you. I enjoy reading them. I'm glad I found out about the new board. I see a lot of the posters have returned here. Looking forward to all the great common sense and substantive posts.

Point of order! Just want to point out, Deke, that Laura was addressing the OP above, not me. I'm delighted to have a compliment - their rarity makes them that much more valuable! But I'd hate for one to come at t the expensive of you misunderstanding - Laura was asking the OP Goldbrick what his/her point was, not me.

I think Laura effectively communicated the same sentiment as my own, but did so using about 52,000 fewer words.

Race is sociological. Here is first black congressman from New York. Do you think he is 100 percent African?

The fascist who 'passed' for white

Lawrence Dennis was a leading light in the American fascist movement of the 1930s. He was a fan of Hitler and a self-avowed anti-semite. Now a new book reveals that he was actually black - although even his wife didn't know.





Given the manifest benefits of life on the other side of the colour line, black people who could pass as white often did, even though doing so meant cutting themselves off from their family and their past. Passing has provided the dramatic tension for many a novel, including Philip Roth's The Human Stain, Walter Moseley's Devil in a Blue Dress and, most pertinently, Nella Larsen's Passing. "Every year approximately 12,000 white-skinned Negroes disappear," Walter White, the former head of the civil rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, claimed in the late 1940s. "People whose absence cannot be explained by death or emigration ... men and women who have decided that they will be happier and more successful if they flee from the proscription and humiliation which the American colour line imposes on them." White, who was light-skinned, used to pass himself as white at times when investigating lynch mobs in the South.

He seems to see himself as black, based on his life choices, etc.

Doesn't seem to have much to do with anything, really. It's almost a non- topic.

Well if YOU can't explain it, then it must be inexplicable!


(I am kinda tickled "Goldbrick" reinforced my analysis by never posting again.)

Well...that shocked the crap outta me.

I think I remember reading that he CHOSE the black community.

We would do well to brush up on COINTEL-PRO as we move toward a more progressive society. This reminds me of the practice of leaving disparaging letters and controversial notes in place were other members of an organization would find them. It seems that some people on the internet deliberately drop little posts here and there designed to excite the passions.

Yup. I seem to remember that too.

I have met people far more African in appearance that reject a black identity and there are millions of people who identify as black that are much more genetically European then Obama. These racial identities very from person to person and definitely vary from country to country.

I can't say definitively, but my theory of what happened to Obama is that he was so diced up by his background, multi-racial, multi-national, multi-cultural that the question of identity was a hard problem for him, much more than for someone who is raised in a more monocultural way. I think he solved the puzzle of identity, transcending culture, because he's so bright and maybe had some framing help from his mom the anthropologist. There is a really interesting framework here that speaks to what I mean. I think Obama is level 6 (InterIndividual in Kegan's progression).

Having solved that puzzle is what lets him play the unifier.

But it doesn't eliminate the social need for community. So (I conjecture) even having transcended culture, there is still a need for social interaction, a feeling of belonging, and sense of community, and that is why I think he "chose" one. Black community makes sense, as would others. Hawaiian community would also make sense. He is able to function and interact well with people with different cultural backgrounds, which is why I believe he is interindividual social maturity on Kegan's scale.

That makes sense. I would imagine that he had to work through a number of issues in the process of obtaining a degree self acceptance that enabled him to interact comfortably in the myriad of environments that he grew up in. I would also surmise that growing up so intimately and fully integrated within a myriad of cultures and races enabled him to realize on a very deep level how alike human beings are once you get past all of the stories and narratives we created for ourselves individually and as groups.

In working these issues out in his life I think he has been able to distinguish between the real issues and concerns various groups and individuals have from the stories and fables we make up about ourselves and others. Differences I might add that are often superficial and stylistic in nature.

Having lived with and amongst so many different types of people I often laugh at the subtle vanity so many have in thinking that they or their group is so, so different from other groups. I find this especially comical in the context of blacks and whites in this country. Although we think of these groups as being highly segregated and divided, people forget that for over 400 years these groups of people lived an extremely intimate intertwined reality that has produced a lot of very similar cultural assumptions about reality itself. I know of very few groups that are so similar that insist they are so different. This is particularly the case in the southern context. The author of Whistling Past Dixie noted this reality when he worked as a waiter in diners in North Carolina while working his way through school. He could not understand for the life of him, how people who were so similar culturally, religiously, and economically could vote in such a diametrically opposed manner.

I think that the root of almost all of this kind of divisiveness isn't color, sex or creed, but class. When an economic or social class seeks to verify their status, they look for signs they can point to that prove there are people on a lower rung than they are. When there is an obvious feature: skin color, hair color (like the Irish), body type, accent, handicap, mode of religious dress, etc that can be used to easily identify class, that becomes the shorthand or focus for their argument that their group is somehow superior to another. When this focal point is manipulated for political or financial purposes the "other" can become the "enemy." I would suspect that the origins of class come from competition for resources... winners and losers, us and them. In the long run there is no more real meaning to it than "shirts and skins."

Circling back to the OP's comment, it's probably because that story lacks news value. The story of Obama's mother and grandparents got some air but being bi-racial just doesn't carry the impact it used to. Obama has self-identified himself as a "skinny black man named Barack Hussein Obama", he looks like a black guy more than he looks like a white guy and he has embraced the African American community as his own. You have to understand that there are elements of that community that still don't feel like he is "black enough." And, I'm sure the Obama campaign has emphasized his African heritage to help get votes. They aren't fools. But, there is sufficient precedent in law and tradition to allow it.

