Barack Obam’s Black Value System
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2006/12/obamas_black_va.html
Obama’s Mysterious Black Value System
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/02/obamas-mysterio.html
For later reading
When you want to assess yourself or someone else as to their inner identity or self you can look at the follow: (1)How they look; (2)What others think of them; (3)And, what they do.
This will, ordinarily, give you a rough idea of a person's identity in contemporary America.
The danger for Blacks and others who strongly identify with racial characteristics and history is they lose their actual identity as individuals. The idea of race influences all of their perspectives such that nothing can be understood without it.
Blacks in America have characteristically had great difficulty with this. They are race conscious 100% of the time, or so it seems, and assume that whites are similarly conscious of their race 100% of the time. Very hard to break but many do. Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and Shelby Steele all would be examples, but, even here, I suspect if we could know their inner lives more, they might confess this is a constant struggle.
After all, an African-American wakes up every day, looks in the mirror and sees a black person. What is crucial, is they somehow overcome this sufficient to have a real grasp of being an individual, being responsible as an indivicual and not accepting their or other's opinion of them as the final determinant on how they think of themselves.
I only listed three things contributing to identity; however, there is an additional one--Heidegger would label it Dasein. There is a part of us that can reflect on the other three and respond to our identity and judge whether we are authentic or inauthentic. IMHO it is inauthentic to see yourself so much as a part of a group that you lack the perspectivism necessary to render individual judgement and decision making.