Obama

[Aggie]

OK, I'll agree that he's African-American (probably more literally than the usual usage).  And I'll give you 'visible minority' But why is constantly described as being black?  Huh?  He describes his mother as "white as milk".   


(what about my kids, will they be Asian?)   

[Swatopluk]

Just wait until he will be called the mongrel or the mulatto
Condi is not "pure-bred" either.
the upside: unlike McCain his black children can't be used against him
But the main smears will use his name and paint him as a crypto-muslim and Al Qaeda sleeper/mole (the "madrassa" is a standard talking point already)

[ivor]

Oh yeah.  Won of my SO's coworkers is quoting snopes.com as confirming that Obama is a radical extremist plant.  He was so excited he forgot to read the whole page.

[Sibling Chatty]

In re: Obama's 'blackness'.

There's a sorta 'racial inside joke' among some people I know and am related to. It's called the Blackitudinality Quotient.

Let me explain this the long way.

I'm this basic white lookin' person. Brown hair, blue eyes, pretty fair skin. Remove the 'colors' and look at the bone structure of the face. Ummm, let's discuss this a second. What 'race' is this supposed to be???

My family is (way far back there) mixed. I'm partially Native American (tribal)/African (escaped slave or Freedman) mixed. In Texas, particularly, there existed from almost the beginning of slavery, a number of escaped slaves that intermarried with the indigenous tribes. By 1800, there were probably few tribal groups that could point to more than a few 'pure blood' tribesmen. As the territory expanded (with few women immigrating in) marriage to an "Indian woman" was quite common, and the women were usually quite striking looking. (Tall and strongly built, most commonly.)

So, technically, I'm "mulatto" of some sort--Texas having never done the Louisiana/Deep South thing of quadroons, octaroons, etc and quantifying the amount of 'difference' in the bloodline.

Now, my nieces... All of them that have had children have married black men. Some of these black men have been Very Dark, some of them have been a fairly light color. it's hard to decide strictly from skin color "how much" of their lineage is intermixed white; in one case we know there's a certain amount of intermixed Mexican heritage as well.

Are these kids black? White? Sorta beige or brown or deep tan? What is their Blackitudinalty Quotient???

Race is a man-made way to divide one's self from those one considers inferior. Yes, I fill in the "Race" blank on papers with the word HUMAN. (I will write next to it Skin color is generally pale and splotchy.)

As long as there are racists, there will be race questions.

Aggie, your kids are gonna be Canadians, unless you're moving somewhere, or they're born at Grandma's. If you moved here, they'd be Texans!!
==========

There is considerable "racism", more or less a looksism thing, among racial groups. African-mixed persons in the US judge one another by how pale their skin is, or by how "good" their hair is. Many Asian societies have women that pay a fortune for surgery to get "good eyes"--rounded, with an epicanthic fold--or to have a fake 'bridge' put in their nose.

There's a universal desire to LOOK desirable, and "desirable" is fluid, based on the attractiveness of the dominant 'power structure'. Feh on THAT crap. I don't want my G'niece Kelsey to ever look at her cousin's long "good" hair and be envious of it. Kelsey's got her Daddy's hair. It's "nappy". Kaity has "good hair", because her Daddy's got so much French background, and her Mom's half German. And it's total bullshit that a child be allowed to feel any pressure over this crap!! (Of course, if it wasn't racially related stuff, it would be OTHER appearance related issues. God forbid that people be allowed to just look like PEOPLE!! We all gotta look like____. (Marilyn, Jayne, Sandra, or Madonna or J-Lo or Beyonce or...BULLSHIT!)

When the human race can quit having to know the "racial background" of every person that comes along--we MIGHT have made progress.

Look at the animal kingdom. What makes for the healthiest animals? Constant breeding within the type? No, bringing in a different type to strengthen wanted points, and maybe get some better hybridization.

