BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture African-American Culture Obama - Black or Biracial?

Just think quickly, no political thoughts. Which box would you check?

Obama single choice
	Black
	Biracial
	Other
Votes accepted starting: 06/09/08 05:03 PM
View Results

This came from this interesting article -

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I have 4 Biracial children, their father is African American, im white. So often their referred as half black or half white. when my daughter was younger and filling out an application it asked her race. she checked both, black n white ;o)

Good for her! That is so cool I think people should get pie charts with crayons

I can understand in schools for example that they want to know if kids are "black" or "latino" to make sure the teachers are teaching everyone fairly. They want to make sure if 100% of "whites" graduate and 10% of "blacks" graduate that they make an effort to figure out why, to help everybody graduate. But it is all so hard to quantify. I mean, it might actually be that 100% of "two parent happy family kids" graduate and that 10% of "single parent working two jobs" kids graduate, but how do you ask questions like that? What if it's not the skin color but a happens-to-be-sort-of-related income level?

I don't think of Obama as black myself - he seems interracial, as I voted in this poll. But it would be still be great if we elected someone who is considered black/part black - it would show that we as a nation are *growing up*. That we don't get stuck on skin color. That people are all just people.

This is a funny poll question as it�s not something that is debatable. Barack Obama is of mixed race. Period.
Now, if I were referring to him and needed to reference his ethnicity, I would refer to him as a Black man.
As far as I�m concerned, if a person has an ounce of Black blood, they are Black in my eyes.

I don't know if it is because I am watching all these reports from outside the US, but the first time I actually thought of it was when one report said Obama could make history by being the first black president of the US. My initial reaction was "Huh? Oh!". Up until then I'd simply thought of him as an American. I was far more interested in the possibility of a woman becoming president.

Ethnicity, Race, etc are very subjective. The only that isn't subjective is nationality.

Obama refers to himself as a black man and therefore that is what he should be considered. Most opinions (while they may be wrong) are based on skin color and in his case he is predominately BLACK.

Myself, I am half Puerto Rican, the other half being european. I consider myself a white puerto rican. I check other on the race box. I would be considered the first latin person elected president because I am half other than white.

Right Elle that's sort of where I am with it. I don't think of him as black. I think of him as "him" which is some sort of mixed race person in my mind. I wouldn't think of him as a "black president".

Jase - see, that's so interesting. It's interesting to me that if you're half something it still seems to count as the "primary trait" in situations like that. Would someone who is 100% African American be upset that someone only partially African American was getting the title of "first"?

He's both. A black man and biracial. My son is both. My son is very proud of himself as a black man and yet to look at him many people say "yeah right, you're white!" He doesn't have dark skin because his mother is caucasian. He also has straight hair. He is atypical in respects to what most people would look for in a black man. But every chance he gets, he says, "I'm black." He gets a lot of flack for it too. He equally has pride in being white.

I myself have a lot of American Indian as well as German bloodline. I just think we all are a mixture of all sorts of backgrounds and bloodlines and really it doesn't much matter because we're all just human beings in the end. We're all humans. So Obama is a human being over being biracial or black or anything else. Just human.
That's why I married who I did, because against my families wishes, I gave myself away at the church because I stood up for what I believed in, that we are all the same and race does not make us different unless we allow it to....we are the same.

You would be hard pressed to find anyone who is �100% African American�. Miscegenation by slave masters took care of that.
It�s all about self-identification. I have much lighter skin than Barack Obama and my son has even fairer skin and blue eyes. But we self-identify as African Americans.
I don�t see the relevance in tracking down the once or two of non-black blood in my family tree.
But being that Barack Obama�s mother is white, I can see why he would identify as bi-racial.