{"id":14372,"date":"2011-06-23T02:47:32","date_gmt":"2011-06-23T02:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14372"},"modified":"2011-10-27T19:35:52","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T19:35:52","slug":"what-is-the-real-issue-with-obama-choosing-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14372","title":{"rendered":"What Is The Real Issue With Obama Choosing Black?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/atlantapost.com\/2010\/05\/04\/opinion-what-is-the-real-issue-at-hand-with-obama-choosing-black\/\" target=\"_blank\">What Is The Real Issue With Obama Choosing Black?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/atlantapost.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Atlanta Post<\/a><br \/>\n2010-05-04<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yvette Carnell<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>During candidate <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Obama\u2019s<\/a> run for Presidency, he said \u201cI self-identify as an African-American. That\u2019s how I am treated and that\u2019s how I am viewed. And I\u2019m proud of it.\u201d Case closed right?\u00a0 One would think so, but now that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=6435\" target=\"_blank\">President Obama has checked \u201cblack\u201d on his Census form<\/a>, some of his detractors are criticizing him for running away from his heritage. So please allow me to set the record straight\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>President Obama checked \u201cblack\u201d on his Census form because, well, he <em>is<\/em> black.<\/p>\n<p>It is a mark of evolution that Americans are allowed to identify themselves as \u201csome other race\u201d on their Census forms, but aren\u2019t most of us multi-racial?\u00a0 If Obama\u2019s critics have decided that he should adhere to the strictest of rules where his race classification is concerned, then shouldn\u2019t all Americans be held to that same standard?\u00a0 And if we\u2019re all held to that standard, won\u2019t 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.\u00a0 The only distinction is that race isn\u2019t as much about definition as it is about identification&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Some observers have even made the case that Obama\u2019s choosing \u201cblack\u201d on his Census form was a marginalization of his white mother and grandparents.\u00a0 It was not. It was, however, an acknowledgment of the visual queues associated with race, and to a larger extent-racism.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, isn\u2019t it a bit hypocritical for those who\u2019ve 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 <strong>to now force President Obama into their preferred \u201cmultiracial\u201d box?&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Read the entire essay <a href=\"http:\/\/atlantapost.com\/2010\/05\/04\/opinion-what-is-the-real-issue-at-hand-with-obama-choosing-black\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Is The Real Issue With Obama Choosing Black? The Atlanta Post 2010-05-04 Yvette Carnell During candidate Obama\u2019s run for Presidency, he said \u201cI self-identify as an African-American. That\u2019s how I am treated and that\u2019s how I am viewed. And I\u2019m proud of it.\u201d Case closed right?\u00a0 One would think so, but now that President [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,33,8,26,394,20],"tags":[6633,6632],"class_list":["post-14372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-census","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-the-atlanta-post","tag-yvette-carnell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}