Tom, of course the question "Why isn't Obama white?" is perfectly
valid. Most of us supposedly enlightened types would like to think
that we all agree that, especially in a world where intermingling of a
genetic nature among traditional genetic groups has made the notion of
"race" fairly undefinable, it is of course not yet irrelevant. There
are presumably genetic reasons why the children of mixed-race
marriages between "Caucasians" and descendents of sub-Saharan
Africans tend on average to preserve more of the physical traits of
their African heritage, which contributes to our ease of identifying a
Barack Obama as "black", without qualification. But our own sordid
history as a nation of course also contributes to how we tend to
identify people. (And how interesting it is that all the false reports
of Obama being a closet Muslim -- and the assumptions that that would
make him a terrorist by association -- seem to have trumped at least
public debates about his being black. I suppose it's just that the
rumor-mongers know that they have to be more careful about racial
epithets than non-American-standard religious ones.)
Another couple of interesting data points (recognizing that I'm
getting wildly off-topic here): My wife, who somewhat to her chagrin
is descended from a number of prominent slave-owning southerners, is
reading the book The Hemingses of Monticello, which sounds
fascinating. Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings was of
course no aberration. I think one of the basic tenets of the book
(which I haven't read yet) is that basically everybody on the
plantation was related, and they all knew it. If I remember
correctly, Sally Hemings was a blood relative of Jefferson's wife. So
we have a long tradition of carefully identifying the children of
(typically) the rape of a black (slave) woman by a white man as black,
so that they could clearly be identified as slaves.
(Interesting point of comparison -- continuing wildly off-topic):
White Australians discovered that the distinctive physical traits of
aborigines tend to disappear much more quickly on average when they
intermarry or otherwise mix genes with whites, maybe because the
original gene pool of those aboriginal settlers must have been pretty
small. So the Australian government took exactly the opposite tack of
our own nation, and went through a period --shockingly recent -- of
kidnapping young aboriginal children from their families, raising them
in their equivalent of Indian schools, and encouraging poor whites to
marry them, in effect to wash away the aboriginal blood. If you
haven't seen it, rent the wonderful Australian film Rabbit-Proof Fence
on this subject.
While I'm in book review mode, I am reading Paul Krugman's excellent
book The Conscience of a Liberal, which I highly recommend to anyone
trying to figure out how to save "liberal" from being a dirty word.
Enough.
john
On Oct 31, 2008, at 1:30 PM, Tom Carter wrote:
All -
I'm not singling out John for this comment, but just using it as a
trigger . . .
On Oct 31, 2008, at 11:45 AM, John Sadd wrote:
it is totally effing amazing that a black man
which raises the question, "Why isn't Obama white?"
If that question sounds silly to you, think a little about how
deeply you and I and everyone seem to have internalized the "Jim
Crow one drop rule" (i.e., one drop of "black" blood makes you
black . . .).
Part of the trouble is that we're all "willfully ignorant" in our
own ways, it's just hard to notice our own . . .
But back to Owen's question . . . I'd say that the Republicans
have really gotten on board with the idea that it's OK to say and do
*anything* to get elected. In my experience, Democrats tend to have
at least a little trouble flat out lying . . .
I often play the "projection" game when I listen to political
rhetoric -- i.e., if they accuse their opponents of something, it's
probably because they know that's what they'd do (or are doing). A
few examples: McCain says "Obama will say anything to get
elected" (charge doesn't really apply to Obama, but certainly does
to McCain). McCain/Palin say "Obama is a socialist" (Palin is
popular in Alaska because she increased taxes on the rich
(corporations) and gave the money directly to ordinary people, no
strings attached). McCain says "Obama wants to `spread the wealth
around'" -- meaning, he wants you to believe, take money from some
people and give it to others (he, and rich Republicans, are all for
it, as long as what you mean is, take $700 billion from ordinary
people and give it to financial institutions . . .)
Oh, well . . .
tom
p.s. On the "Why isn't Obama white?" question:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/27/EDQI13NPIT.DTL&hw=why+isn%27t+obama+white&sn=003&sc=242
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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