Why doesn't the media EVER mention that Obama is half white

[bigdarryl]

I know as a black man myself that if you have just a little black blood in you your considered a BLACK in this country BUT having said that the media never brings up the fact that Obama is half white.

[polichick]

1. It messes up their faux story.

[babylonsister]

2. Russert on MTP did today. nt

[slinkerwink]

3. MTP discussed the Clinton lie on Bosnia

[billbuckhead]

7. At least all this post racial alternate reality is gone

He's Reverend Wright's and Emil's candidate,Tony Soprano's candidate, the nuclear power industry's candidate and will throw his white grandmother under the bus to succeed. Why would anyone want him?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

4. MSM is making a big deal

over his grandmother, the "typical white woman".

Think there's a lot of "race cards" on the table? Wait'll he wins the nomination. This is gonna get ugly before November.

[izzie]

14. I think they should say 'typical women'

As a women I have alway known that it was sort of un-safe for me alone on the street of any place . Even in those good old days of the 50's. It has never been the color of any ones skin but the number and the sex of them that made me watch out. You know that you are smaller and usually weaker. It makes one watch out what they are doing. I am betting where you grew up would add to how you think about this.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

17. Yes, and to add color to it:

it could apply to "typical white-haired people". Of either gender and any race, we who approach geezerdom have to be alert to surroundings. "Fight" and "Flight" ain't what they used to be ...

:rofl:

[izzie]

47. Your right.

--

[noobie2]

5. My guess, it's the same reason...

half coffee and half milk is considered a cafe latte. The beverage is considered a coffee, not milk. :)

[blogslut]

6. never?

Don't you think you're exaggerating just a bit?

[Breeze54]

8. Untrue...I've heard it mentioned a lot, especially last week.

Even Obama talks about it in his speeches, but not all the time.

[Bensthename]

9. Well, he looks black and reffering to Obama as the half white half black candidate would be odd.

But I have seen almost all major news networks mention he is 1/2. That's just how it goes. Bill Richardson is also half white but that is not hardly mentioned either. Maybe beacuse people dont want to be called half something even though Im sure they don't mind that they are.

[TomBall Democrat]

10. Simplicity

Stupidity?

Laziness?

Why don't they report the news in general?

Or perhaps, I'm wrong and Brittany Spears is in fact a world leader.

[drexel dave]

13. It's neither stupidity or laziness

it's a calculated strategy to help enable the dumbing down of society, which enables the corporate elite to plunder, rape and pillage as they see fit...and the greatest part is that most of the people being boned up the poop chute don't even know it's all working as planned.

Evil genius is more like it.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. They did a few months ago when they were calling his 'blackness' into question.

Obama has been:

• not really black
  
• way too black
  
• muslim
  
• christian but the wrong sort of christian (way too black)
  

It just depends on the phase of the media.

[ecstatic]

22. Yeah at that time they were irritated with Obama embracing his black side nt

[PM7nj]

12. Because they can't portray him a racist then

If they noted the fact that he is biracial they wouldn't be able to say he is racist against white people.

[MH1]

15. bingo.

[treestar]

28. Exactly, and the right wing would not have the chance to rant on

about Farakhan (don't know much about him, but he is a favorite bogeyman of the right). Thus trying to identify Obama with that kind of thinking, even thought Obama does not think like that.

[BumRushDaShow]

16. That's because the drive-by stereotype hits would become meaningless.

He even had to put the pictures out there to prove it and there was like a stunned silence until they started flailing around ever since regarding his maternal grandmother... talking all sorts of gibberish regarding how he described her early stance and how she changed over the years.

[Donkeykick]

18. I have seen it in the news.

:shrug:

[formercia]

19. Jim Crow mentality

Even if he had blue eyes and was lilly-white.

[mckeown1128]

20. What is funny is that in many other countries...

the opposite is true... one drop of white blood makes a persona white.

[LisaL]

21. What countries would that be?

[mckeown1128]

31. Many south and central american countries...

I remember learning about it in Anthropology :)

Those with lighter skins were/are considered white more so than black.

[BumRushDaShow]

38. They sortof did that in Brazil, which was a Portugese colony.

In South Africa, they created a 3rd designation "coloreds".

[mckeown1128]

39. the concept of "races" is total BS...

Every country as weird un-logical standards for determining race... and unfortunately basing worth on those BS standards. Which leads to misery. (Anyone seen Hotel Rwanda???)

[stray cat]

23. I have heard it pointed out by the media but more from black commentators than white

[Traction311]

24. Sadly, a lot depends on skin color

Like how light skined/dark skined you are. Derek Jeter and Mariah Carrey are also half black/half white, but they are rarely if ever described as black.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

25. I imagine that the Obama team uses his half white status to garnish the white voters

[TomBall Democrat]

46. WTF?

Garnish the white voters?

Like parsley on a plate? Or taking my wages?

If you mean that as an Obama supporter, I'm playing up his Caucasian mother to motivate white voters to vote for him, that is as flawed a purpose as say, voting for Hillary because I'm a woman.

If you must resort to imagination, imagine this:

Obama supporters support Obama because he's Obama.

[LisaL]

26. What would you have media do?

Should they start with "presidential candidate Barack Obama, who is half-white," or should they end with it?
Or should they throw it into the middle, now and then?

