A question about race.

[panader0]

Why is it that if you are one half white, and one half black, you are considered black? Even one quarter, or one eighth black(weren't there terms for people with that mixture, derogatory of course, quadroon and octaroon?) Why can't people who are half white be called white instead of black? The underlying racism of this is amazing. It's as if white people think their race is tainted by interracial children. Do black people do the same in reverse? I don't think so. The fact that Obama is the best candidate by far is actually aided (to me) by the fact that his skin is darker that mine. The time has come, not only for a great leader, but to finally address the racial issue head-on. My daughter, age 16 just started dating a fine young boy who is half and half. His father is white, his mother is Ethiopian. Her last boyfriend was half white, half Puerto Rican. Face it folks, if you live in this "melting pot" You're going to blend together eventually.

[AngryAmish]

1. I, for one, await our great leader.

[BlooInBloo]

2. Because white folks have thus decreed. Duh. It's especially funny tho...

... when white folks pretend to not know this, in the interests of maintaining the thin pretense of not being racist, but in a dog-whistle way to other white folks.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. I don't know if black people call mixed children half white or not, but can find out.

My son has a 2 yr. old little girl by a 'black' mother. The only thing I can say is that she dearly loves yogurt and her mother told us, "Don't be feeding that white people's stuff to her." I'll ask her mother if she refers to the child as half white.

[BlooInBloo]

6. They don't typically. They say mixed or black.

[Flying Dream Blues]

4. You've answered your own question. It's racism, pure and simple. nt

[malaise]

5. Well

It's as if white people think their race is tainted by interracial children.
Some do. Remember the establishment said black people were only three quarter human.

Do black people do the same in reverse?
Depends on where you are. In Jamaica, they simply call you brown man/brown woman and sadly some wear it like a badge of honor.

On the other hand, while generations of mixed Caribbean progressives declared themselves black, the younger generation insists on defining themselves. They refused to be defined by white people.

[panader0]

7. I just find it incredibly racist.

As if the standard is white, and all else is less than white.

[EFerrari]

8. Because this culture is insanely obsessed with melanin.

Don't sweat it, hermanito.

Our kids will do better. They will respect others more than we were taught to, they will be more interested in other cultures than our own times allowed us to be, they'll be fine.

I know it to my toes. :toast:

[damntexdem]

9. Race is not a natural division of humanity, it was created by racism: a system of exploitation.

Of course we can all see different skin colors, as we can eye colors, hair colors, heights, facial features, and so on. Sorting people out by skin color (and other correlated factors) and assigning them to major categories on this basis is not, however, anything "natural." In fact, modern racism got its start in European conquest of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and so on. There was plenty of hatred of the other, other Europeans, that looked like what we have known as racial divisions (and remnants of same as seen, for example, in Serbia, Croatia, and Kosovo). However, when Europeans were conquering much of the rest of the world, they needed a method of sorting out who could be universally killed, enslaved, or have their lands stolen from others who would not be subjected to such fates in such a universal manner (although Europeans did not forsake killing one another, including en masse, when occasion arose). Skin color, and some associated features, came to be used as the method of sorting of humans into those whose life, freedom, and goods might be respected from those who would be univerally exploited. Skin color was, of course, quite useful for such sorting. It has remained so. Thus, Obama is African American based on skin color, no matter what his ancestry. His mother was white, no matter who was her progeny.

We may all blend. But even insofar as we maintain diversity in skin color as in other factors, the issue is not what color we are but what we make of it. We need not blend to look alike in order to treat each other as humans like ourselves. In fact, if blending into one skin hue were necessary to eliminate racism, then sufficient intermixing to so blend would be most unlikely to occur. Ironically, such blending becomes more likely (though not necessarily a desired end) only insofar as differences among the unblended become less important. The issue is to end structures of exploitation and oppression, end racism, then to root out the learned sociopsychological behaviors (e.g., how we react to skin color) that developed to support such structures -- only that will eliminate 'race.'