Obama's identity crisis
He knows who he is, but some people have a problem

Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs / Plain Dealer

In a delicious irony, February begins with a controversy over African-American identity. This year, the question isn't "What does it mean to be black?" but "Who is black?"

And the debate swirls around Barack Obama.

His mother is a white Kansan, while his late father was a black Kenyan. Others might call him biracial, but Obama doesn't quibble. He says he's black.

His profession isn't enough for pundits like Debra Dickerson. She maintains that culturally, Obama isn't black - African-American - because he has no ancestral connection to what was once called "the black experience."

" 'Black,' in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves," Dickerson wrote in an article for Salon magazine.

Dickerson is right about one thing: African-American identity is about culture and race. Any anthropologist will explain that society, not biology, determines the criteria for racial identity. Those criteria can and do change.

In other words, black is whatever we say it is. And the debate around Obama's racial identity shows the demographics of the African-American community are changing so radically that the very definition of black is being transformed. More...

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To me it makes no difference to the color of Obama's skin. I won't vote for the man because he is to liberal and is to new to politics to lead our country. The same theory would go towards Hillary and her being a women.

I could care a less if the next President wore Bozo the Clown shoes and did magic tricks in the oval office as long as they were conservative minded.

King