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Originally Posted by King Glorious
I don't want to get too far into the subject but remember, the law used to say that that if a person had 1/8th black in them, they were considered black. Their skin color could be white as snow but if there was 1/8th black present, it was a black person.
My grandfather was born in Louisiana in 1905. Growing up, he was easily the darkest member of his family. He was basically an outcast for one reason......because he was so dark. During that time, black people desired to be as light as they could. They wanted to have the wavy hair. They wanted to do anything possible to be able to pass for white....or to pass as anything other than black. By the way, my grandfather was lighter than Obama is.
Basically, throughout the history of black people in America, it's always been considered a desire to be light in skin color. Even today, I know people that specifically will date only white people in hopes of having really light skinned babies. My best friend and I used to really go at it over this. He'd say "I'm already dark as hell (he was) and if I have a baby with a black girl, my baby will have no chance in this world. As much as I hated to admit that, and I would argue it with him, inside, I knew there was some truth to what he was saying. We, as a nation, are making a lot of progress. But the job is not done with Obama being elected as president. There is still a lot of work to do as there are still a lot of racial issues that need to be dealt with.
Obama is considered a black man because he's got color. That's the simple truth. That's the way it is with most people of mixed races. They are almost always referred to as black people. Look at Tiger Woods. Halle Berry. Mariah Carey. The list goes on and on. Tiger is an interesting one because he goes out of his way to seemingly not identify himself as just a black person but he embraces his total background. There are a lot of black people that are really disappointed in him for that, saying he's embarrassed to say he's black. I'm not one of them. I think he's totally right to say he's just as much black as anything else and to be identified by all of his ethnicity. I see Obama doing that same thing. I get tired of black people calling other people of color sellouts simply because they don't do "all things black." I look forward to the day when it's not even an issue anymore and we don't worry whether a man is black, white, green, or red. In the end, we are all just people. But until that day comes, when you are brown, and you aren't Hispanic, you are considered black.
By the way, on applications, I will not check African-American because I was born in Tennessee, my parents were born in America, my grandparents were born in America, their parents were born in America. I am American.
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