{"id":17260,"date":"2011-10-24T22:10:48","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T22:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=17260"},"modified":"2011-10-27T19:35:46","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T19:35:46","slug":"obama%e2%80%99s-racial-identity-is-his-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=17260","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s Racial Identity Is His Call"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.poynter.org\/how-tos\/newsgathering-storytelling\/diversity-at-work\/93222\/obamas-racial-identity-is-his-call\/\" target=\"_blank\">Obama\u2019s Racial Identity Is His Call<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.poynter.org\" target=\"_blank\">Poynter.<\/a><br \/>\n2008-12-16<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/about.poynter.org\/about-us\/our-people\/tom-huang-0\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Huang<\/a><\/strong>, Sunday &amp; Enterprise Editor<br \/>\n<em>The Dallas Morning News<\/em><br \/>\nAlso Ethics and Diversity Fellow at <em>The Poynter Institute<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Not long ago, I sat on a journalism panel in which the question of \u201cWhat are you?\u201d came up&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;I thought about the \u201cWhat are you?\u201d question when I read Jesse Washington\u2019s recent Associated Press story about the hubbub surrounding <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama\u2019s<\/a> racial identity.<\/p>\n<p>Obama self-identifies as African American, because, as he\u2019s explained in the past, \u201cthat\u2019s how I\u2019m treated and that\u2019s how I\u2019m viewed. I\u2019m proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0It turns out that some people are less than comfortable with that. Some argue that it\u2019s too simplistic to call him \u201cblack.\u201d After all, he was raised by his white mother and white grandparents. Others argue that it\u2019s more accurate to identify Obama as \u201cbiracial\u201d or \u201cmultiracial.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Well, let\u2019s give the individual the power of self-identification. If Obama wants to be identified as \u201cblack,\u201d let\u2019s give him that choice. If <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tiger_Woods\" target=\"_blank\">Tiger Woods<\/a> wants to be identified as \u201cmultiracial\u201d (or \u201cCablinasian,\u201d for that matter), more power to him.<\/p>\n<p>The reality is we still live in a society in which racial constructs, however antiquated they might be, still matter.<strong> They help us be mindful about how our cultural traditions have shaped our identities. They help us remember how centuries of oppression and discrimination shaped our politics, economic divide and social strata&#8230;<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poynter.org\/how-tos\/newsgathering-storytelling\/diversity-at-work\/93222\/obamas-racial-identity-is-his-call\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obama\u2019s Racial Identity Is His Call Poynter. 2008-12-16 Tom Huang, Sunday &amp; Enterprise Editor The Dallas Morning News Also Ethics and Diversity Fellow at The Poynter Institute Not long ago, I sat on a journalism panel in which the question of \u201cWhat are you?\u201d came up&#8230; &#8230;I thought about the \u201cWhat are you?\u201d question when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,125,8,394,20],"tags":[8044,8043],"class_list":["post-17260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-poynter","tag-tom-huang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17260","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=17260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}