My friends Kathy and Gus had some great kids. Kathy is the daughter of a Jewish father and a Black/Jewish mother. (Her dad is Sephardic, her Mom's dad Askenazi.) Kathy "looks' to be Indian (subcontinental Asian, not Amerind/Native American.) Gus is 4 th generation East Side Manhattan Jewish guy...Russian background.

Their oldest girl stated telling people that she and her siblings were a 'designer breed' of hybrid humans that could withstand a lot of sorrow and woe, but they kvetched a lot... 

[Aggie]

Aggie, your kids are gonna be Canadians, unless you're moving somewhere, or they're born at Grandma's. If you moved here, they'd be Texans!!

Heh, that part is a given.  Everyone is Canadians up here, it's only a matter of generations, and out west we are rarely more than 3rd or 4th (BC and AB probably average somewhere around 2nd generation).

Look at the animal kingdom. What makes for the healthiest animals? Constant breeding within the type? No, bringing in a different type to strengthen wanted points, and maybe get some better hybridization.

Yep, we are going for "hybrid" vigor.    And plotting to have our children marry other races / mixes (definitely some African blood for looks, I would like to also bring in some Indian (S. Asian) for the food at family reunions, but of course we might have to let our offspring have some say.  We are hoping for grandbabies with 4 different lineages, preferrably from 4 different continents.    ).

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

That would be pretty cool!

My family's done that, too. Well, my mother's side has. My dad's side got pissed when one of my cousins went to prom with a Mexican kid.
My two of my aunts married Hispanic men, one of whom was also Chinese and French, in addition to Ecuadorean. One cousin is married to a nice Jewish guy, the other is seeing an Indian girl (I think). And most of us in this generation are various shades of blonde, with light eyes (blue, hazel or in my case green). The next generation won't be as pale (though one of them looks just like her mama with blonde hair and blue eyes).

Back to Obama--my generation won't care that he's not eight shades of Gingo. And probably not as much with the generation above us or the boomers. It'll be my grandparents' generation that will care more than the groups below it. although, if they keep it up with the stoopid Obama Osama smear, that could frighten certain sheepish folks.

[Aggie]

Back to Obama--my generation won't care that he's not eight shades of Gingo. And probably not as much with the generation above us or the boomers. It'll be my grandparents' generation that will care more than the groups below it. although, if they keep it up with the stoopid Obama Osama smear, that could frighten certain sheepish folks.

Oof, am I that old already?  My parents are the boomers. 

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I think you're the early part of my generation, actually. You were born post-1980, right?

[Aggie]

Umm....  which part of that particular year do you consider 'post'?  

My parents are the tail end of the boomers.  I'm probably a Gen-Y or something, but I'm a B+1.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

So am I, and I'm definitely a Gen-Y. We're both part of the echo-boom, too.

[Sibling Chatty]

Some of us aging Boomers are pretty OK with ignoring 'racial identity' and some aren't. Lot of it has to do with how we were raised...

After the age breakdowns, there are the inevitable racists and morons...and the people that feed them.

The fact that Obama was raised by his Mother's very white very (veryvery) upper-middle class family SHOULD put him right in the comfort zone of some of these people. Were he a registered Republican, he'd be "a fine fellow with a weird name". That he self-identifies as a Democrat (although ideologically, he and Hillary are BOTH to the right of "the line", even with the moving "the line" to the right) makes him 'strange and dangerous".

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

That's what I was suggesting, Chatty.

[Sibling Chatty]

I just wish I could convince MY generation to be less--manipulable.

I'm appalled at the supposedly educated people of my generation that can be pushed around like sheep by the kind of advertising/informational sleight of hand that YOUR gen looks at and laughs...

These aren't dumb people. I guess they're..gullible?

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

We're used to having to look under things to check if they're real, and the boomers aren't, by and large, I think.

[Aggie]

We're used to having to look under things to check if they're real, and the boomers aren't, by and large, I think.

Might be a function of growing up in the information age.  There's so much BS on the 'net that we are pretty used to the idea that what one is told may not be correct (I have a Grade 1 teacher to thank for that, though).  Older generations tend to see news media as being reliable information, maybe?