Obama: Too black? Not black enough?

Since Barack Obama has thrown his hat into the ring for the Democratic Party’s bid for the presidency, he is receiving a great deal of criticism for being black. But this criticism is not coming from the people you would suspect. The old guard of the Civil Rights Movement, and other African American leaders have charged that Barack Obama is not black enough for them to back his candidacy at this time. It has been said that major black leaders such as the Rev. Al Sharpton are in full support of Obama’s Democratic rival Sen Hillary Clinton.
Obama is the son of a Caucasian woman from Kansas and an black African immigrant. His ancestors did not have the “American experience” that most black Americans have had, meaning that their families suffered through the hardships of slavery and the Jim Crow era in the decades that followed. He is a second-generation African descendant. This is why the Congressional Black Caucus and many other black leaders have strayed away from the Obama campaign. Also, Sen. Obama is a graduate of Harvard Law School and an ivy-leaguer. The liberal black groups have used his own education against him, much like they did with Bill Cosby during “The Cosby Show’s” successful run back in the 1980s and early 1990s. To use an old southern cliche, they say that he is “gettin’ above his raisin.’”
Is Sen. Obama too white, as the black leadership has eluded to? He is well-respected and has a growing network of support from many white Americans, but has he betrayed those who would relish in electing the first black president? The concept at work here is the American perception of race. Although Americans know that he is of mixed race birth, the issues that spring up about his campaign are of a racial difference between he and his white constituency, and now he and his black constituency as well. If he were to be elected to the highest office in the land, he would be considered the first African American president.
Who will stand and say that he is the first person of mixed race to be president? No one, and do you want to know why? Because in America, we are still seeing things in black and white. There is no grey area for America. It is still a confused and racially divided society that chooses to classify individuals according to their skin color (or the skin colors of the parents as is the case with Sen. Obama). Mixed race persons are still classified as black or white; there is no middle ground. If only we could make an attempt to quit categorizing people based on that old social construct called race (social construct meaning it was an invention of mankind; its not as if it has any real biological significance) and move on with our lives.

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Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 2 2007. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry