Obama's Half What?

I had a conversation with a few members of my family recently about our President. I was amused and amazed by what what I was hearing. They were emphasizing the importance of remembering that President Obama is actually half white, in addition to being half black. Simple, straightforward and absolutely true.

Still, it didn't sit quite right with me. Why? Well, because the underlying motivation was to take something away from the black community at large. They contended that the black community wanted to take credit for the President, and conveniently forget his white heritage as well. After all, they said, he has more in common with the white community with the black community.

Of course, they are simply basing their thoughts and opinions on stereotypes and biases (though they both did vote for Barack Obama). My brother even fervently denied the validity of African American Vernacular English, though he's never studied the subject -- while scores of scholars have. Still, this isn't what bothered me most about their contentions that the black community it claiming too much of Obama.

I was bothered by how oblivious they were to how their words contradicted the history of our country. I decided to remind them. After listening and calmly debating long enough, I exploded into something of a tirade, "Let's not forget that this is the country that instituted the "one drop rule." This is the country that decided that if someone even had one drop of African blood in them, they were African American and could therefore be treated as subhuman. So don't turn around now and claim that our President isn't "black enough" for them to claim as their own."

It's incredible how we have to take everything as ours. At the same time, I know that if President Obama turns out to be a failure of a president, plenty of white folks will stand up to remind us all that he's a black guy.

Perhaps I should just be happy that right now we're fighting for credit instead of assigning blame.