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 don’t believe she is the real daughter of Mooch and Barry, but of another couple that the Obama’s have known for years.
Could it be that only 12% are not the size of an Abrams tank and not batsh!t crazy?
My very best friend, from the time we were five years old, is black and he never dated a black woman. He married a wonderful Cuban refugee. He told me years ago that black women were stupid, crazy, and always seemed to denigrate black males.
I think you may have just insulted everybody who was a third grader in 1935.
“Let them just be young adults with a little privacy”
Making out, smoking pot, and twerking in front of crowds, hardly qualifies as one seeking privacy. These gutter slum kids will reap what they sow.
p.s. They’re both old enough to know this.
are the man and woman in the background (SS?) wearing MAGA hats? :-)
If she attended Howard instead of Harvard, this wouldn’t be a story.
I agree. Forget race the poor girl inherited her father’s face and her mothers azz. Not a winning combo. Who can blame her for saying yes to a hot guy. It likely doesn’t happen every day.
Malia Obama and her life SHOULD BE OFF LIMITS FOR THE PRESS. THIS STORY SHOULD NOT BE POSTED.
PFFT!
Just like the Bush daughters were *off-limits* and Barron Trump is *off-limits*.
Great real.
Malia is 19...an adult by most accounts?
Look up "octoroon" and "one drop rule". He qualifies.
I feel Bush’s daughters should have been off limits and Barron too...
I tried to hold back but she wouldn’t let me!!!
Oh, I understand that he is technically somewhat black by blood. BUTT, it is very revealing that he completely ignores that he is mostly white. That is what I call a pure racist.
Secret Service is either wearing MAGA or Harvard ball caps..
‘White Privilege’ has it’s advantages.
She is an adult.
“70+% of black babies are born out of wedlock - I see no enormous social pressure to even keep their knees together, much less marry .... “
Perhaps the rarity of marriage ADDS pressure for those few marriages to be to black men?
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