Posted on 11/26/2017 7:35:09 AM PST by drewh
Amid all the scrutiny that Malia Obama has been subjected to in her first months at Harvard University, nothing has attracted as much press attention as her being snapped by eager paparazzi kissing a white guy.
The guy—identified by enterprising journalists as 19-year-old Rory Farquharson—is a British-born Harvard sophomore. The kiss, outside last week’s Harvard-Yale football game, suggests that the 19-year-old former first daughter is boldly asserting her independence after eight sheltered years in the White House.
The families of presidents have always been the subject of tabloid fascination, but Malia Obama, like her father Barack Obama before her, inhabits an unprecedented position in America’s centuries-long race debate. Many, including other first daughters past and present, have argued quite reasonably that the press should leave Malia alone. Of course, that’s unlikely to happen. Never before has such a high-profile young woman of color navigated her way through the Ivy League dating pool. Which is why it’s all the more intriguing that Obama’s journey—at least for now—has ended with a white guy.
Marriage rates overall are in precipitous decline across America, but this is especially true for black Americans—only 30% of black American adults were married in 2015, Pew researchers found. Black women—particularly those with the most education like Obama—are faced with a limited pool if they seek to date within their race. Due to a host of societal conditions—from early death to mass incarceration—twice as many black women attend college as black men.
Among all demographics, African American women are the least likely to date outside their race—with barely 12% marrying non-black spouses. The reasons behind this trend are as disturbing as they are depressing. For one thing, black women are America’s least-desired ethnic group by men of all races, according to ongoing research by dating site OK Cupid. On a community level, explained Stanford law professor Ralph Richard Banks in his book Is Marriage for White People?, black women often face a type of pressure to marry within the race that white simply women do not experience.
“There is still enormous social pressure on black women to only marry black men—to ‘sustain’ the race and build strong black families,” Banks told me in an interview in 2011. “In short, no matter the personal cost,” Banks said, “black women are encouraged to marry ‘down’ before they marry ‘out.'”
So far, Obama’s kiss is been met with relatively little backlash. This decorum, however, is likely to fade if Obama continues to date—and ultimately marry—outside her race. One need only look to the vitriol heaped upon tennis star Serena Williams last winter when she revealed her engagement to Alex Ohanian, the white co-founder of Reddit who’s now her husband (and daughter’s father). Williams’ announcement was met with messages of anger, betrayal and dismay across #blacktwitter. Williams may be rich, famous, and stratospherically accomplished, but for many black Americans her romantic decisions are not fully her own.
Like Williams, Obama cannot escape the optics of her new boyfriend’s whiteness. Whether we like it or not, Farquharson’s race and class—his father is a CEO of an investment fund and he was the “head boy” at an expensive private school in the UK—have implications far beyond her rarefied milieu.
For the moment, at least, those implications are likely still years away. At just 19, Obama’s long-term romantic trajectory is impossible to predict. What is certain is that the frustrating absence of black male peers means that nobody should be surprised if Obama chooses to date—or eventually marry—”out.”
I swung by to troll this article....
Who cares what color they are.?
“””””””Barack is half white, and 100% gay.”””””””
His mother is all white. Every relative and ancestor he has ever had in the United States is white. He has never known his father.
Yet he thinks he is black. I will go with....He’s a fag, Jim.
She a ho.
Exactly.
People bond with one another based on culture and character.
Indeed it’s the only card they have to play losers.
Maybe Malaria is dating a white guy as a jab at her parents...
It will be Blacks who show their hate for the mixed-race couple. It’s Blacks who are full of anger and hatred.
Unless and until Malaria and Sasquarch actually commit some horrible crime like drunkenly smashing into a school bus full of kindergarteners, can we just leave them the f%#* alone and not have to hear about their exploits? Let them just be young adults with a little privacy
Are those Secret Service agents wearing MAGA hats?
But - regardless of her future spouse's race - won't Malia's children probably identify themselves as "Black?" Won't any family she founds (unless she uses, e.g., ova donated by a non-Black woman) be "Black," by popular definition?
Regards,
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Not true. I saw a 'collage' of twitter comments from black women and they were 'not nice'. I also had to laugh when I saw this in the article:
“There is still enormous social pressure on black women to only marry black men—to ‘sustain’ the race and build strong black families,”
Where is the enormous "social pressure" to MARRY (at all, regardless of color) and build "strong black families"??? 70+% of black babies are born out of wedlock - I see no enormous social pressure to even keep their knees together, much less marry .... if any pressure was there, you would have much less of what is going on in the black race - unwed teens, fatherless kids, crime/murder rates through the roof, gangs, the whole 9 yards (ok, didn't mean to do it, but the reference to football is appropriate - National Felon League). Malia Obama is not going to marry within the "typical" black race ... or white. She's the daughter of a former president & like it or not, there are perks, prestige, and 'privilege' that go with the association. She's living in rarified air & she'll attract those who do the same .... Serena is another example of this.
Just stop. Please.
Some kids grow up hating their parents - everything they do is to shame and humiliate them.
You hope they grow out of it, and most do.
Why is this even a topic for Malia (and her sister, if she should marry a white man)? Both have a white grandmother thus white ancestry.
Many in the so-called black community who are critical of Malia and Serena likely have white ancestry too, whether or not they realize it.
Facts is facts...
Now, don’t go all PC on us...
Statistics from Pew and Ok Cupid......underwhelmed
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