Good Question: Is Obama The First Black President?
WCCO is asking and I answered. Read the story or watch the video.
My thanks to Jason for asking for my input. We had an abbreviated conversation on the topic a few weeks ago. I’m glad to see he followed through with the story. I was also happy to see that some points I thought were important made it into the story on account of the fact that the other interviewees were able to articulate it more eloquently than I could.
I’ll also add that I’ve gotten tremendous value from the Racism and White Privilege discussion series I’ve been attending. It really helps just to have concrete definitions to work from. You absolutely must attend if Rainbow Families offers it again next year.
Here are the main points I’d like to convey on whether or not it’s fair to call Barack Obama “the first black president”:
- Race — a label applied to people based on skin color/features — is different from culture and ethnicity. We all notice race. We all subconsciously assign a race to people (or do so consciously if we’re confused by what we see). The problem is when people associate assumptions (usually) based on culture/ethnicity to the race label they’ve assigned to someone and treat people differently accordingly.
- Multiracial people’s self-identification varies widely (largely due to varying cultural/ethnic experiences) and is almost always different from how other people label them.
- It doesn’t necessarily matter if people call Barack black/african-american vs mixed. It’s what assumptions they make and responses they have based on whatever label they give him.
- This whole concept of race/ethnicity/privilege is not simple. People don’t really know how to talk about it and white people are afraid of offending people of color. It’s hard enough for people to grok that someone “different” is in the White House; we, as a society, can’t even go there with the biracial part yet.
Agree? Disagree? Anything I missed?
Republicans certainly tried to emphasize Obama’s “otherness” before the election. They rarely went after his race directly, except, to an extent, by connecting hm with Jeremiah Wrights and implying that both he and Michelle had some sort of extreme Afrocentric views. But generally they played on it more subtly, by pushing a lot of subtle cues about Obama somehow being different and unknowable, and playing on fears of difference.
Which is indicative of just how ingrained societal messages and our reactions to people of other races are. Taking race out of the equation, John McCain’s life is a whole lot of other from mine: Military background, insanely rich. Would I vote against him because I can’t identify with him personally AT ALL? I like to think that that wouldn’t be the case if I agreed with his political policies.
I’d have voted for him if I thought he’d be fun to have a beer with. As it happens, I think I would have more fun having a beer with Obama. Mostly because people would come up to me and say “Did you just have a beer with OBAMA?” whereas if I had a beer with McCain, people would come up and say “How is your grandfather? He looks a little sick …”
Maybe we need another Good Question about how it’s still cool to be ageist, Max. :-)
Congrats, Erica on the great interview and the publicity for this site!
My two kids identify their multiracial/cultural identities in different ways. My son, 25, claims “mixed” as a political statement. My daughter, 22, says “black.” Both hang out in almost all-black circles of friends, yet their closest friends are almost always “mixed.” Both have kids whose other parents are black with two black parents. Neither of them see their kids as “mixed.” But my children do walk around in the world with a multicultural sensibility and relate to what Obama has to say about who he is.
I’M JUST SAYING MCCAIN LOOKS LIKE MY GRANDPA, JASON
Who has been dead for 25 years.
However Obama identifies himself is how we should identify him. As a biracial person, I think that it is important to also recognize that Obama is biracial. To continue the black/white binary only seeks to perpetuate racial classifications of the past that limited people to either one category or another. Our world is so diverse, with so many beautiful mixes of people.
I think part of people’s trouble is he hasn’t been overly forthcoming about how he self-identifies. To the small extent that he has, people still don’t get it. I don’t think that’s incompatible with calling him the first black president, though.
I was surprised by this comment Obama made at his press conference this afternoon regarding plans to get a family puppy. From the NY Times:
…Near the end of the brief session, he alluded to a domestic choice facing his family: what kind of dog to bring to the White House. Perhaps, he said, the Obama family should visit a shelter and pick out “a mutt like me….”
As the white mother of biracial children (see earlier post) this comment strikes me as the kind of in-humor we in multiracial families might use among ourselves (my own kids, when younger, always joked about our family being full of mutts — people and pets) but not so much in public. I’m curious what folks who are multiracial think of this.
I need to find video of this press conference, because I’ve heard so many people mention this exact thing.
I’m glad to hear him say it. I would think/hope it helps cut down on wild speculation about his self-identification. And it helps take the taboo out of the subject.
Here’s the “Mutt like me” reference. I think it’s pretty funny, actually.