why does obama get labelled as 'black'?

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Roaring Chubby said:
he is half white half black, and was raised by his white mother and family as his dad pissed off to africa when he was young.

maybe its to appease the black community in that they think they have a 'black' president, but truly he is half white and probably far more influenced by white culture than black.

should be called mixed race.
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To answer this question seriously, the racial history of the united states is such that anyone who could visually be identified as having any African ancestry was labeled as "black" and discriminated against accordingly. When there were laws on the books permitting black people to be legally discriminated against (within Obama's lifetime, although just barely, and the most vicious ones had already been struck down), the typical legal definition was that if you had one-eighth or more African ancestry, you were legally "black," or as they usually called it "Negro" or "colored." So many people who to modern eyes are obviously of mixed ancestry - and often of mostly white ancestry - were labeled as and considered themselves black. It's a relatively new phenomenon in American culture for someone to be identified as mixed race. Before that, if you looked even part black, you got called black and therefore treated like shit. There's a long and sad history of degradation and discrimination behind all this, but one obvious and easily noticed corollary of this is that many Americans who self-identify as black (as Obama does) are even lighter in skin tone than he is.
 


Frijj said:
Some bloke at the NSA reading the SMB man.

"Randy! Randy! Get over here!"

"What's up, Hank?"

"What in the name of the Lord does SEB mean?"
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More likely they'll look up the IPs associated with this board and ban you lot from ever travelling to the US. Then they'll kick my door down in the middle of the night and waterboard me until I tell them. Ironically, they'll have to ask so many times that their questions will be SEB themselves.
 
SYB_DC said:
To answer this question seriously, the racial history of the united states is such that anyone who could visually be identified as having any African ancestry was labeled as "black" and discriminated against accordingly. When there were laws on the books permitting black people to be legally discriminated against (within Obama's lifetime, although just barely, and the most vicious ones had already been struck down), the typical legal definition was that if you had one-eighth or more African ancestry, you were legally "black," or as they usually called it "Negro" or "colored." So many people who to modern eyes are obviously of mixed ancestry - and often of mostly white ancestry - were labeled as and considered themselves black. It's a relatively new phenomenon in American culture for someone to be identified as mixed race. Before that, if you looked even part black, you got called black and therefore treated like shit. There's a long and sad history of degradation and discrimination behind all this, but one obvious and easily noticed corollary of this is that many Americans who self-identify as black (as Obama does) are even lighter in skin tone than he is.
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Good post.

In the modern age though, calling someone black because they are 1/8th black and 7/8ths white seems inappropriate to be honest.
 
Roaring Chubby said:
Good post.

In the modern age though, calling someone black because they are 1/8th black and 7/8ths white seems inappropriate to be honest.
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Well, for the most part we're far past anyone knowing precisely what their ancestry is in America in any event. Most of the African ancestry in this country has been in the country for hundreds of years. In the intervening centuries there's been so much mixing of people, including black, white, Native American, and most anything else conceivable, that very few people - Obama being a notable exception - can say with any certainty what their precise origin is, and most of the white population is of multiple national origins as well. It's largely become a measure of self-identity these days.
 
Read an interesting article the other day that in places like New York which have such a melting pot culture and have done for some time, attempts to define race by the census parameters are becoming pointless. Ask the kids what race they are and they don't say they're Black or Hispanic or whatever, they say they're half Cuban and half Dominican, or part Jamaican part Panamanian etc. it won't be too many generations before racial / ethnic labels will be meaningless in some places.

And then there's Idaho.
 
Roaring Chubby said:
Good post.

In the modern age though, calling someone black because they are 1/8th black and 7/8ths white seems inappropriate to be honest.
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1/16 for Maori. And they get special privileges because of it.
 
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