Posted on 12/17/2006 9:02:23 AM PST by shrinkermd
The possible presidential candidacy of the biracial senator has sparked an illuminating debate on race.
WE KNOW this: Barack Obama is a rising star. He's a powerful speaker and a gifted writer. He is the only African American serving in the U.S. Senate. But is he black?
That's what New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch asked last month, and his answer was decidedly "no." No, Crouch wasn't just employing the old "blacker than thou" canard. Nor was he concerned with the fact that Obama was raised by his white mother. Rather, he was treating blackness not just as a racial (shared biology) identity but as an ethnic (shared historical experience) one. And isn't that what the switch of terms from "black" to "African American" was all about?
Think back to the late 1980s, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson became the most prominent black to call for the adoption of the term African American. "Just as we were called colored, but were not that," he said, "and then Negro, but not that, to be called black is just as baseless…. Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical cultural base. African Americans have hit that level of maturity." The problem, of course, is that most black Americans are descendants of slaves who had their African cultural heritage brutally stripped from them.
What Crouch is arguing is that what the majority of black Americans share is their ancestors' experience as human chattel, brought to these shores in the grips of chains. Slavery and segregation not only forged a rigid racial line between black and white but created a shared ethnic experience. For Crouch, the fact that Obama's father — whom Obama met only once — was a black Kenyan...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Sounds like he's well enough educated to be president. After all, it's unfair to question anything about the man.
Never got the Halle Berry obsession. I just don't see it.
"I just don't see it."
How 'bout them?
I dont know, but it would make him ineligible to be U.S. President.
Oh, but there's an important difference there. Blacks are African-American, Theresa is an African American. Do you see what the difference is?
It's sort of like the difference between "colored person" and "person of color".
Don't know, don't care. He's further proof that anybody can be manufactured into a DemonRat politician. With people like Obama, Carol Mosely Braun, and Slow-Joe Biden being appointed as our "betters", no wonder the country has the problems that it does.
Halle Berry is not black either, but managed to be a black winner of the Oscar.
Turning their backs on white mothers who raise them to be successful seems to be a common practice among non-blacks who want recognition as black achievers.
must be that pesky Constitution again
From the article:
"For Crouch, the fact that Obama's father — whom Obama met only once — was a black Kenyan who came to the U.S. to study at Harvard and the University of Hawaii removes him from the traditional black American narrative."
So I guess the answer is 'yes'.
oops, I should have read (and looked at the pictures) all the posts before commenting.
Me too. The more the media spouted off about her, the more I tuned out.
Like his experience ?
As a black woman, I see Obama as a black or African-American (although I am not a fan of that term). Saying that he is not really black because his ancestors were not American slaves is like saying that someone isn't a real white American unless their ancestors came here on the Mayflower. It doesn't make sense. If he looks black, then he is black. Now, he doesn't have the same heritage as most black people in this country, but that is a different issue.
One parent (his father) was a Kenyan native, Barack Hussein Obama, the senior. The person we speak of, is actually Barack Hussein Obama, the junior.
His mother is definitely Caucasian, and was born American. So by some twisted stretch of imagination and interpretation, Obama-Osama is "African-American". But he is equally as much a "Muslim-American", and in fact, only the accident of birth (in Hawaii) makes him "American". A legacy, not supported by his upbringing, which was in a Muslim household in Indonesia, where he had a Muslim stepfather (his mother and natural father divorced before Barack was two years old, and his father has since died).
A better description would be "Oreo" because of his half-white ancestry, and the outside only conceals a much different inside. He is recorded as being a member of a Christian church, but that is only protective coloration in his case. A child cannot grow up in the presence of that much Muslim influence in the home without being definitely shaped and molded into that set of mind. For certain, Obama-Osama has never RENOUNCED any ties with Islam, nor do we have a public declaration of devotion to Christianity.
The emptiest suit in America. Or perhaps, the most diabolical Trojan Horse in history.
Things are definitely not as they seem to be with Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
I belive Robert KKK Byrd made it clear.
Yeah, really not fair. There's no place in presidential politics for questions like that.
Yeah, really not fair. There's no place in presidential politics for questions like that.
His popularity stems from the fact he is hybrid white. He is from nonslave African stock. He is Eddie Murphy in Coming To America.......
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