The Presidential Race and Barrack Obama

Since Senator Barrack Obama announced his intention to run for President of the United States, there has been much discussion about whether Mr. Obama is "black enough" to capture the African American vote. The issue is centers around the fact that Mr. Obama is biracial, his father African and his mother white. Since Mr. Obama's background does not include a family history of being enslaved, these commentators argue that he cannot fully comprehend the black experience and therefore, would not be equipped to deal with problems of race and class that may face him during presidency. Apart from the political utility of distancing Obama from black voters, this distinction of whether someone is black enough hearkens back to rules of hypodescent which provided that one drop of black blood makes a person black. Arguably, this classification of Obama which separates him from other blacks in the United States is really the modern progeny of the one-drop rule and the ideas associated with it.

The "hypodescent" rule or more informally known as the "one drop rule" has set the "boundaries of the African-American race" by providing that "one drop of Black blood makes a person Black." In other words, "anyone with a known Black ancestor is considered Black." The classification scheme benefited white settlers in that:

"White males from any responsibility for supporting their offspring by Black women slaves; these offspring became the property, and the responsibility of the woman's master. Thus the birth of mulattos provided an economic advantage to both the father, in the form of freedom from parental responsibility, and to the mother's slaveholder, in the form of a new slave."

This partitioning of racial groups is based in an exercise in racism. While the originators of these rules attempted to base their classifications on scientific fact, the rejection of race in science is almost complete. Race is better understood as a social construction created as a means to justify racial bias. The division of people based on an arbitrary signifier such as negligible genetic similarity reinforced ideas of inferiority of non-whites. Since ancestry alone was the sole determinant of race, this fixed historical fact could not be altered irrespective of the passing of time, inter-marrying, appearance, or present/future social status of the individual. If someone is white, that person is inherently regarded as superior to someone who is tainted with blackness no matter how far back and how remote the connection.

In the mid-seventeenth century, under the hypodescent rule, mixed raced persons would have been considered a mulatto. As a mulatto, one wouldn't be black but one would not be white either. The prevailing opinion of whites regarding mulattos was that "the mulatto exceeds the black both in intelligence and pride." The "praise" that the mulatto surpassed the black slave in intelligence and pride is clearly rooted in the belief that the "white blood" that flowed through the veins of the mulatto somehow made him better. Yet, because he still possessed black ancestry, he was not entirely good. Certainly he was not comparable to his white superior in any respect. This demarcation between "plain blacks" and mulattos made sure to keep them separate and inferior to whites. In addition, the creation of a sub-class within the subjugated class that received "preferential treatment" or at least, higher regard generates antagonism over this artificial distinction within the group as a whole.

The discussion that Barrack Obama isn't black enough to win the black vote can be considered the offspring of the hypodescendent rules and the ideas around what it means to belong to a particular race. Political pundits have argued that because Obama's mother is white and his father black but African, Obama's experience as a black man in the United States is completely inapplicable to the African American experience of slavery. Hence, the fact that Obama is the son of an African immigrant as opposed to descendents of slaves in America is a big deal. This statement about Obama's inability to relate to the African American experience over-generalizes the problem but does not speak to the undercurrent of tension within the African American population that is sparked by the presence of someone like Obama who has achieved some success in this country as a black man.

The feelings generated by Obama on both sides, black and white, can best be understood by again thinking about the way mulattos were thought about in the seventeenth century. What is interesting here is that whereas hypodescendent rules were applied by whites to separate blacks from themselves, African Americans who criticize Obama for not being black enough are in effect doing the same to him. Like the one-drop rule, "ancestry alone determined status, which was fixed." While the question here isn't so much about the color of his skin as much as the cultural aspect of his race, Obama is being excluded because of an immutable part of his personal history-that his father was Kenyan.

Moreover, these distinctions expose the strained relationships that exist among blacks in this country and the way negative stereotypes about race can come to affect self-perception. What is voiced in the concern over Obama's blackness is that he lacks the understanding to fully comprehend the ongoing plight of poverty and generations long effect of slavery on African Americans. While this is a legitimate worry to express regarding any presidential nominee, it is particularly telling when it is directed at Obama by African Americans. The most prominent and appealing feature of Obama's story is that he is someone who has experienced adversity but has reached great success in spite of the challenges before him. The speculation that Obama cannot relate to American blacks because his father was African puts into play stereotypes about African immigrants as being more industrious than American blacks because they don't have the "excuse" of slavery as a luxury. Going hand in hand with that misconception is already the notion that American blacks use slavery as an excuse for poverty and other social problems. What the discomfort with Obama's lack of blackness ultimately brings us to is that African immigrants are different from African Americans.