|
fddd25c
|
"Is Obama Anything but Black? So lots of folk--mostly non-black--say Obama's not black, he's biracial, multiracial, black-and-white, anything but just black. Because his mother was white. But race is not biology; race is sociology. Race is not genotype; race is phenotype. Race matters because of racism. And racism is absurd because it's about how you look. Not about the blood you have. It's about the shade of your skin and the shape of your nose and the kink of your hair. Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass had white fathers. Imagine them saying they were not black. Imagine Obama, skin the color of a toasted almond, hair kinky, saying to a census worker--I'm kind of white. Sure you are, she'll say. Many American Blacks have a white person in their ancestry, because white slave owners liked to go a-raping in the slave quarters at night. But if you come out looking dark, that's it. (So if you are that blond, blue-eyed woman who says "My grandfather was Native American and I get discrimination too" when black folk are talking about shit, please stop it already.) In America, you don't get to decide what race you are. It is decided for you. Barack Obama, looking as he does, would have had to sit in the back of the bus fifty years ago. If a random black guy commits a crime today, Barack Obama could be stopped and questioned for fitting the profile. And what would that profile be? "Black Man."
|
|
black
mixed-race
multiracial
obama
race
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
4b99b3a
|
"I'm what the botanists call a hybrid," he said the first time Cora heard him speak, "A mixture of two different families. In flowers, such a concoction pleases the eye. When that amalgamation takes its shape in flesh and blood, some take great offence. In this room we recognize it for what it is - a new beauty come into the world, and it is in bloom all around us."
|
|
lander
mixed-races
whitehead
elijah
underground
railroad
mixed-race
|
Colson Whitehead |