{"id":14636,"date":"2011-07-01T03:19:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T03:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14636"},"modified":"2014-05-21T20:27:58","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T20:27:58","slug":"claiming-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14636","title":{"rendered":"(Re)Claiming Rights?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8230;Consider the irony of a man so long under fire for his origins, comes to Ireland to celebrate one strand of those origins. He is called black because in the United States, we are messed up about origins. Why not call him \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a>, America\u2019s 44th white president?\u201d Or \u201cAmerica\u2019s third Irish American president\u201d (after <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ronald_Reagan\" target=\"_blank\">Ronald Reagan<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_F._Kennedy\" target=\"_blank\">John Kennedy<\/a>)? He is as much those things as its first black president. No? Never happen? Why not?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasalle.edu\/sociology\/faculty-profile\/?fid=273\" target=\"_blank\">Charles Gallagher<\/a>, chairman of the Sociology, Social Work and Criminal Justice Department at La Salle University, sees the notorious \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">one-drop rule<\/a>\u201d of U.S. social attitudes at work: \u201cA single \u2018drop of black blood\u2019 negates your ability to reconnect back to Europe. Race trumps all other questions of ethnic origin. <strong>Yet we know that 80 percent of all African Americans have European ancestors. Their history, which includes slavery, has cut them off both from Africa and from Europe, from being able to reclaim that great-grandfather in <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sicily\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Sicily<\/strong><\/a><strong> or <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eastern_Europe\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Eastern Europe<\/strong><\/a><strong>.\u201d&#8230;<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>John Timpane, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=14351\" target=\"_blank\">In visit to Ireland, O\u2019Bama seeks to reverse U.S. notions of race<\/a>,\u201d <em>The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, May 25, 2011. <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.philly.com\/2011-05-25\/news\/29582090_1_ollie-hayes-barack-obama-president-obama\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/articles.philly.com\/2011-05-25\/news\/29582090_1_ollie-hayes-barack-obama-president-obama<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;Consider the irony of a man so long under fire for his origins, comes to Ireland to celebrate one strand of those origins. He is called black because in the United States, we are messed up about origins. Why not call him \u201cBarack Obama, America\u2019s 44th white president?\u201d Or \u201cAmerica\u2019s third Irish American president\u201d (after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,3],"tags":[1243,6625],"class_list":["post-14636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-excerpts","tag-charles-gallagher","tag-john-timpane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14636","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=14636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}