The Color and The Race.

Barack Obama is NOT a Black man. Nor will he be the first Black president. He is biracial. His mother is white. His father Black.

Tiger Woods is NOT a Black man. Nor is he the greatest Black golfer in the history of the game. His mother is Thai. His father biracially Black and white.

Halle Berry is NOT a Black woman. Nor is she the first Black woman to win an Oscar for ‘Best Actress’. Her mother is white. Her father Black.

Mariah Carey is NOT a Black woman. She is insane.

There are numerous examples of other multi-ethnic folks out there who tend to take on their minority ethnicity as the sum whole of their being, either voluntarily or not. We are, as a society, divisive by nature. We like to put anyone or anything that is even remotely different into their own special little box. We say that we’re doing so as a way of ‘celebrating our differences’.

Really?

I used the examples of Obama, Woods, and Berry to demonstrate the validity of my next point. Shortly after the good ol’ slave days, a friendly term was created to handle any pesky confusion that may arise between Blacks and whites. It was called “the one drop rule”. It suggested that even a single drop of ‘negro’ blood in one’s veins renders them Black.

Actually, the logic applies to all non-white races, but is mostly applied to Blacks. A biracially Chinese and white person is more likely to be called “part Asian”, for example. A biracially Black and white person is usually simply ‘Black’, or refered to as the lovely ‘mulatto‘ – derived from spanish, meaning ‘young mule’. It originates from Spanish slave traders who considered biracial slaves useless. Good times.

When a presidential candidate’s ethnicity takes more precedence over the current two term president’s C Student grades, AWOL status, cocaine abusing days, and failed business ventures, it goes to show just how screwed up the world really is.

I look forward to the day when Barack and Woods are simply men, and Berry and Carey are simply women. Need we really say more?

(I really think that Carey IS insane though.)

~ by Denas on March 18, 2008.