{"id":19427,"date":"2012-01-01T01:19:13","date_gmt":"2012-01-01T01:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=19427"},"modified":"2012-01-01T01:19:13","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T01:19:13","slug":"obama-and-the-complexities-of-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=19427","title":{"rendered":"Obama and the complexities of identity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.signonsandiego.com\/uniontrib\/20080619\/news_lz1e19sha.html\" target=\"_blank\">Obama and the complexities of identity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.signonsandiego.com\/uniontrib\" target=\"_blank\">The San Diego Union-Tribune<\/a><br \/>\n2008-06-19<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/jms.sdsu.edu\/faculty_staff\/bios\/sha.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bey-Ling Sha<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies<br \/>\n<em>San Diego State University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In a recent commentary titled \u201cWhat He Overcame,\u201d <em>Washington Post<\/em> columnist <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eugene_Robinson_(journalist)\" target=\"_blank\">Eugene Robinson<\/a> described <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a> as a \u201cyoung, black, first-term senator.\u201d In her campaign-suspension speech, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton\" target=\"_blank\">Hillary Clinton<\/a> said, \u201cCould an African-American really be our president? . . . Sen. Obama has answered that one.\u201d These descriptions of Obama are typical of many others offered by and reported in the news media.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s wrong with these descriptions of Obama as being black or African-American? As others have already noted, these descriptions reify the supposedly outdated \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">one-drop rule<\/a>,\u201d whereby any individual with even \u201cone drop\u201d of African heritage was considered black.<\/p>\n<p>A second, related problem is that these descriptions are instances of identity ascription, whereby one person assigns an identity to another person, usually based on physical characteristics. Thus, someone with blond hair and blue eyes is usually called \u201cwhite,\u201d even if that person has African, Asian or Native American heritage somewhere in his or her background&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.signonsandiego.com\/uniontrib\/20080619\/news_lz1e19sha.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obama and the complexities of identity The San Diego Union-Tribune 2008-06-19 Bey-Ling Sha, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies San Diego State University In a recent commentary titled \u201cWhat He Overcame,\u201d Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson described Barack Obama as a \u201cyoung, black, first-term senator.\u201d In her campaign-suspension speech, Hillary Clinton said, \u201cCould an African-American [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,125,8,20],"tags":[8983,5013,8986,8985],"class_list":["post-19427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-bey-ling-sha","tag-eugene-robinson","tag-san-diego-union-tribune","tag-the-san-diego-union-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19427","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=19427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}