I’m struggling to understand why Barack Obama is considered “black” or African American. As I understand it, he’s equal parts black and white, having a (black) Kenyan father and a (white) Kansan mother.
50/50. Toss a coin. Seems like it could be called either way but most everyone thinks of him as black. Why is that? Do you consider him black?
I’m going to continue thinking of him as white. To do otherwise is to buy into the attitude of racist blacks who think that Obama is “not black enough” or that of racist whites who think that any amount of black taints one’s whiteness.
I cannot for the life of me understand why people (and our government) are so obsessed with something as superficial as skin color. Race and skin color do not define who we are, character does, culture does. And the culture that matters most to me is American.
If an American puts his (or her) ethnicity first, or considers ethnicity to be more important than being American, more significant than character, that person is a hyphenated American.
Teddy Roosevelt said: “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism…. A hyphenated American is not an American at all… Americanism is a matter of the spirit, and of the soul…The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans…each preserving its separate nationality…. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans…. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American.”
We each need to consider what it means to be American and how we can best protect America from becoming just another country full of warring tribes. Racial “diversity” is a pointless goal since race is such a superficial criterion. True diversity comes from a diversity of ideas and ideals.
It’s time for true color blindness, not further obsession with color that blinds us to a person’s true identity.