There has been a lot of talk about B.H. Obama and how to phrase acceptable language about his race, color, ethnicity, religious preference and his inexperience in foreign affairs. It is quite good that he is a family oriented sort of a guy.
Mr. Obama is bi-racial. He is split down the middle because he definitely is an African American on his father’s side and his mother was a Caucasian American from Kansas. He could be called a Kenyan American but we don’t often do that to discriminate about the mixture of tribes that exists in Africa. We muddle about because of the tribal groups brought here in America due to slavery. Mr. Obama does not have slavery in his background and, he definitely is not “black”. He IS “tanned” as unfortunately described by the undisciplined leader of Italy. There are shades of Black which include Browns and Yellows. In fact there are very few authentically Black people in a color scale that makes any scientific sense out of pigmentation. Most Americans look at each other and see what tradition tells them and ignore the fact that each individual does NOT sort out by stereotypical beliefs unsupported by scientific technical studies.“ Negro” or Negroid (so-called Black) is the anthropologically correct term used to distinguish one of the three major races of our human kind. The other two are “Mongoloid” or Asiatic so-called Yellow – a difficult idea to assimilate for that would mean “Yellow” (actually more brown than yellow) Mongoloids would all suffer from jaundice) and Caucasoid or White. Some white Americans equate lack of color as superiority. Also there are Italian Americans, German Americans and so on. At one time each of these groups claimed superiority and “one of our guys could beat ten or yours.” We generalize and sometimes call the whole mass from Europe as European Americans but we like to be more specific. The same thing results from lumping all Asians in one group rather than distinguish the Chinese from Japanese and Koreans from Burmese. Then, too, in each of the major groups there are subgroups that have distinct differences from each other.
Mr. Obama is truly one half African (Kenyan) and one half American (his mother’s Kansas background goes back to Europe). It gets messy if you seek for specific and universally adopted labels. I would hope that the color of Mr. Obama’s skin does not detract from the content of his character. Just like there are all shades of white, Mr. Obama’s skin color is the least of important things we elected him for. If the “Black” population in America and a great many non-Black people in other parts of the world are pleased by contributing to his election, then this is justly a good thing. If he does well by ALL the people he represents this will be a great thing.
When I taught American and World History in High School I taught with great authority that there were three terms for divisions among us Humans. To be scientific about it, there were Negroid, Mongoloid and Caucasoid humans. (Carol is uncomfortable with the “Caucasoid” label). This was so 20th Century and I don’t think we are going to go backwards on this issue. We can look forward to better times when we all are accepted as equal under the law, social groupings and as we enter the voting booth. When you think of it, Humans first came out of Africa.