Monday, February 16, 2009
Is Barack Obama an African American?
Your Anderson and Stewart text opens Chapter Three with a generous and insightful quote from historian Robert Harris: "Afro-American historiography, with its own conceptual and methodological concerns, is now poised to illuminate the Afro-American past in a manner that will broaden and deepen our knowledge of black people in this country. The writing of Afro-American history is no longer undertaken principally to revise the work of wrongheaded White historians, to discern divine providence, to show black participation in the nation's growth and development, to prove the inevitability of black equality, or to demonstrate the inexorable progress made by Afro-Americans. It is conducted as a distinct area of inquiry, within the discipline of history, with black people as its primary focus to reveal their thought and activities over time and place (43)." How do you see this idea of black people's thought and activities as the focus of black history in parallel with the discussion of self-naming and racial identification that begins in Chapter One? Is there some kind of relationship between the contemporary debates over categories of racial identification, and the historical legacy that defines people of African descent/black Americans/African Americans as a group? And how does this problem of self-naming look differently when we consider someone with a background and a personal history like our President's? What does African American history mean for African American studies?
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The idea of black people's thoughts and activities as the focus of black history goes hand in hand with the self naming/ racial identification discussion. By focusing on accomplishments, discoveries, triumphs, etc. this proves how unfounded and undeserving these names/identities that were given to black people were.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a contradictory relationship between historical definitions and contemporary debates of racial identification. Instead of basing being African American soley on ancestory we are now looking at the big picture.
Barack Obama faced discrimination and hardships moreso having parents of two races. Self naming can seem to be harder with someone with parents of two races. African American history is being seen moreso as great people who overcame obstacles, made advancements, discoveries, and changed the world. Thus, African American studies will focus on these great things.
All in all, I think the ideaologies of black history go hand in hand with the racial/naming identification. It is only through this that many African Americans form any type of bases for who and what the culture should represent. Not that this is always a positive light that portrays most blacks, but it is what it is.
ReplyDeleteThe "one drop rule" was an outdated, but considered valid way of an automatic determination of which class of race one would be placed in. For some reason, now people make it seem like in order to be quailified as "black", their has to be some extra stigma attached to it as well. What is that stigma?? No one can really say, all they can say is who they consider not to be a real black person, and no validity to base it on most of the time except they don't act black enough. What is acting black anyway????? Maybe if it isn't a sterotypical description, it could be better defined. I don't feel like the black community will ever accomplish anything, if they can't accept the different types of blacks their can be, but yet criticize others for passing the same types of judgement.
Kayla, these are some great observations! How do we all get beyond stereotypes about black people to see reality, to see the complexity and variety of our experiences and backgrounds? Not all of us are Christians; not all of us have ancestors who were enslaved; not all of us speak English, and yet we are all black. We do need to be more accepting of each other's differences, and realize that they add so much to the richness of an African Diasporic culture.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be an ongoing issue of self naming and racial identification. But it all comes down to how society views an individual of two different race. Society or people determine who is Black or White based on their accomplishment, success and economic status.
ReplyDeleteThere has been so many debates on whether President Obama is black or white. If he was'nt the president or if he wasnt educated the he is, he would just be seen as a regular Black man, no one would even recognized him to say whether he is Black or White.
According to a study done By Northwestern University on "should such racial characterization on people like Obama really matter?" The study shows that it matters and also "the study highlights the legacy of hypodescent in racial categorization in the U.S. According to hypodescent, a child of mixed-race ancestry is assigned to the race of what society considers the socially subordinate parent. Historically, mixed-race children in slave societies were most commonly assigned to the race of their non-Caucasian parent. In the most extreme manifestation of hypodescent in the United States, the one-drop rule holds that if a person has one drop of black blood, he or she is considered to be black."
[Northwestern University (2008, October 12). Does It Matter If Black Plus White Equals Black Or Multiracial?. ScienceDaily. Science daily.com]
I think that an individual should be able to identify with the race they are comfortable with and not what society says.