Obama and the melting pot

His mother is white, as a child he lived in Indonesia with an Asian stepfather, and he then lived with white grandparents before going to college. So why is Sen. Barack Obama simply called "black"?

Born in Honolulu where his mother, a white American, met his father, a foreign student from Kenya, while both were at university. His parents divorced when he was 2, and his mother married an Indonesian man and moved the family to Jakarta. His father returned to Kenya. When Barack was 10, he moved back to the United States and lived with his maternal grandparents in Hawaii.

Stanley Crouch of the NY Daily News made a similar point last November (via WSJ "Best of the Web Today"):

...After all, Obama's mother is of white U.S. stock. His father is a black Kenyan. Other than color, Obama did not - does not - share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves...

I ask the question in particular with Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees in mind. Mr Jeter also has a white mother and a black father; yet I always think of him as just Derek Jeter--neither black nor white--and I suspect many others have the same perception.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at January 17, 2007 08:20 PM