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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: Lane3 who wrote (51111)3/1/2008 2:47:28 PM
From: Cogito   of 543755
 
>>I think we're talking about two different things. Of course he would be seen as black.

But how we are seen is different from how we identify ourselves and how we choose to present ourselves. For example, people become Jewish by having a Jewish mother. But they choose with whom they culturally associate and they choose whether to practice the religion and the variation of that religion. An excellent athlete chooses whether to identify with jocks. A beautiful woman chooses whether to be a beautiful woman or a woman who happens to be beautiful. Look at the fuss in the deaf community about choosing between the community and the broader world.

Black people will accept mixed-race people as black, but white people will not accept them as white.

This is not a binary choice. Or course they can't choose to be white. But they can choose to be multi-racial. They can also choose to be brown. And those who have an African parent can choose to be part African rather than part "black."<<

Karen -

I guess maybe we are talking about two different things. I was responding to the idea that Obama "chose to be black". There even seems to be an implication coming from somewhere that he did so for political advantage; a ludicrous notion.

I'm not sure if you're saying that Obama could have just decided to hang around with white people more, or what. You say he could have chosen to be multi-racial. Well, he does identify himself as African-American, in much the same way as I identify myself as Scottish and Swedish.

My thesis is simply that people are likely to hang around with and identify with the people who accept them most readily, and in that respect, I think Obama just chose to accept things as they were.

- Allen
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