On 6-Nov-2008, at 02:32, Cyril Niklaus wrote:
I know that the perception of race is rather different in the US than in Europe, but I don't understand why Obama is presented as a black person.
For the same reason that Halle Berry (3/4th white) is presented as black. In the US the legal definition of 'negro' was someone who had ANY 'negro blood' Any at all. Your g-g-grandparents were 15 slave- owners and 1 negro? You're legally a negro.
To me he is a métis, which translates (badly) as a person of mixed race or even worse as mongrel. The fact that there is no direct equivalent is also revealing, isn'it it?
Oh, there are a host of words that apply, none of them considered very nice. Start with mulatto (Obama), quadroon (Berry), octaroon, and keep going back.
So, since Obama's mother was white and his father black, why does that make him black?
Because this is a country with a rich and varied history of racism and exclusion and despite having some semblance of civilisation now, many of those trappings remain. He 'looks' black, therefore he was always treated as black. Not by his mother or grandparents, perhaps, but certainly by society at-large.
-- I mistook thee for thy better Hamlet Act III scene 4
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