But if Obama’s capacity for racial unification is to be credibly assessed, then the white heritage with which he is intimately familiar must be acknowledged as prominently as his black identity is. |
The talk of Obama as a presidential contender centers on this power to unite. But if Obama’s capacity for racial unification is to be credibly assessed, then the white heritage with which he is intimately familiar must be acknowledged as prominently as his black identity is. His black identity has been imposed without incident and paraded in public with fanfare. Yet, while Obama is known as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, he in fact is more probably the periodical’s first biracial president. He is celebrated as only the fifth African-American ever elected to the United States Senate, although he is more accurately among a tiny group of Americans of equal black and white heritage who have been elected to the United States Senate. It is as if the well researched and now-officially-recognized racial category for mixed Americans does not exist-or, if it does, never should be taken seriously as a category of its own, lest history be subject to significant revision informed by an enlightened embrace of ethnic distinctions that matter to every American’s identity.
Amos N. Jones, “Black Like Obama: What the Junior Illinois Senator’s Appearance on the National Scene Reveals About Race in America, and Where We Should Go from Here,” Thurgood Marshall Law Review, Volume 31 (2005): 84-85.
Tags: Amos Jones, Amos N. Jones