Race and Politics

It seems the news media have been overrun with articles about Barack Obama and whether or not he's "black enough." Black enough for what? Apparently to be acceptable to the "black community," as if that's one monolithic entity where everyone thinks alike. Or else the stories flip the race card, and speculate on whether he's "white enough" to be an acceptable black.

Haven't we gotten beyond this yet? I am particularly puzzled by our approach to people of mixed race. Obama is called "black," even though he's the son of a black African man and a white American woman. Doesn't calling him "black" ignore or reject the entire heritage from his mother's side? I am reminded of the media focus on Tiger Woods as a black golfer, although his background is a delightful combination of races and ethnicities.

I know. I understand the history of the language and classifications, of how anyone with a speck of black blood was once labeled "black" and hence discriminated against. But now genetics tells us that we probably all descended from Africans (who, yes, were black) and that we share more genetics across so-called "races" than we do within races.

So, c'mon people, let's get over it already.