Why do people accept Barack Obama as African-American?

littlek wrote:

... ANY black blood in a person

Have you ever seen BLACK BLOOD?

Is there such a thing?

Can Barack Obama get Bar- Mitzvahed?

((I would be interested to know if Foofie would say that Rosa Parks is not African-American.)

Quote:

Can Barack Obama get Bar- Mitzvahed?

No! Not unless he converts to Judaism.

Obama's father was a Nigerian sheep herder. Thus, Obama should be called a Nigerian-American.

Why isn't he?

Yeah well, why go overboard when "African-American" which is what he chooses to call himself, encompasses Nigeria too. Last I looked, Nigeria was still in Africa - right?

aidan wrote:

Yeah well, why go overboard when "African-American" which is what he chooses to call himself, encompasses Nigeria too. Last I looked, Nigeria was still in Africa - right?

Your point above brings up the thought that all of this hemisphere is the Americas - North, South and Central America. So, should he be Kenyan-U.S.? (I thought his father was Kenyan, not Nigerian.)

Your point above brings up the thought that all of this hemisphere is the Americas - North, South and Central America. So, should he be Kenyan-U.S.?

Obama just can't win for being African or American
By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
03/03/2008


In the movie "Selena," about the slain Tejano singer, there is a priceless scene where Edward James Olmos tries to explain how difficult it is to be Mexican-American. One has to be more Mexican than Mexicans, he says, and more American than Americans.
"We've got to know about John Wayne and Pedro Infante ... Oprah and Cristina," he says. "It's exhausting."
That scene came to mind when I saw that goofy photo of Barack Obama in traditional Somali dress, complete with turban, during a visit to Africa - the photo that Hillary Clinton assures us did not come from anyone in her campaign "so far as I know."
It's pretty clear why the photo, which had already appeared in a supermarket tabloid, enjoyed a second life on the Internet: It is part of an effort by Obama's critics to portray him - and, his wife, Michelle - as unpatriotic, ungrateful and un-American.
Apparently, to those with prejudices, depicting someone as a foreigner, or even dressed in foreign garb, gets you halfway there. In Obama's case, it only adds fuel to the furor that he chooses not to wear a flag pin on his lapel or once opted not to place his hand over his heart during the Star-Spangled Banner.
This exercise is familiar territory for Mexican-Americans, condemned to spend eternity trying to convince English, thank you. For the most part, what the skeptics want is a guarantee that, in the unlikely event that war breaks out with Mexico, Mexican-Americans would come down on the right side of the hyphen.
How idiotic. Mexican-Americans are the last people on Earth who owe anything to Mexico, which disowned their ancestors. Everything they have achieved they owe to the blessing of living in the United States.
In recent days, Barack and Michelle Obama have been saying much the same thing. They insist that one doesn't run for president unless one feels an undying love for one's country.
Michelle Obama never said she didn't love her country. What she said to an audience in Milwaukee was that "for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but (because) I think people are hungry for change."
Conservative commentators - including some white men who don't have a clue what is like to walk in Michelle Obama's shoes - couldn't wait to pounce on the remarks, as if their suspicions had been confirmed. Suddenly, the graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School was transformed into the female equivalent of Eldridge Cleaver.
But what gives the commentators the right to lecture someone else - let alone someone with a different life experience - about how she should feel about her country? Few things are more personal.
Later, Michelle said that what she meant to say was simply that she was proud that Americans were excited about the political process. Asked if she had always been proud of her country, Michelle replied "absolutely" and noted that she and her husband both have been given many opportunities for which they are grateful.
The irony is that those very opportunities - such as the chance to attend elite universities - may make it more difficult for the Obamas and others with similar credentials to identify with their fellow African-Americans even as they're viewed suspiciously by the mainstream. It can be a lonely place.
That was the conclusion of a Princeton senior who, in her senior thesis, examined whether black alumni of the university were, as a result of their time at Princeton, "more or less motivated to benefit the black community." After interviewing 89 black graduates, the student suggested that attending the school decreased the extent to which black alumni identified with the larger African-American community.
The student also drew on her own experience, which, she wrote, was consistent with that of the black alumni. Her name was Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, but today she is Michelle Obama.
Her thesis is not exactly "Soul on Ice," but it does provide a glimpse into world of the African-American high achiever. You spend your life studying and working hard and, for your trouble, you find yourself alienated from the rest of your community. Then, years later, something happens to convince you that neither are you accepted by some in the larger community. So you expend a lot of effort trying to fit into both.
Like the man said, I bet it's exhausting.

For some mixed-race couples, Obama is a symbol of acceptance

Some see Obama's interracial roots as step toward erasing stigmas


09:23 AM CST on Monday, March 3, 2008
By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News
[email protected]

NELSONVILLE, Ohio - Barack Obama was nearing his sixth birthday when the Supreme Court struck down the last 16 state laws banning interracial marriage. Forty years later, the offspring of such unions and folks who crossed racial lines to find a spouse, like Mr. Obama's parents, are watching his campaign with special pride.

