Barack Obama keeps referring to himself as a black man. Indeed he goes out of his way to stress that he is "African American." His parents as well as his friends all called him "Barry" when he was growing up, but Obama insisted on being called by his African given name: Barack. For two decades now he has attended a church which describes itself as authentically"black" and unashamedly "African." If this seems strange when you consider the fact that Obama has one black parent and one white parent, it is.
Obama's racial self-definition is derived from the famous, or infamous, one-drop rule which continues to hold sway in America but nowhere else. In other countries, say the nations of South America or Africa, if you have mixed blood you are considered mixed-race. It would be absurd to call a person who is 50 or even 70 percent white a "black" person. Why then does the United States use this weird rule according to which a single drop (or any visible presence) of blackness makes you automatically "black" and "African American"?
Many people think that the one-drop rule is a product of slavery. Not true. During slavery, the general rule was that slave status passed through the mother. In other words, if a white slave master had sexual relations with a female black slave, the offspring would automatically be considered a slave. By contrast, in the relatively rare case that a black slave produced a child with a free white woman, the offspring would be legally counted as white and therefore free. Obama has a white mother and a black father: in the antebellum South his racial status would pass through his mother.
The one-drop rule was a product of segregation and Jim Crow, not slavery. It developed in the postbellum South as a way to enforce a strict line of demarcation between black and white. Without such a rule an intermediate class of mixed-race mulattoes would make segregation increasingly difficult to enforce. Consequently the Southern ruling class mandated that even a modest trace of African heritage was sufficient to count as "black."
Strangely the one-drop rule has outlived segregation and is today embraced by the very groups the rule was designed to subjugate. Today the NAACP and the Black Caucus live by the one-drop rule, defining as "black" and "African American" anyone who has any discernible evidence of black ancestry. Reading Obama's The Audacity of Hope and his recent speech on race, I see no awareness of these ironies and no attempt to intelligently grapple with them. He is content to maunder about "complexity" and the need to "come together" despite our differences.
The deep question for Obama is not merely "how can America transcend race while continuing to have race-conscious policies?" but also "how can America transcend race as long as the one-drop rule remains intact?" Far from producing answers, Obama shows no recognition that these are even questions that need to be addressed. Meanwhile, Garry Wills in the current New York Review compares Obama's race speech to one of the great speeches of Abraham Lincoln. When I read this on the plane I almost lost my peanuts!
How embarrassing it is to see intellectuals like Wills and sophisticated magazines like the New York Review of Books and the New Republic fawn and grovel over Obama! You can be sure that if a white political candidate mouthed Obama's vague and vacuous nostrums, these liberals would not be issuing such hosannas. In this sense Geraldine Ferraro was right, not so much about Obama as about his white "amen corner." They are giving Obama something he has never asked for as a presidential candidate: intellectual affirmative action.
Reader Comments ( Page 36 of 37)
526.
Once again, someone of seeming intellectual credentials is muddying the waters by making statements that clearly stem from "talking points" designed to obfuscate issues and make tortured comparisons in an effort tear down any efforts to address issues. What is worse than these magazines "fawning" over the Obama speech is the nakedly blatant attempt by neo-conservatives and garden-variety misanthropes to misinterpret those words and transform them. We now have people translating anything out of Obama's mouth into so-called evidence of a mad, racist, uber-liberal, panty-waist who will weaken our national defenses and run the eonomy into the ground with his policies. Hasn;t anybody notice that W has already acomplished those ends on his own.
Secondly D should be ashamed of hiself for inferring that since the one-drop rule was developed under Jim Crow, a child conceived between a slave male and a white woman would have been designated as white and free. That's a load of poppycock that not even a delusional neo-conservative should comfortably be able to swallow.
How ironic that my first venture into this realm finds me responding to someone so nakedly partisan who is passing off their personal bias as if it were scholarship, or even emanating from a mind tht is rationally, objectively and truthfully taking in the real world, all the givens and the options available.
The time for honest dialogue and realistic analysis is way past due. Hiding our heads in the sand is not a viable option, and whether or not one likes Obama, it's time to admit any "change" from the direction the country has been taken in the past seven years or so is not only warranted but welcomed.
Sanjulo at 1:59AM on Apr 16th 2008
527. bravo!
Dghost at 2:22AM on Apr 16th 2008
528. I just want to say... I am a black man. But people keep calling me white. All because of a religious breeding ritual. I don't think there are any white people anymoore. We are a new species with every spin of the Orion circle. Heads are spinning with neo-arroganism!
dfrecklenish at 2:42AM on Apr 16th 2008
529. I juz wanna say, eyez thinkin oui al shood talk about thiz. We wuz thinkin, and then we found these buks. They didn't say nuttin, but we fond'em inturestin. We stacked 'em in circles. Then we new'em wood evoke thought, cuz one circle is like a nutter circle, then we cud confuz'em. So me and da kin fok could dance, cuz we was dizze. I cum from da plaz we al newd what wuz goin on. Cuz I got my info fromz a student body prezident. She red all dem buks.
