Unabridged appeared in FAS, 9 11. 2008
The first black president of the United States the son of a white mother. His Kenyan father he hardly ever seen, most of his youth was spent at the white grandparents. How come he is still simply as "black? Answering this simple question leads straight into the depths of the former American race law and the paradoxes of today's identity politics.
Barack Obama is to be regarded as black first, to respect its own self-determination. Obama has spoken at length in his autobiography Dreams from My Father about his background and how to deal with it. At twelve or thirteen years, he reported here, have He stopped to talk to strangers on the skin color of his mother, because this seemed to him as pandering to the whites. Since then he has always been witness to how disturbing it look like black on white Americans to know a person ambiguous race in front of him, "You do not know who I am. Secretly, they might in front of my inner turmoil, the mixed blood, the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped in two worlds. "
Obama's review appeared on the life of a young man who is present, more recently, in German translation, 1995, before beginning his political career. Meanwhile, the genealogy of the author no longer a secret. The politician has since Obama always expressed its intention to contribute to overcoming racial barriers, but at the same time unconditionally to the black community known. He has given to the still inevitable question about his race the one answer which awaits the American society and the vast majority of his voters from him. While there is no reason to doubt Obama's sincerity. An insistence on its own hybrid identity, however, that's for sure, would be among the Americans largely met with incomprehension.
"As in the United States a person, socially and legally, defined as black? What are our relevant rules, and how did they develop? "These issues are dealt the sociologist F. James Davis, professor emeritus at a university in Illinois, Obama's current home, in his first time in 1991 published survey Who is black? One nation's definition.
Davis has the merit to have drawn the attention of the Americans on the peculiarities of their dealing with this for them to date relevant classification. No other nation has attempted a similar result to differ between blacks and whites, without recognizing a transition area. At the end of the eighteenth century took place in the immediate neighborhood, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, an entirely different development. Here it was in the turmoil of the Haitian Revolution to alliances between white settlers and the mulatto, who opposed the rebellious black slaves together as well as the troops of the French colonial power.
While successful in the Caribbean, the gens de couleur fought for their own rights, they remained in the American South, with the exception of areas around New Orleans and Charleston, the slaves assimilated. Unless they still were an elite, they set necessarily speak for the black population as a whole. This constellation also learned by the victory of the Northern states during the American Civil War no fundamental changes. On the contrary, was reaffirmed in 1896 by a decision of the Supreme Court, the equal treatment of all, even the brightest and Coloured explicitly: The judge dismissed the claim of shoemaker Homer Plessy, who had his right do the first ride to be transported in the White reserved train compartment. The origin of only one black great-grandmother was enough Plessy to be classified as black.
enacted a result many southern states to maintain the racial purity laws, which was enshrined the so-called one-drop rule , named after the "black blood" and his homeopathic dilution. While this has been applied rigorously only between whites and non-whites discriminating binary system to all other population groups in states such as Virginia was concerned at the same time the Indian ethnic groups, which further exacerbated the discrimination.
The finite repeal of racial legislation in the sixties did not mean also the end of Eintropfenregel. Prominent spokesman of the civil rights movement, by WEB Du Bois to Martin Luther King, even White had to direct their ancestors, and their struggle for equality was all dark-skinned. But to the extent, as in the system Before the compensatory division resulted, he stressed the need to stick to the traditional categorical distinction between the "races".
In afterword to the tenth edition his to classical seminar reading became attempt has F. James Davis approvingly concerns about the multi-racial movement that despite the opposition of lobbyists Affirmative action the introduction of a new checkbox on the was able to establish arcs of the federal Census Bureau. He concluded: "The end of Eintropfenregel will be facilitated if the underlying social construct - race . Themselves - become less relevant, "
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