There are all kinds of elements of any community. There are elements of the black community that did not think Malcom X was black enough.

Obama is multi-racial (biracial).

In this country, since we use hypodescent, particularly in the American South, this gets him labelled 'black'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypodescent

However, in another society, like Brazil, he might be considered mulatto or mestizo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizo

The recent 40 yr. anniversary of the Supreme Court decision to overturn state bans on inter-racial marriage (Loving v. Virginia, 1967) was just noted.

The category "multi-racial" was only added to the U.S. census as an official category or "checkbox" in 2000.

The one definite good thing about Obama is his prominence (as well as Tiger Woods) has caused the previously invisible category of multiracials in our society to get more attention.

I think it's very interesting that a lot of what is considered Black English (BEV or so-called "Ebonics") shares linguistic features with the same kind of speaking used by poor and rural Southern whites, another thing that often goes uncommented on.

In Brazil, he still wouldn't be white, though.

In the Latin American countries, it's a bit of a tricky thing. The racial labels sometimes have more to do with socioeconomic status than with ancestry or appearance.

I understand all that. But the fact remains that someone with his complexion would not be considered white.
Wealthy, powerful - certainly possible. Not FOB black, preto/prieto - agreed.
White, no.

Here is a question for all of us enlightened (US) Americans, who recognize that by birth Obama has equal claims to his European-American and African heritages:

How would the Obama Presidential campaign be received if Michelle Obama were white?
(Assuming everything else about him, including his service in the US senate and Illinois state legislature, were the same.)

Yeah. At the end this was true in terms of ideology. But no one every said he wasn't racially "pure" enough. Malcolm X wasn't raised as a white kid by his white mom/grandparents till he was 18 years old. Also, he was a "son of slaves", not a modern day African scholar. Obama's roots are international, not African-American. The people who have not backed Obama's campaign are not inconsequential and include folk such as Cornell West.

Malcom X's mother:

Louise Helen Norton, b. La Digue, St. Andrew, Grenada 1897, d. 1991

Malcom X's Maternal Grandparents:

Norton, b. England/Scotland

Gertrude Langdon, b. Grenada

Incidentally Louis Farrakhan is in all likelihood half-white and his roots are not in America; clearly was not socialized in the same manner as Obama. It is not about genetics it is about life experience.

The people who have not backed Obama's campaign are not inconsequential and include folk such as Cornell West.

Cornel West has backed Obama for a long, long time. I am not sure were you got that idea.

I have never read or heard of black intellectuals say someone is not black enough based upon genetics. Obama is not particularly white genetically as it relates to the black community. While I was in college a geneticist from Penn State randomly tested Howard University students all who self identified as black.

Her subjects were Howard students, all of whom identified themselves as African American. When Pfaff analyzed these subjects' DNA, however, she found a large amount of variation in the degree of African ancestry, from only 10 percent up to nearly 100 percent.

Dessalines, although I agree with your general point, I have to wonder about the geneticist's findings. So-called admixture testing using the autosomal DNA is still in its infancy even today. More likely, the geneticist tested the students' mitochondrial or Y-chromosome DNA, which would give a very skewed picture, especially if you have been out of school for a few years.

Race is a social construct. I would argue what race we label people usually has to do with how they appear physically (primarily, skin color and facial features) and secondarily their socioeconomic status.

Although people believe that race (phenotype) is a good indicator of their genetic ancestry, it isn't. Most of what is most meaningful in your genotype, as far as indicating your genetic ancestry, does not appear physically in your phenotype.

My point exactly. Bloody murderous ethnic wars have been fought between people in one country that would be socialized as one ethnic group in another. A good example of this would be Haiti.

And still, 42 posts later, the OP has yet to return to his/her thread, has yet to explain how the heck the question posed is relevant to anything, or even to add a comment to any other thread.

I respectfully submit this was a definitive "Hit and run" post per the Board Rules. Further, and unless any of the subsequent posters disagrees for any reason, I suggest closing the thread.

I agree that your assessment of the OP was spot on. But I also feel it would be premature to close the thread. Those who are not interested in the subject can just ignore it.

Then I happily withdraw my suggestion!

Awwww.....thanks.....
AND YES, BUSHWA ROCKS!

FASCINATING! I hadn't known that!

About Malcolm X:
My senior year in high school we were assigned "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" as our in-depth literature project and it's a totally different experience from "Dreams from my Father".

I used the term "self-identified" as opposed to "genetically" for a reason. Aside from the reasons you mention, the extent of race in genetics is not well accepted these days. Thom Hartmann makes this argument a lot. 8^) It's kind of hard to sum up the argument in a single sentence but I think you get the idea so I won't belabor it.

I got the idea when I researched Cornell West's endorsement status and the things he has said about Obama, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXj3_pjTTwg

However, I should have said his support was nuanced, so that was an error on my part. This is a very full discussion of his POV (BTW I'm a big fan of West so it's always been a pleasure to hear him weigh in.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxGRBIElSe0

There is so much interesting stuff here! I am hoping that Obama's campaign (and hopefully Presidency) will encourage more learning and thinking along these lines. The evolution of Malcolm X is a timely story. I haven't read that book for 35 years. Maybe I'll dig it out and read it again.

Why are people, STILL in 2008, confused about these matters?

How can someone who pushes for ignorance and prejudice be called a "leading light"?

Yep-yep. "Race" means only what an observer would classify a person into. There is so much genetic variability in people from any particular ethnic stock, that it overlaps the other "classes" of race. Biologically, race is a fiction. Sociologically, it's a marker of our civilization, or lack thereof.