"First viable black candidate for president"

"First African-American president"

"Of the Demcratic candidates for president, we have one female candidate and one African-American candidate"


These are all terms used to describe Barack Obama. I have a very simple question, why does everyone keep calling Barack Obama the first viable "black" candidate for president? Barack Obama is every bit as much white as he is black. His father was black and his mother was white. He is 50% black and 50% white. If anything is racist in this campaign, its the media and the public's insistence on making a half-black/half-white man 100% black and 0% white.

I have one daughter whose biological father was 100% African-American and whose biological mother was 100% white. When she was 5 years old she asked me "Daddy, am I black?". I told her she wasn't black OR white, and that she was her own special color. I would consider it an inexcusable injustice to tell my daughter she was white when she's clearly not. But I would consider it equally inexcusable to tell her she's African-American.

My point is, you can just as easily call Barack Obama white and you can black. So why in the world are we calling him black? Can anybody answer that? 

He has been converted by the Clintons, their surrogates and a media that the Clintons have played like a Stradivarius from the Barack who carried white Iowa into The Black Candidate.

....

January raises a long-term question. If an African-American with as great a cross-racial appeal as Obama had in Iowa can be so easily ghettoized in three weeks to where whites and Hispanics, the fastest growing minority in America, recoil, when if ever can a black American be nominated or elected president?


http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24713
Patrick J. Buchanan

Ask your black friends this:
How many half black half white people do you know consider themselves white?

The fact of the matter is that if you look like you are partially black society views you as being black; therefore, you identify yourself as being black.  I know several mixed race individuals (black/white 50/50) and they all identify themselves as black.  Its ironic you mention this b/c I just had a conversation about this with a black student a few days ago.  Its even more prevalent (calling partially black people as just black) in the south.

not saying whether its right or wrong, just stating why Obama is called black....my point is that its not just him.  Its pretty much all racially mixed individuals with half black ethnicity.

Media outlets do not want to be out done by the other. If one says something and another says something strikingly similar then all of them will parrot it. Doesn't really matter what it is. When you 'report' the news who cares what the news is so long as you can cover your 30 min time slot or make your 2000 words.

FoxMbcCnnBbcNbcTimesPostHearlds do not satisfy investors or commercial time payers by educating anyone. That is so ridiculously beyond the time+effort vs profit limit it's not funny.  Just look at education. No they're paid to fill time with talk and pictures in the most attention-getting manner they can get away with. Even if it's in a sly, slick chic manner.

Ahk

Its a combination of descriptive writing and stereotyping by the media. The media like to put labels onto people purely for descriptive purposes.

Thus you will see constant labels as "black" "latino" "chinese" "ex husband of" "disgraced businessmen" "wife to" etc etc.

Its nothing to do with racism or positive discrimination. Its purely stereotyping labelling.

He looks black. Thus, growing up, he was more than likely treated like he was black.


Stop looking for racism.

He's black. Get over it.

I should also mention something I heard in my poli sci class yesterday. We were having a debate and most of the students in the class said they would vote for Obama over Clinton, but one of them says they would do it solely because he's black.

I didn't feel the need to say anything and I go to a mostly-black college.....