A solution to the Barack Obama racial identification conundrum

People sensitive to the meaning of words and not under the sway of the mainstream media are understandably hung up by the description of Obama as “black.” He’s half-white, they say, and in addition he was raised by his white mother and white grandparents, so he is not a product of black culture, and his personality does not exhibit any typically “black” traits. So how can we call him black? Objections noted. But then what descriptors should we use for him? “Obama, who would be the first half-white president?” Or, “Obama, who would be the first mulatto / race-mixed president?” Such expressions are not really part of American speech.

So, if it’s incorrect to call Obama black, and if it doesn’t work in the American idiom to call him race-mixed or mulatto, how should we describe him?

I suggest an expression that once was common in America but has been prohibited for the last 40 years: colored. Obama would be the first colored president. Colored, while overlapping with black, does not necessarily mean the same as black. It suggests something other than white. Obama may not be black. But he certainly is colored.

The main objection to colored is that it is considered racially derogatory. But that is just an arbitrary liberal notion. “Black” was once considered derogatory, so “Negro” and “colored” were adopted because they seemed more respectful. Then, in the confrontational Sixties, “Negro” and “colored” came to be seen as derogatory, and were replaced by … black! Then in the late 1980s, black was (partially) replaced by African-American. It’s all a matter of political fashion and convention. And of course there is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the PC phrase “person of color,” as well as the United Negro College Fund, and no one objects to those. There is thus no inherent reason why we should not use the word colored. Also, colored has a gentle, pleasing sound, while black has always sounded harsh. And think of all the partially black people in America who have never felt comfortable with being called black, because it simply didn’t fit them. Colored is thus more inclusive.

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On further thought, I can see that blacks would object to the expression “colored” because it suggests that whiteness is the norm and “colored” is something added onto the norm. It thus implicitly makes “colored people” subordinate, or at least secondary, to whites. “Black,” by contrast, is a primary quality in itself, independent of whites and whiteness. But if this is the case, then the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the most powerful black organization in America, should change its name. As long as the NAACP keeps its present name, blacks have no justification for rejecting or attacking the use of the word “colored.”

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HB writes:

It’s one of the great contemporary linguistic ironies: “colored people” bad, “people of color” good. We’ll just ignore that NAACP thing, or chalk it up to history—an anachronism from a bygone age. The opinion of any white is neither asked for nor tolerated on this issue. It’s the same thing with men weighing in on the definition of “feminism”—if they’d wanted your opinion, they would’ve asked, you know?

I personally use “black,” as at least it’s accurate; an “African-American” isn’t necessarily “colored.” But I’d invert your point that the term “colored” subordinates “colored people” to “whites.” Which sounds better, to be “color-filled” or “colorless”? Thus the term “white” becomes associated with emptiness. If you aren’t colored, you’re colorless. You’re a ghost in a colored age.

LA replies:

Interesting. Is “white” a state of nothingness, which is turned into a positive value by being colored; or is “white” the primary and self-sufficient value, compared to which “colored” is a mere secondary and presumably inferior addition?

Maybe truth is relative after all. :-)

Ken Hechtman writes:

Remind me again why “colored people” is demeaning and racist and “people of color” is affirming and empowering. You can guess within ten years how old an organization of people of African ancestry is by what word they use in their name, whether it’s the “Black this” or the “Afro-American that” or the “Colored People the other thing.” There’s one in my neighborhood in Montreal that still calls itself the Negro Community Center because they want people to know they’ve been around for a hundred years.

LA replies:

Because of the relevant history and context. “Colored people” was used in a pre-civil rights society in which the dominant norm was whiteness. Therefore it is thought to denote people who are of secondary importance. But “black people” turns Negritude into a primary value in itself, just as whiteness is a primary value in itself. Instead of Negroes being a mere minority in a white-dominant society presumably adapting to white norms, they are now the equals of whites, no longer accepting white America as the norm, but insisting on their blackness as a norm equal to the norm of whiteness and the cultural norms associated with it. Basically the advent of “black” in the Sixties was coeval with the advent of the idea of cultural equality that later (in the late ’80s) became known as multiculturalism.

The next step beyond black equality with whiteness is black superiority to whiteness—in which blacks are no longer a part of America, but part of a larger Black African world that rejects white America, as in the Black Liberation Theology which Barack Obama followed for 20 years. “Black” arrived in the mid 1960s. James Cone’s book on Black Liberation Theology was published in 1970.

However (to return to our subject), just because blacks and liberals see the phrase “colored people” as unacceptable, that doesn’t mean that we have to accept their view. Since the notion of which racial terms are considered proper is shifting all the time, if some people start to use “colored” again, it might eventually become generally accepted again.

We have a world to win. All we can lose is our “racism.”

A. Zarkov writes:

How about “non-white.” Doesn’t that make everybody happy, and retain a semblance of accuracy?

LA replies:

Up to a point yes. I’ve used that myself, viz., “Obama would be our first nonwhite president.” But as an all purpose usage, I don’t think so. It might work for conservative whites. But blacks don’t want to be known as nonwhite.

Norm P. writes:

The correct answer is that Obama, if elected, would be the first mulatto president, since a mulatto is a first-generation offspring of a white (meaning, in fact, Caucasian) person and a black (meaning, in fact, Negro) person. Whether or not the liberal “politically correct” (meaning, in fact, “wrong”) crowd is uncomfortable with such accurate use of the American language is irrelevant, any more than their belief in man-caused global warming or the tooth fairy. Obama is a mulatto. American adults need to suck it up and pretend like they’re adults.

Taffy writes:

In truth, Obama is one of the few true African Americans around!

W., a prominent black conservative who occasionally reads this site, writes:

I like “colored.” When I sort my laundry, I sort it into “white” and “colored”—and there is no value judgment attached to either.

September 28

Mitch writes:

Here’s the phrase I use:

Melanin-Enhanced Hyphenated American.

It accurately reflects his pigmentation, as well as his association with groups that believe they’re victims of intolerance perpetrated by Melanin-Deficient Americans.

Personally, I’d prefer to refer to him (and every citizen) as an American, but that’s not PC in the eyes of liberals/leftists.

On occasion I’ve referred to myself as a Native-American given that I was born here.

Finally, what do we call whites from South Africa who emigrate to the US and become citizens—“African-Americans”?

Not PC either. :)

LA replies:

Haven’t you heard? After all the Hollywood action thrillers in which the terrorists were Nazi-like white South Africans, Congress passed a law barring white South Africans from immigrating into the United States.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 27, 2008 12:50 PM | Send