Mixed Race Studies

Op-Ed: President Obama and the Mixed Race Mix-up

Digital Journal
2009-03-22

Hargrove Jones

Today, a young woman in a California audience, stood up and told President Obama that she is mixed-race, and glad that the president is someone she can relate to. Does that mean she cannot relate to her father, or her mother?
 
As a matter of fact, if her parents shared her point of view, she would not exist.

Confused thinking, like a person with a black parent and a white parent, purporting to need a mixed race person, in order to relate; echos the chaotic ideas of Alice Walker’s bi-racial daughter, claiming her mother is jealous because she has a rich white father. As if she cannot conceive of the truth, which is, that it is her mother who is rich; and it is her mother who picked that white man, to be her father. This type of mis-perceiving can only occur, when you deny who you are…

…Mixed race, without white parent involvement, has been part and parcel of the Diasporan community for 400 years, which is why those who are a part of this new social experience, and who want to be identified as mixed race or bi-racial, have difficulty distinguishing themselves physically since, large numbers of Diasporans, who are pleased to own their African heritage, look more European than most bi-racial people.

People who are of African descent, but who want to excuse themselves from that designation, are plagued by social concepts like the one drop rule. According to the one drop rule, one drop of African blood makes one African. But it is more than a biological description, it speaks to the historic attitude toward Africans since, the concept is not reciprocal. One drop of European blood, does not a European make. Inferentially, the rule speaks to a racial measure that is qualitative, not quantitative…

…Most mixed race people, like all people of African descent, wear a symbol in their flesh, that has the same effect as the star of David appended to the Jews during the holocaust. It identifies us with slanderous misrepresentations, and as people who are available for abuse.

In my opinion, the mixed race claim is an effort at exception from a maligned group, and the aggressive inclusion of President Obama, is an attempt to dignify it. Only people of African descent are perpetually saying, that they are something, besides the obvious.

Acknowledgment of racial and ethnic heritage is fine and right, but it should be responsive to a question, or in a meaningful context, not an anxious announcement that begs to escape the many painful experiences that racism provides.

Mixed race claimants should be aware, that whatever you call yourself in America, if you look like you are of African descent, you will be treated like you are of African descent. But it’s everyone’s right to be called whatever suits them, and the woman in the audience, obviously wants to be called mixed race, but President Barack Obama is, a self-described African American. She should have given him, the same respect, that she wants for herself.

To read the opinion piece, click here.