Newsflash: black and native folks have been navigating “multiracial” experience since get go. Of course a “reasonable” person might, you know, read history and consider that before shooting off.[/quote] That’s not an unusual trait. In addition, those privileged can make unsubstantiated claims, because popular “knowledge” revolves around them. However facts is not predicated on mass appeal. It goes through a strenuous peer review process to ensure that bias and other errors are confounded.

Saying that, history tells us that history of people of color is not very different from bi-racial people. That is unless, it’s assumed that realities in our world have changed. The truth is, whiteness is valued in our society and proximity to that construct often resulted to immense economic returns.

There was often a push within the PoC communities to become white. That is what any human that achieves to live would attempt to do. However, the prerequisites were heavily tied to skin tone. The “cut-off” was often quite high and it ultimately led to a color-based hierarchy within Blacks.

This may have resulted to animosity by darker-skinned blacks against the lighter, closer-to-white-but-not-white-enough, individual. It developed, because we live in an individualistic, cut-throat society. I thought that explanation would be obvious, but it seems like some are ignoring hard realities.

However that experience would be quite similar since power centers would classify her or him as a person of color. Racism centers around a white ideal and it’s downright inane to argue against the mythical “antagonist” Blacks. Basic morality would suggest that frustrated black children can’t take on a white-run state(s*) maintaining the most powerful armed forces in the world.

As for Obama, I really find it hard to look at him as a role model. On the other hand, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, I can see it. Despite being a recipient of a Noble Peace Prize, he has stepped up war crimes. That is, the non-UN sanctioned (yes, illegal) war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In addition, he has bailed out bankers, is waging a war against education (high education, included), welfare, and unions as well. I don’t see how he is very different from George W. Bush. His ability to receive so much campaign funding has a lot to do with maintaining policies that fall under a continuum that includes Bush. I feel that as a black man that our definition of “role model” needs to be heightened substantially.

PS: My reply isn’t necessarily directed at you, but Claire and others. Stop falling for the hype!

The fact that you have a German accent is more striking as well. Do understand that throughout Western history, people of color, have been classified as perpetual foreigners. That remained even as PoCs assimilated including pushing the interests of imperialist states.

It is possible that you could assimilate. If you don’t appear Arab, feature a German name, it’s very unlikely for one to perceive you as one. You may identify yourself as a PoC, but it’d be no different from white people who claim to be part indigenous. It doesn’t change the fact that they are the recipients of immense privileges.

PS: There was a time when even Jewish and Irish people were considered color. Those groups had to sell out, ultimately oppress others, in order to enter the club. One does not have to have blue eyes/ blonde hair to be white.

Mr. Obama and Ms. Berry are undeniably very successful people. If they are black, then we have two very successful black people. One of whom is the President. This challenges people’s prejudices. If they’re white people who happen to have some black ancestry… then we just have two very successful white people and those people’s prejudices are safe and sound.

Racism can take some pretty weird turns. I was “raised white” by a mother who seems ashamed of her heritage and tries hard to pass and a racist white father who hates me because he couldn’t tell my mother was multi racial before he married her and had kids. I’m one eighth each Black, Chinese, Munsee (Native American) and Jewish, the rest is varied and mostly undocumented. I pass for white about 80% of the time, whether I want to or not… unless I get some sun, which does weird things to what people think I am.

What does that make me? It depends on what heritage is hated by the person I’m talking to… because that’s the heritage they focus on. I’ve been called all the racial slurs for the different races in me… most of them, I heard from my father first. Along with slurs for Hispanics, Vietnamese, Korean, etc. I’m just unidentifiable enough to be a convenient target for anyone racist enough to notice that I don’t look quite right… that my skin has a certain odd coloring and texture, that my hair is a little more coarse than it should be. It was worse before I discovered the joys of proper care for my kind of hair but that still gets noticed, by that tell-tale “stiffness”.

Oddly, most of my “friends of color” seem to consider me to be plain old white if they care at all. Most don’t. Those who do, always seem to base it either on my social experiences or what I choose to identify as. Yet, I almost never feel excluded with them, usually I just get included in whatever heritage they happen to have. It’s something that is acknowledged, accepted, then pretty much ignored. They’re much more interested in sharing what’s going on in their lives, finding out what’s going on in mine or just hanging out and enjoying each other’s company. I’ve had a few bad experiences… but very few and from what I can tell my experiences there are within the normal range of light / dark conflicts.

Most of my white friends however seem to care. They seem to stop considering me white after they find out about my heritage. I become their “insert race” friend and a sort of token to prove they’re open minded and diverse… or a target for their hatred. I’ve been accused of lying about my race because I didn’t tell them and just let them assume I was white. (Why they would think they assumed I was white, never really gets explained.) Every conversation with them ends up bringing up my race (which can be one I have or one they just sort of tack onto me whether I have it or not.) They don’t tell me about their kids and families as much. I do hear a lot more about that person at work they talked to, though… I dread being asked if I know them. Very little of any of this is extreme or in your face. It’s subtle. I’m not even sure if they realise what they’re doing. It does make me sad though, when that sweet little girl I was introduced to and who gave me such a big hug to thank me for baking the cookies… is suddenly three years older and her parents haven’t said a word to me about her in that entire time unless I specifically asked. It hurts when the answer to “How’s Shelby doing?” is “She’s fine” instead of “She did this at school, or that at camp or this other at soccer practice.”

It isn’t rational. It doesn’t make sense. Racism NEVER does.

I’m Black. I’m Chinese. I’m Munsee. I’m Jewish. I’m Scottish/Irish/Welsh/German. I’m a woman. I’m an American citizen… and a citizen of China (Thank you, Grandma!)… so how do I identify?

