What Is The Real Issue With Obama Choosing Black? |
What Is The Real Issue With Obama Choosing Black?
The Atlanta Post
2010-05-04
Yvette Carnell
During candidate Obama’s run for Presidency, he said “I self-identify as an African-American. That’s how I am treated and that’s how I am viewed. And I’m proud of it.” Case closed right? One would think so, but now that President Obama has checked “black” on his Census form, some of his detractors are criticizing him for running away from his heritage. So please allow me to set the record straight….
President Obama checked “black” on his Census form because, well, he is black.
It is a mark of evolution that Americans are allowed to identify themselves as “some other race” on their Census forms, but aren’t most of us multi-racial? If Obama’s critics have decided that he should adhere to the strictest of rules where his race classification is concerned, then shouldn’t all Americans be held to that same standard? And if we’re all held to that standard, won’t that make the task of completing the Census form an act in futility for many, if not most, Americans? We are a melting pot, and as such, a significant number of us are an amalgamation of a wide variety of races and are therefore, by definition, multiracial. The only distinction is that race isn’t as much about definition as it is about identification…
…Some observers have even made the case that Obama’s choosing “black” on his Census form was a marginalization of his white mother and grandparents. It was not. It was, however, an acknowledgment of the visual queues associated with race, and to a larger extent-racism.
What’s more, isn’t it a bit hypocritical for those who’ve fought for the right of multiracial and biracial people to choose a race category which more suitably fits the way in which they self identify, i.e. a choice more ethnically encompassing than purely Black, White, or Asian to now force President Obama into their preferred “multiracial” box?…
Read the entire essay here.
Tags: The Atlanta Post, Yvette Carnell