by Justin La Grange
A lot has been made of Barack Obama being the first black president of the United States. From rappers celebrating through song to Campbell Brown tingling in her notoriously wet panties to Keith Olbermann savoring the shirtless images of the president on his ceiling, folks all across the US have been rejoicing in this fact. But is it true?
While the birthers are wasting their time digging a shallow hole to nowhere, nobody has bothered to question what might be the biggest misconception in the American sphere of thought, evading even the most brilliant minds of Keith Olbermann and Geraldo Rivera: President Obama may not be black.
But don't take my word for it. The answer comes from Harry Reid, who claimed Obama was able to win the presidency because he is a "light-skinned African-American with no negro dialect". I'll take it a step further: President Obama cannot simply be appropriately labeled "black". That of course requires me to make assumptions on what it is to be "black".
I think all would agree that a suitable litmus test for being "black" would include association through "racial identity" and "cultural identity".
In terms of racial identity, it is already questionable whether a half-white ethnic composition composes a "black person". Isn't it convenient that certain elements will utilize the underdog or "victimized" race to suit a political convenience? Why can't President Obama be called a "white" president when he is as white, ethnically and even moreso culturally, as he is black? Why do the country's "African-Americans" feel as though they can take more associative ownership of President Obama, even though he's as much "Irish like me" as "black like they"? I'm here to say that the "one drop" let me be a minority rule is no longer legitimate. If for that, I'm a Arab and a Jew, using my flying carpet to mosy on down to Wall Street. As my title picture would imply, there's not much of a racial barrier separating Barack Obama from, say, Charlie Crist.
But the Obama racial puzzle digs even deeper. As we all know, Barack Obama's paternal ancestry hails from Kenya, a region of East Africa that straddles Somalia, Sudan, and the Middle East. In addition to heavy Muslim influence, the region shares substantial Arab genetic composition with the Middle East. Admittedly, that composition and influence is far more substantial on the coastal region of Kenya -- Barack Obama's father was from an inland region and is quite African to say the least (it is important to note that he was Muslim). However, he likely has more than a slight helping of Arabic material when compared to West Africa and deeper west into Sub-Saharan Africa (such genomic information is helpful in tracking the origins of disease and fighting disease, etc).
And in there lies the core of my point. President Obama, as part of the aforementioned ancestry of his father, cannot identify ethnically and racially with those of West Africa, the near-exclusive origin of African slaves brought to America during slavery. You might ask how that is different from all kinds ethnic groups all across West Africa. I would say it's analagous to Northern and Southern Europe and the two different subgroups of white-Anglo and exotic-white that tend to subscribe to varying racial identities in both Europe and the United States. At the end of the day, you can call a near-albino Swede and a Greek Cypriot "white people", but there is a substantial difference in genetic material and dare I even say race. Obama Sr.'s moderate sprinkling of Arab ancestry is quite substantial in differentiating himself from the West African blacks who form the core of American black genetic material.
In terms of cultural identity, let's not pretend that President Obama's complete identity was not born and fostered in Honolulu, where you can go for days on end without seeing a black person. And there were not exactly Miles Davis jazz/soul bars in Indonesia, where President Obama's was dragged by his mother for a period of time so she could engage in more multicultural relationships with Muslim men. He was also raised by his white grandparents in Honolulu, who from what I've seen were not exactly the purveyors of black culture to President Obama.
But don't take my word for it. Rod Blagojevich had to recently apologize for asserting that he was "blacker than Barack Obama". And while Barack Obama was busy hitting up high profile dinners for the liberal elite, this was not a problem. It was only until he made campaign trail stops at large inner cities or black organizations that he began hocking a fake Jesse Jackson-like black accent with some strings of "negro dialect" (as Harry Reid would put it).
However the most important part of American black cultural identity is certainly a communal identification with slavery, as the practice was instrumental in forming the past and present social, economic, and political context of black life in America. If necessary, nearly every part of American black life can be somehow tied back to it, and President Obama has zero associative identity with this history.
To turn the tables for a sec, why not ask the question, how white is President Obama? Racially, we can start at 50% and then ask whether someone who is 50% white or 50% black deserves to be called or have ownership of one label or the other? Furthermore, how much Caucasoid Arab origin genetic material can we add to that 50% which is unique from the majority West-African American black origin? Then adding in the fact that President Obama's cultural origins are nearly completely white, it can be argued that President Obama has a minimum simple majority white identity, and therefore cannot legitimately be called one or the other.
But at the end of the day, who cares. Probably half the people I regularly associate with have some kind of polar split racial or cultural identity of some sort, and in modern day America, it's no longer a big deal. However, elements of the radical-Black left and radical-white right either seek to exploit the President's racial identity or use it as a fear tactic, and I would respond to those people that President Obama is neither black nor white, but a nice melting pot of American, and it's easier to leave it at that. Let the issues be the issues.
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