I’m a person. I can’t identify as all of the things I am and I refuse to give up some part of my heritage to fit into a label. I can’t let others push me and pressure me, hurt me and leave me confused and uncertain about my own identity.

I’m proud of all of my ethnicities. I’m proud of all of yours. I’m proud of us all as a people… except the bigots. They suck. :)

Karnythia, I didn’t wait to comment here for some nefarious reason. This is simply the first time I’ve seen this post. (And it’s sad that you would feel it necessary to add such an innocuous detail to your attack.) I don’t check in here all that often because I feel that the “discussion” here is decreasingly discussion, and increasingly only either fighting or sycophancy. Usually I don’t add a comment when I come, but I did this time because you’re saying something here that affects a lot of people, and you’re stating it as fact, while leaving a LOT of issues, and opinions out.

And you finally break out the accusations of “privilege” and “derailing.” I wasn’t derailing the discussion. I’M still IN the discussion, still talking about multiraciality and Obama and concepts of the same. YOU’RE the one who has stepped away from the issue at hand to accuse me of “privilege” and “derailing” and to avoid addressing any of my points. THAT’S DERAILING.

And no, you don’t get to cry “model minority” and repeatedly tell me that I’m not black in a discussion about MULTIraciality, and then accuse me of privilege. Just because you’re using polite terminology doesn’t mean that you’re not tapping into oppression olympics.

NOW we’re done. You can have the last word if you want to, but really? What’s the point? “makes me think that trying to have an intelligent discussion with you was always impossible” is pretty much the conclusion I’ve reached, too.

Privilege. Always first to claim “reasonable” while defining other people’s lives. Well done.

Newsflash: black and native folks have been navigating “multiracial” experience since get go. Of course a “reasonable” person might, you know, read history and consider that before shooting off.

I would caution a monoracially-identifying parent against using their multiracial child’s identity to make arguments. Parents have a stake in how their multiracial children identify; both a personal stake, and a parent’s stake (i.e. parents want their children to identify in the way that is most advantageous to their children, be it politically, economically, or personally advantageous … and how this plays out will be different in each family.) And, of course, parents have more influence over how their children identify than anyone else in the world, although it may not always seem so. Often, how even an adult child identifies is in part a reflection of their parents’ politics. And often, a multiracial who is comfortable with multiple identities, will declare only one identity to a parent who is uncomfortable with other identities for their child.

I’ll make it even easier: these are GENERAL PRINCIPLES, gleaned from being multiracial, from reading a lot of academic literature studying multiracial families, and from working in a multiracial community where I’ve seen all kinds of examples of monoracial parents using their multiracial kids to make all sorts of points. I wasn’t saying that YOU do any of the things above (I wouldn’t have ANY way to know if you did); I was suggesting that using your son to make these points is a bad idea because SO MANY PARENTS do these things, that it’s hard to tell whether or not YOU’RE doing them. And I don’t mean it’s hard for ME to tell; it’s IMPOSSIBLE for me to tell from one stupid, simplistic blog post. I mean it’s hard for YOU to tell because you’re so close to it and have such a huge stake in it. And that goes double now, given how defensive you are about it.

And for you to get all defensive and silly because I talked about your son is, well, silly. You’re the one who brought your son in to make a public argument. If you don’t want people to grab hold of that, leave your kid out of it in the future and tell us all how to think about Obama based on general principles. And, in fact, that’s pretty much all I was saying above: leave your poor kid out of it and speak from your own experience.

And finally, quit trying to shut me out of this discussion. Your post above and all your responses to me so far have been essentially saying that I don’t get to draw on my own experience in this discussion because you’re only talking about YOUR community. And I keep telling you that this is where you’re wrong. When you try to make Obama ONLY a member of YOUR community and not a member of mine, you’re wrong. I’m a citizen of the country Obama leads. I’m a multiracial in a culture in which he is a multiracial. I share the following experiences with him: being raised multiracial in a white family, being raised at all in a white family, being raised transnationally in an Asian country, having a sibling whose racial self-identification is distinct from my own. There are also many important experiences that I DON’T share with him.

THIS is why multiraciality is such a complex issue, and one that deserves a great deal more thoughtfulness than you’ve shown yourself able to produce here. Because a multiracial person can’t just be restricted in the public mind to one experience, one community. No one single person can identify themselves with all aspects of a multiracial person. Many people from many different communities share experiences and heritages with a multiracial person, and all of those people get to talk about it in public. Obama can choose how he identifies; that’s his right. But YOU don’t get to choose for the rest of us how we get to talk about Obama’s obvious, open, and public construction of his identity. He has deliberately made the construction of his identity a public one — through books, speeches, and public performances of family — since 1995 and the publication of “Dreams from My Father.” He put that out there at least in part to give us something to talk about. And we’re talking about it.

You’ve accused me of arguing not against what you said, but against an argument that I constructed in my head. But what else have you done here but that? I laid out my understanding of this above and you accuse me of trying to school you from ignorance. But if I hadn’t laid out my understanding, you would have simply accused me of ignorance. You accuse me of acting like a gatekeeper, but what have I done except try to keep you from closing down this argument to your own narrow view? Everything I’ve said here and above has been an effort to keep this discussion OPEN, COMPLEX, AND INCLUSIVE, not closed, simplistic, and exclusive.

And everything you’ve said about it so far on this thread has tended towards trying to shut up that argument with your authority as a black woman who claims Obama as simply and solely black.

I really have to ask: what WAS your purpose in posting this in the first place? Because if you had really wanted a complex discussion of biraciality, you should have welcomed the opportunity I brought here to discuss it. Instead, you’ve been trying to shut me down.