{"id":1599,"date":"2007-07-20T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2007-07-20T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp\/?p=1599"},"modified":"2021-06-09T23:09:40","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T23:09:40","slug":"obama-on-multiracial-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/2007\/07\/20\/obama-on-multiracial-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama on Multiracial Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"
This is from page 99 of the paperback edition to Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father<\/u>.\u00a0 Many people assume that he is similar to Tiger Woods because he constantly refers to his white mother “from Kansas” and black father “from Kenya.”\u00a0 He has benefited from the efforts of the Multiracial movement to make racially mixed families and racially mixed ancestry respectable and overturn the “one drop” myth, but he is obviously not in favor of free choice – or at least no one has publicly dared to ask him if he still holds to the views expressed below:<\/div>\n
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I didn\u2019t have the luxury, I suppose, the certainty of the tribe.\u00a0 Grow up in Compton and survival becomes a revolutionary act…I had nothing to escape from except my own inner doubt.\u00a0 I was more like the black students who had grown up in the suburbs…You could spot them right away by the way they talked, the people they sat with in the cafeteria.\u00a0 When pressed, they would sputter and explain that they refused to be categorized.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t defined by the color of their skin, they would tell you.\u00a0 They were individuals.<\/div>\n
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That\u2019s how Joyce liked to talk.\u00a0 She was a good-looking woman, Joyce was, with her green eyes and honey skin and pouty lips…all the brothers were after her.\u00a0 One day I asked her if she was going to the Black Students\u2019 Association meeting.\u00a0 She looked at me funny and then started shaking her head like a baby who doesn\u2019t want what it sees on the spoon.<\/div>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m not black,\u201d Joyce said.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m multiracial<\/em>.\u201d Then she started telling me about her father, who happened<\/em> to be Italian and was the sweetest man in the world; and her mother, who happened<\/em> to be part African and part French and part Native American and part something else.\u00a0 \u201cWhy should I have to choose between them?\u201d she asked me.\u00a0 Her voice cracked, and I thought she was going to cry. \u201cIt\u2019s not white people who are making me choose.\u00a0 Maybe it used to be that way, but now they\u2019re willing to treat me like a person.\u00a0 No\u2013it\u2019s black<\/em> people who always have to make everything racial.\u00a0 They\u2019re<\/em> the ones making me choose.\u00a0 They\u2019re<\/em> the ones who are telling me that I can\u2019t be who I am…\u201d<\/div>\n
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They, they, they.\u00a0 That\u2019s the problem with people like Joyce.\u00a0 They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, they way integration always worked, a one-way street.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is from page 99 of the paperback edition to Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father.\u00a0 Many people assume that he is similar to Tiger Woods because he constantly refers to his white mother...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,63,141],"tags":[121],"class_list":["post-1599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-mixed-blog","category-a-d-powells-view","category-news-clips","tag-biracial-and-multiracial"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/AD-Powell.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89tuq-pN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1599"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5575,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions\/5575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}