Barack Obama is 'White'

I know that you have never stopped to think about this, why should you? To you he looks black. I guess the question is, what does a black person look like? Is there really such a thing? Or are we as a society just repeating the wrong classifications of people handed to us by our fore-fathers. Lets for argument sake say there is such a thing as a “black” man and a ‘white’ man.
Every morning when I make my coffee it has a deep shinning black color, when I pour the fat and sugar free vanilla creamer it turns into a cream or light chocolate color. If anyone asks me what color the coffee in my cup is I will never call it black for obvious reasons. Saying it is black will be like saying one plus one is equals one. If I remember my first grade math correctly (actually, that might have been pre-school), if you put two different things together you do not come up with only one of them. Then how can any sane, intelligent, human being, refer to a product of two races as one race. A Starbucks mocha is not black, just as Barack is not black.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand, Barack’s father was a “black” man from Kenya and his mother was a ‘white’ woman from Kansas. Now how does this man become a black man? Yes he is part black, but he is also equally part white (50/50). If we have to call him either black or white then it should not be such a shock to anyone if I call him white. I am sure Barack is equally proud of his African and European ancestry and by calling him black you refuse to acknowledge half of him. This refusal I contended is not by accident, but it is indeed by design. I am not saying the whole country or the whole world is involved in some conspiracy, but I am saying we are unconsciously re-enforcing this farce every time we call a mixed person ‘black’.

The words black and white were first used to describe human beings by the first white people who landed on the African continent. The word black was used interchangeably with the word ‘savage’. Black was meant to represent not only the presence of pigment, but dirty, bad, sub-human, and intellectually inferior. White was meant to represent purity, good, and intellectually superior. I do not think many people think about this when they use these words, but subconsciously the words affect the way they react and relate to black or white people. Think about it this way – what is the first word that comes to you when someone says the word white? My 9 year old next door neighbor’s answer was; clean and pure, you can guess what his response to the word black.

The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as a black or white human being. There are people who are different shades of brown and people that are different shades of porcelain. Tiger Woods is right, the whole world calls him a black man but he does not consider himself one. The sad thing is because the connotation that black is bad, most successful black people find themselves with white spouses for the wrong reasons. (Just to be clear, I am not trying to say that any black person who marries a white person is trying to run away from his ‘blackness’. What I am saying is: some do.) What they fail to understand is, this is not a solution because unfortunately their kids will also be misidentified as black. This misidentification of people does not just happen for people with black and white parents but to all kids of a white parent and any other race. These people are almost always identified as non-whites, because as if in some way they are not pure. Most people I know will identify Hitler correctly as an evil mad man, but then maintain and promote the spirit of his beliefs.

I know, I know, maybe the Hitler reference is a little bit too much, but how can we have racial unity when we keep the farce that one race is the better race. Maybe we do it to keep the status quo, in a, if it is not broken why try to fix it kind of way. The problem is, it is broken and by ignoring it we are not doing anyone any favors.

Most earthlings are racist, in the classic meaning of the word – “a prejudiced belief that one’s race is superior to others”. I strongly believe this to be true; not because of some natural flaw, but because putting other people down makes us feel better about ourselves. If all Native Americans are alcoholics then inversely all white people are sober and upstanding citizens. If all ‘black’ people are criminals and thugs then inversely all white people are innocent. If all white people are racist then all black people are saints. I can go all day, but I am sure you get the point.

People feel more comfortable with what they know, so you will think people who live in a melting pot will have the most racial harmony. This however is only true in theory. In practice the melting pot masks the problem. It makes it such that those with racist tendencies go undetected. Not all hope is lost however, so do not despair, change is coming, but only to those homo-sapiens born today and forward. Not that I can tell the future or anything; but the kids today are the first human generation to truly be very curious about their differences and to celebrate their differences. If you were to go to a pre-school today, you will be met with a mini version of the United Nations, and I love it. These children challenge the use of color to refer to people; speaking of color, what color are people from Japan?.........Careful!