JimmyJo at 3:28AM on Apr 16th 2008
530. The article is articulate, accurate, and resplendent in it's acuity. Simply put, Obama is lying through his teeth to win an election, and he proves his racism, non Christian teachings in every action he takes. It would be more palatable if he'd honestly claim he is a muslin, distrusts or hates whites, etc. but then he wouldn't make it to first base, so let us dissect what he means being a Christian is.
If by Christian he means being a loving, Jesus embracing, Just, non prejudiced, 'Uniter" of all people, Color Blind, non-hating, egalitarian, honest speaking, truth telling, charitable, non-messianic Demigod worshipping, America supporter, Lover of ALL RACES, including the whites, Jews, Latinos, Asians etc., then SORRY, NO HE IS NOT A CHRISTIAN. Witness his mentors, Rev. Wright, and Wright's Church's hero, Farrakhan. Witness his own words in his own books about his AFRICAN FATHER who abandoned him at age 2 being his 'ideal' which he relates to, but is embarrassed, and denies his white mother and grandparents who worked for him to become the rich, successful almost President of the U.S. I, as a person of mixed ethnicity think it's time and then some that we all stop claiming prejudice in the U.S. Sure there are idiots out there against blacks, hispanics, women (more so against women than anyone), Christians, Jews, Asians, etc. But even Bush had a thoroughly mixed cabinet, and none turned out to be Saviours anymore than other white contenders, so let's look at the content of Obama's SOUL, not his WORDS as MLK would have asked us to do---though some of them are majestic, while others are bigoted, stupid, cruel and full of hatred, and I find his soul lacking too cause he acts like a cat in a cat box---however much he tries to shovel it aside, his background & the hatred taught in his Church, and the influences that made his stain on his soul still stink. HE ISN'T SUITED TO BE PRESIDENT. HILLARY IS.
Voters Unite at 1:54PM on Apr 17th 2008
531. brian; you'll be missed. Remember though, Dinesh sets the tone here. He's a racist and an atheist basher (even though he's agnostic???). If you want some place with less confrontation, I'm sure there are christian chat groups out there. It's been interesting.
Take care.
Ryan Anderson at 6:50AM on Apr 16th 2008
532. Sanjulo - Watch out for those "Garden Variety Misanthropes". Those obfuscating weasels. They'll get you every time.
Dave at 6:59AM on Apr 16th 2008
533. And say what you want about McCain. He's not snooty.-Dave
Stupid reason to support a candidate Dave. Vote on issues, not personality
"Obama will double U.S. spending on foreign aid to $50 billion a year by 2012."-Common sense
Good , they absolutely need it. Common sense should tell you that spending Billions of dollars on the poor is much better than spending trillions on a needless war that kills civilians. The extra saved from war can help the middle class in America.
"If it wasn't enough we have people in America on welfare, we also have to extend our aid to Africa? Sending tax money out to foreign nations is wrong no matter where you send it so long as there are poor people IN AMERICA."-Common Sense
So you're against welfare programs and you want help for Americans? Which one is it common sense? The poor in America are better of than the poor in Africa. As a person who regularly helps out at a local charity I see many fattened poor wearing Nike's, caring cell phones and sleeping on nice cots. The poor in Africa don't even have water!
"Isn’t it also amazing that the middle class must go poor paying for college when the lower economic class gets the federal government to pay for them, even if they get low grades compared to middle class students. College is too expensive for many middle class families, especially when there are multiple teens going into college at once."-Common sense
I actually agree with you there but how is McCain going to solve this? Have you seen his issues on education? He voted no twice on spending tax dollars on education, no on setting a national standard on education and smaller classes. He supports the student voucher system that makes parents pay for 2 education systems. (This is a sneaky way for religious schools to receive government money to support religious education) The only yeses on his record are for abstinence education and prayers in schools.
How is the middle class going to benefit from this? They are not. McCain also has proven fierce on waging war with Iran under false pretenses while we still occupy Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you know what the current war has cost us, education primarily? All across the country states are cutting taxes and budgeting for the fiscal year by cutting back on educational programs available to the poor and middle classes. DO you know what this promotes if it cuts education along with welfare programs? Crime, crime and more crime. If that is what you want then sure, vote for McCain.
*Welfare, and other "entitlement" services were made by the federal government to be only temporary to get Americans out of the Great Depression. They were a drain on the financial health of the nation back then, and even more so now because people on these sevices has been increasing greatly now that immigrants and lazy people are exploiting these services.-Common Sense
Where did you get your common sense from? Those exploiting from the welfare system are white American single mothers and the elderly. Blacks and immigrants are on the bottom of this list. Know your issues and programs before you vote. McCain has admitted to having no economic knowledge, and his war knowledge is very questionable .
goddess1prevail at 9:10AM on Apr 16th 2008
534. And say what you want about McCain. He's not snooty.
Dave at 1:10AM on Apr 16th 2008
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He's not SNOOTY? That's your criteria for president of the united states? He's a warmonger that will ruin us forever, but he's not snooty so let him have his chance? He's almost as dumb as Bush and has a worse temper, but since he's not condescending he's okay? Are you MAD? Plus, he flip-flops all over the place! He used to disagree with Bush's tax cuts and other things, and now he's practically licking Bush's crack.