...

Voters of many ethnicities find meaning in the Obama candidacy, just as many women root for Hillary Rodham Clinton to break the gender barrier.

But for mixed-race families, he represents a lifting of ancient taboos.

"My son's half black, and I'd like him to be able to run for president" or at least feel that his choices in life have no limits, said Carol Lennox, waiting for the candidate to emerge at Wednesday night's rally in Fort Worth.

"There's a large biracial population that's usually ignored," said the 55-year-old psychotherapist, adding that with her son's heritage - she's white, and his father is black - there's always anxiety about acceptance, especially at school, where kids seem to segregate themselves.

...

Rice University sociologist Jenifer Bratter in Houston, who has written extensively about the topic, said that "what modern interracial families deal with is questions of whether their child is going to be able to fit in and develop a coherent racial identity."

Mr. Obama, she said, has managed to "navigate the politics of race" in a way no national leader has before, embracing two races "without alienating either side."

And it's not just about his comfort with his own identity. It's about acceptance. "He embodies the possibility of being welcomed by both sides of the divide that modern interracial families are constantly contesting with," Dr. Bratter said.

...

The 2000 Census found 3.1 million interracial couples, a bit more than one in 20 married couples. Of those, one in eight involves black and a white spouses. The number of marriages has risen steadily since the Supreme Court ruling that struck down laws banning interracial marriages, including one in Texas - from 65,000 black-white unions in 1970 to an estimated 422,000 three years ago.

But the stigma remains. Public health studies show sharply higher stress and divorce levels in interracial families.

"You have to think, what must it have been like for a little biracial child in Kansas with white grandparents?" said Francine Childs, professor emeritus of African American studies at Ohio University in Athens. Dr. Childs' brother is Dallas pastor Rickie Rush of Inspiring Body of Christ Church.

She said Mr. Obama's candidacy gives biracial people a chance to "come through and say, 'I am who I am. I can be the best black part of me, the best white part of me, the best Hispanic part of me, without rejecting my mother or my father or my grandparents.' "

...

At an Obama rally last weekend in Akron, Canton resident Jean Nash volunteered that Mr. Obama's background struck a chord for her and her daughter.

"When her dad and I were married in the '70s, there were certain states we couldn't go to safely," said Ms. Nash, 52, who is white and works with the mentally disabled. "All those years where I got looked down on and called names and stayed proud - proud of my family, proud of our children. ... It's just a dream come true."

...

In Nelsonville, as Mr. Obama shook hands, Mr. Forte, pastor at Grace Christian Center in Athens, spoke of the son and daughter he had with his ex-wife, who is white.

"Someone is going to say, well, they're hindered because you're neither one or the other. They have to make a decision: Do they embrace their blackness or do they embrace their whiteness?" Mr. Forte said. "He says it doesn't make a difference. His candidacy says it doesn't make a difference."

Barak Obama's church identifies strongly with the black community:

Foofie said:

Quote:

Your point above brings up the thought that all of this hemisphere is the Americas - North, South and Central America. So, should he be Kenyan-U.S.?

And speaking of concepts - you're the one who brought the whole subject up of Barack Obama not labeling himself accurately or precisely (although in fact he is).

But yeah, if we don't want the rest of the world to view us with such arrogance, it probably is a good idea to remind ourselves once in a while that the North American continent consists of more than the United States of America. It also encompasses Canada and Mexico.

And when I did live in England, people constantly asked me if I was from North America - "Yes", I'd say. And then they'd remind ME of the fact that the US is not all there is here, when they'd continue with their first assumption that I must be from Canada Then I'd have to say, "No, US".

I don't have any problem labeling myself as being specifically from New Jersey. This gives people important information about where I might be coming from in a whole slew of ways- say, as opposed to Wyoming.
If only that, unlike someone like Edgar who lived primarily in Texas and has never eaten calzone - I've eaten a thousand in my time.

I don't understand this feeling that it's wrong or troublesome to acknowledge differences in race or nationality. I think it just reinforces the thought or idea that there is some reason to be afraid to be different or of differences in other people. We are all different - and I say Hallalujah to that.
I find it much more interesting to live in and talk to people in a world who can tell me all about where they're from and how that made their life different from mine.

You couldn't pay me to sit at a party with a bunch of suburban New Jerseyites who look and grew up just like me. Been there - done that.

Yeah, well, I grew up within commuting distance of NYC and Philadelphia -(just north or Princeton) so we were really lucky - we got the NYC and Philly stations (network- there was no such thing as cable back then).

I just keep thinking that I'm missing your point....Do you have one? And if you do, can you tell me exactly it is again?
Thank you.