Barack Obama Had A White Mama…

It’s absolutely foolish to keep pointing out that Barack Obama is biracial and was born to a white mother. That old, despicable one-drop-rule was an actual, enforced social and legal assertion that if your ancestry contains one drop of sub-Saharan African blood that you are considered black. And, all the cultural context of that same one-drop-rule is why you, personally, feel the need to keep pointing out that his mother was white when someone calls him “the first black president.”

Yes, Barack Obama had a white mama. It doesn’t make you NOT a racist to remind us of the fact. We get it; we know all about his mama. It doesn’t make you any less bigoted to remind us that the first black president is biracial. It only shows how desperately you want to deny Black Americans that victory in their cultural advancement in our society.

When someone accuses you of racism for hateful remarks about Obama, it doesn’t make your unreasoning hate any less racist or bigoted to point out that his mother was white – because, her whiteness never counted to non-blacks before. I’ll grant you may genuinely believe you’re not a bigot. I’m sorry to be the one to inform you, but you don’t get to decide if you’re a bigot. The person or people on the end of your vitriol, whose sensibilities tell them you’re bigoted against them, get to decide. Moreover, when groups like the KKK and WBC share your viewpoint, it’s time and past time to question your viewpoint and examine your soul; if you cannot see that, then yes: You are a bigot.

A little modern history lesson on mixed-race Americans – and I mean VERY modern: Until as late as the 80s, laws were still being enforced that determined if you had any traceable African ancestry, that you were legally black. For example, as late as 1983, the one-drop-rule was still in practice in Louisiana.

Culturally, white and Asian people BOTH refused – and largely still refuse – to acknowledge children of African biracial birth as one of their own race. Let me be clear: If a white parent and a black parent have a child, other white people don’t acknowledge the “white” of that child - the child to other white people was and is black; If an Asian parent and a black parent have a child, other Asians saw and still view that child as black. 

However, from the earliest days of the legalization of biracial relationships, black people began evolving on the issue to accept the biracial child as a black child. At least three generations of biracial adults born since that legalization have grown up only ever black to the entire society of America. 

Biracial people of African ancestry identify as black because they have been and still continue to be marginalized as black people by everyone else. 

To have spent the last century convincing biracial people of African descent that they are black, and to now claim otherwise because you don’t like being suspected of racism is hollow and preposterous.