Stop hating Obama nd realize that he's the only one that can change anything around here for the better. The other two are horribly dishonest and self-centered. And McCain is the worst of the two. Hillary is a typical political liar, but McCain is that plus an idiot and a violence-embracing man. He will "stay the course" all the way to Hades.
See the LIES. You're too focused on minutia, as Hillary and McCain want you to be.
Godless Heathen Brian at 10:46AM on Apr 16th 2008
535. Especially when Barrack reveals just how little he understands the average American.
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Y'Ever think that it's hard for a brilliant man to really "get" morons? The average person is, I'm sorry to say, pretty much a moron in this country nowadays. Beer-swillin, gun-totin, bible-thumpin, high-school-dropouts are everywhere. Bowling, for instance, cannot be the measure of a man. And yet, the morons seem to think that the president needs to be a good bowler more than a good speaker or a good leader.
We DESPERATELY need a leader that is NOT A MORON.
So get used to your brilliant president not "getting" a lot of the less-educated people, but still helping them to lift themselves our of joblessness and poverty, because that's what he's good at. He's proved it before. Stop insisting on a beer-buddy for president. That's how we got the last asshole.
Godless Heathen Brian at 11:01AM on Apr 16th 2008
536. And isn't it nice that the former Nazi Ratburger, I mean Pope Benedict, is visiting the US?
When he was a cardinal, he's the one that was responsible for the pederast priests not being prosecuted or fired, but only relocated so that they could molest other boys. And now, he's here to "address" the problem of pederasty in the clergy! He was part of the problem, exacerbated it, and now pretends that he wants to be a part of the solution. Typical hypochristian doublespeak.
Godless Heathen Brian at 11:07AM on Apr 16th 2008
537. And are you people WATCHING the Mormon women from that polygamist ranch bust? They were on the Today show apparently...
It's like they're hypnotized! Meredith asked one of them what the minimum age is in her religion for girls to marry, and she just stared at the camera and kept repeating "There is no force" i.e. that the childern are not coerced to marry. Meredith mentioned thirteen, fourteen... the woman monotoned "not that young" but couldn't or wouldn't specify any age. Meredith asked her "Even if they're not forced, isn't thirteen too young to be able to make that kind of decision?" and the woman went all glassy-eyed, even moreso than before, as if she didn't understand the question, and repeated "there is no force" as if that answered the question. She looked like someone that had just taken 500 milligrams of thorazine.
Ahh, religion. You steal the minds of good people and leave festering crap in it's place.
Godless Heathen Brian at 11:16AM on Apr 16th 2008
538. 536. And are you people WATCHING the Mormon women from that polygamist ranch bust? They were on the Today show apparently...
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The whole thing is so sad. The poor kids. First of all, they have been victimized already, then taken from their home, and now they are in state custody. I wish they would have made all of the men leave and then CPS could have moved into the ranch to conduct their investigation. Maybe it would have been a little less traumatic. The children have been taught to fear outsiders. How will they ever assimilate into society?
My thoughts are with all of them.
tay at 11:53AM on Apr 16th 2008
539. Goddess/GHB-You folks are jumping to conclusions. All I said was McCain wasn't snooty. I didn't say that was the reason I was voting for him, or even if I was voting for him at all. Good grief.
And if Obama is so brilliant, why would he insult the very people he wants voting for him? (What a genius.) And who cares about race? I just want to know, what the heck are this man's qualifications for President? He seems to be incredibly naive about a number of issues, particularly Islamic Radicalism.
And regarding Iraq, our federal budget is about 3 trillion as year and we spend $80-100 million a year in Iraq (2.7%-3.33 of the overall budget). And some of that money goes to military salaries and to US Defense Companies w/American workers.
And if there is one day a functioning Democracy in Iraq, at least we get something for our money. Where is the proof that dumping Billions more into education makes anybody one bit smarter? It costs $25,000 per year per student in Washington, DC to produce graduates, many of whom can't read their own diplomas.
My wife teaches in a small private school where most of the graduates go to college, the tuition is $4000 per year and a number of national merit scholars are produced each year. I'd say throwing money at education is hardly foolproof.
I don't hate Obama. I just don't see a leader. I see a guy who's forever equivocating and trying to frantically do damage control every time he says something ridiculous.
And listen to yourselves. First lying didn't matter with Clinton. Then of course lying mattered when Bush became President. Now that Obama has told a few unbelievable whoppers and then backtracked, lying is incidental and trivial once more. Be consistent. Because if you don't, you're being every bit as hypocritical as you think the politicians are being.
Dave at 7:01PM on Apr 16th 2008
540. OK, I know, I know. That should be $80-100 Billion.
Dave at 7:04PM on Apr 16th 2008