Why is Obama considered black? (please read my details)?

Question

When really he's half black AND half white. If that's the case, shouldn't we consider him white as well? Or is America still only skin deep?

All answers are appreciated, thank you :)

Answer 1

He married a black woman, and it looks like to me that his closest confidants are black - Rev Wright,Oprah, etc. Yes he is 1/2 white but you are the company you keep.

Answer 2

Yeah good point.I think it's because he has dark skin.He looks black,but if he looked like Mariah Carey,people wouldn't call him black.They'd call him white

Answer 3

We tend to judge the race people belong to by their coloring. It many not be right, but for some reason people tend to do it.  

Answer 4

because all presidents so far have been white and it just doesnt sound good when you say 'barack the first half black half white president.'

Answer 5

He is considered black because of his skin color. I think you are correct though.

Answer 6

Some people like to judge you by the color of your skin; and some people like to think if you have any african american decent in you are considerd full african american // I know I know, it's so wrong ..

Answer 7

The only ones with a problem are the Republicans, I as other Dems don't see color we see the person.

Answer 8

Oh god are we really going through this again. they shouls really teach people about race in school. every black person in america is not 100% african.  we are al mixed. and the only reason people are questioning Obama's ethnicity is because he's running for president and some people don't want to accept a black man running. so to help you out Since 1977, the United States officially categorized black people (revised to black or African American in 1997) are classified as A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. Other Federal offices, such as the United States Census Bureau and the adheres to the OMB standards on race in its data collection and tabulations efforts.The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation also categorizes black or African-American people as "A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa" through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce derived from the 1977 OMB classification

Answer 9

Along with being raised by a white lady . . . and majorly bigoted grandparents?

So I doubt even his culture is black.

Answer 10

maybe when African Americans drop the African prefix. maybe when the black people stop crying for help and help themselves. then we can all be just plain old wonderful Americans.

Answer 11

We come from a country that once had its highest court declare that a person with one great-grandparent (1/16th) of African decent should be separated from those pure white people.

That's why.

Answer 12

A good question, same with Tiger Woods, most people don't call him Asian.  It has always been that way, though.  If you look a bit darker, then you are black.  Not right, but it proves that race is not real, we just call it what it looks like.

Answer 13

Let me help you with this one. Obama wrote the perfect stuff in his first book to help all of us understand his HONEST views of caucasians.

Why did Obama write his first about his black father when he never even knew the man? Why didn't he write about his mother and grandparents that spent thousands putting him into the best schools? Why did he choose to denounce his mother's race (white)? Why do he and his wife attend a racist church? I'm sure that his white grandmother still loves him, but I sure don't.

In his first memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” Obama wrote:

“I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites,”

Although Obama spent various portions of his youth living with his white maternal grandfather and Indonesian stepfather, he vowed that he would “never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.”

Obama wrote that in high school, he and a black friend would sometimes speak disparagingly “about white folks this or white folks that, and I would suddenly remember my mother's smile, and the words that I spoke would seem awkward and false.”

As a result, he concluded that “certain whites could be excluded from the general category of our distrust.”

During college, Obama disapproved of what he called other “half-breeds” who gravitated toward whites instead of blacks. And yet after college, he once fell in love with a white woman, only to push her away when he concluded he would have to assimilate into her world, not the other way around. He later married a black woman.

Such candid racial revelations abound in “Dreams,” which was first published in 1995, when Obama was 34 and not yet in politics. By the time he ran for his Senate seat in 2004, he observed of that first memoir: “Certain passages have proven to be inconvenient politically.”

Thus, in his second memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” which was published last year, Obama adopted a more conciliatory, even upbeat tone when discussing race. Noting his multiracial family, he wrote in the new book: “I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.”

This appears to contradict certain passages in his first memoir, including a description of black student life at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

“There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying close together, traveling in packs,” he wrote. “It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.”

He added: “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”

Obama said he and other blacks were careful not to second-guess their own racial identity in front of whites.

After graduating from college, Obama eventually went to Chicago to interview for a job as a community organizer. His racial attitudes came into play as he sized up the man who would become his boss.

“There was something about him that made me wary,” Obama wrote. “A little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.”

Answer 14

In the US, we consider a person black only because he is -dark-.  People like Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, etc., we think of them as black because they are dark.  

The Republicans are the party of racial division and intolerance.  EVERY Republican campaign for the White House has some element of race in it, like the Willie Horton issue in 1988 or Ronald Reagan's 'welfare queen'.  Many of the issues we talk about are just proxies for race--poverty, welfare, drugs, street crime inner-city issues.

The Republicans were trying like crazy to make Obama's race an issue, but without making it too obvious.  For  a long time Obama himself was very careful not to say a word about race for fear the Republicans will accuse him of 'playing the race card', i.e. asking you to vote for him just because he's black.  When he finally had to say something, last March, he made the most honest and sensitive speech I think I have ever heard a politician make about race.  Of course the media paid no attention at all.

It just shows how race-conscious we are in the US.  Racism is still a big problem in this country.

Answer 15

Obama chose his black side because of Oedipal issues with his mother. He writes about it in his memoir.

he talks about wanting to rip out all of his white ancestry. He cites Malcolm X.

In fact, Obama went with being black because he could milk an adopted African American identity for more advantages than he could his real, culturally white identity.

Back at Harvard, he was so culturally white, his chums used to tease Obama about being a member of ABBA, the whitest band in the world.

Answer 16

America is just that superficial.

In America everybody has to fit into their cultural cubby holes.

There is only space for black or white.

There is no space for the other variations.

Beyonce Knowles gets the same thing.  

Answer 17

i think it that the fact that hes darker than all the previous presidents primarily makes him "black"but good point

OBAMA '08

Answer 18

Because

1/2 White + 1/2 Black = Black

It's been that way for centuries and it will never change.

Halle Berry

Mariah Carey

Wentworth Miller

Vin Diesel

Jennifer Beals

Lenny Kravitz

all are biracial Blacks, who say identify with being Black and always will.

Why does this matter to you?

When interracial children began popping out, the slave masters automatically disowned them so...

ADD: I don't think that there's anything wrong with being called biracial, which is why I just call them biracial Blacks, that pretty much takes care of everything.

Someone who is White, with Black ancestry will not be considered Black, because they don't LOOK Black.