Obama is Biracial? Barack Obama's ethnic identity raises questions in a multiracial family. By Heidi Durrow "What's tomorrow?" The sought-for answer was Tuesday. Instead I said: "Super Tuesday. Election Day. Go Obama. Mixed people will rule the world!" The over-the-top-ness was for the effect I thought it would have on fourteen-year-old Nephew who sat in the backseat. He's African-American and Filipino. Mixed People Power: it's something I thought we could bond over. "I thought Obama was black," said Nephew. "He's biracial," I said. "His mother is white. His father was black, from Kenya." "Oh," said Nephew. (Fourteen-year-olds are often underwhelmed.) This was the comment from the same kid who at age ten thought I was rooting for the "Danish guy" to reach the American Idol Top Ten. (The "Danish guy" was a mixed, light-skinned singer with curly hair and light eyes. I still chuckle thinking of this.) This was the comment from the same kid who often gets the comment "you look like Tiger!" He has an awareness of biracial identity but didn't know that Obama's background was also biracial. Interesting, but perhaps no surprise. The press routinely refers to Obama as the first African-American in serious contention for a major party nomination. And Obama himself has shied away from calling himself biracial, saying that he categorizes himself as "black." That is until Kansas, when he introduced his white cousin to the crowd and press. An article in Salon, Multiracial Man, discusses whether Obama's "frankness" about his biracial background heralds a new emphasis of the campaign and questions how it might play out in states both red and blue where folks are used to easy divisions between black and white. ___________________________ A new generation of people for whom mixed race might not invoke the specter of slavery want to celebrate their dual status. ___________________________ "Obama has allowed the country to think what it wants about him, perhaps in an effort to reach Americans for whom his intricate multicultural background might prove difficult to parse. As it gets harder for him to deny his biracial heritage - indeed, as he begins to use it politically, as we saw in Kansas - will we cease to think of him along those carefully drawn lines? Can we elect a zebra? Will that dilute the sense that an Obama victory would make history? Or will we continue to insist that one drop of black blood makes a man black?" writes James Hannaham. He continues: "But in America, to define yourself as biracial if you happen to be a half-black and half-white politician means risking alienation from black voters, who will presume that you are trying to distance yourself from blackness simply by acknowledging your European genes. So while groups like the NAACP feared a dilution of black political power and fought efforts to introduce a more complex system for racial self-identification on the U.S. census, a new generation of people for whom mixed race might not invoke the specter of slavery want to celebrate their dual status. If Obama embraces his inner diversity, though, he might also risk confusing white voters of the sort that swept him to victory in Iowa - at least the sort who believe that they can tell who is black just by looking." My hope is that this does herald the possibility that Obama will talk about being biracial. I don't just mean for the cause of biracial people power - it's not just a matter of giving us mixed folks a new sense of self-esteem in the same way that a Black is Beautiful movement did. Claiming his biracial identity is a way to change the whole conversation about race. Let's not make it easy for people to say “He's biracial but really he's black.” Let folks be confused. Really, he's black AND white. Let folks be confused. The whole notion of race is confusing. As a biracial folks, I think we have a unique insight straddling the divide. Let's talk about it. Or maybe, the fact of Obama's biracial background should be as underwhelming as it may be to Nephew. At least for that (as yet non-voting) generation, biracial identity is not something to proclaim or shun. It's just another thing about being a teenager. I don't know. Heidi Durrow is a graduate of Stanford, Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School. She is of Danish and African-American descent. Her writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, Smokelong Quarterly, the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, Essence magazine, and Newsday. Her homepage is http://heidiwdurrow.com/biography.html. Go to Urban Mozaik Magazine This website: Copyright © 2008 Dream World Media, LLC. / Urban Mozaik Magazine. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in Urban Mozaik Magazine are not necessarily those of Urban Mozaik Magazine and the publisher cannot be held responsible for them. This website/publication, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.