[treestar]

32. Surely that was not suggested

But then why all the focus on Pastor Wright? When have we ever seen that before? Did we even know who the Chimperor's pastor was?

Have we heard one word from McBush's pastor? Why is that? He/she could well have said something stupid at some point in the last 35 years.

Or, why haven't we heard from Obama's teachers, then, or others? The media has the power to find them out. But perhaps none of them say anything "controversial" (I've yet to see anything Wright said that isn't true) about race, and the media would rather bait everyone on that and get things stirred up than tell us what Obama himself thinks. True they showed his speech. But the need for the speech came about because the media made such a big deal of Wright.

Even if one wants to argue that Wright "hates" white people, it is silly to identify Obama with that, as Obama hardly could "hate" white people. The right wing MSM wants the white voters to fear a black man having the power of the Presidency - otherwise they would be more evenhanded about the fact he is just as much a white man as he is a black man.

[LisaL]

37. Not talking about Obama, but I don't buy into the premise that

bi-racial person, or person of mixed heritage can not be racist.

[treestar]

They could be, but is Obama?

There's nothing to say he favors one race over the other except the lame assertion that just because Pastor Wright has some ideas that some whites could find offensive that Obama has to carry responsibility for them.

[treestar]

27. The media has opportunities to do that, too

Obama clearly has white family members, and it is very likely they are out there supporting him. But they never show up on camera, while Rev. Wright does. The media is so clearly trying to pander to right wing bigotry which gets into a self righteous victim stance over "racism" against it, by trying to identify Obama with opinions he doesn't hold (he doesn't have to agree with Wright about everything) - but this "fun" the media is having would be undermined by even publicizing Obama's own opinions more, let alone letting his white side have equal time.

[LisaL]

30. Who would the white family members be?

His mother is dead. His grandmother is old and she doesn't campaign.
When his sister was campaigning for him in Hawaii, it was reported, but she is bi-racial herself.

[treestar]

36. There have to be some

His mother was white, therefore, there is a white cousin out there somewhere. Was his mother an only child? If not, there could be a white aunt/uncle and therefore likely cousins. Most of us know our cousins growing up. Maybe grandma has younger brothers or sisters? It has been known to happen.

Googling, I haven't been able to find out much about this, other than that Obama is a distant cousin of Cheney. Well, there's a white relative to be proud of. :sarcasm:

But I also came across the fact that his black relatives aren't showing up in the media, either, and that for the most part, other than immediate family, they don't show up in the media much for any candidate.

Still, Obama was close to his mother, she raised him, she's white and he's half white, so that is an equal influence on him and it is very unlikely he has sympathies with the more extreme opinions of some black people on race, but the media is diligently trying to equate Obama with that. The extreme right is only too willing to agree with that false position.

[TragedyandHope]

29. He's a black man with a white mother...

Look up the history of the One-drop rule. It's an American concept that had legal ramifications, although it isn't part of other cultures around the world.

Personally, I don't buy into the One-drop rule. For me to accept it would mean buying into the idea that one drop of black blood somehow taints a pure white bloodline. Flip that on it's head and try saying the one drop of white blood makes a person white. Not only does it not make sense, it also implies a built in stratification of various races. And really, everyone's blood is the same red color.

I do accept that this outmoded idea is still widely held by both black and white Americans, so it's commonly used in the media.

Obviously, Obama is of mixed race and has a truly multi-cultural background, but even he has struggled with identity and his own self-image. In some ways, some of his personal choices seem to indicate that he felt uncomfortable with possibly being too white or not black enough. You can see that plainly enough in his choice of name and I suspect that might have been an undercurrent in his choice of Church and other aspects of his life. I don't see those as negatives, but simply as a conscious choice to define his own identity on a personal level.

The other side of this is that he is white (50%) and he does have a white family and a much deeper kinship and understanding of white American than that bigots could ever imagine.

There are so many issues in this campaign that Obama has obviously made a conscious choice not try and overturn the One-Drop rule mindset. He could have set a standard to have his campaign emphasize the use of words like "mixed-race" in all his press and public communication, but he didn't. Frankly, I think it would have confused the issue and most Americans would have tuned out of the discussion. There is also the possibility that some blacks may have been offended, thinking that he was somehow trying to distance himself from them or mistakenly inferring that self-identification as "mixed-race" was somehow more desirable than blackness.

As you can see, a serious discussion of mixed heritage in America is a whole other can of worms on top of the simple race issue, so I think Obama consciously made this choice himself based on history and generally accepted notions in American society. The media is going along with Obama's own choice of identity as well their own tacit acceptance of the One-drop rule.

Obama is black and he is white, but more importantly he is a great American leader. His background truly does put him in a unique position to move the country forward into the future.

[treestar]

41. IA, his background contributes with his intelligence to his being a

very well informed person, and the intelligence will lend him good judgment, (which is better than "experience" in politics - after all, president is not a "job" in the business sense) and we sorely need that kind of person after 8 years of the Chimp. The last thing we need is McChimp.

[caledesi]

45. I agree! NT

[DemsUnited]

33. I think it's because Obama doesn't mention it much.

Part of his effort to transcend race.

But now that race is an integral part of the race, he'll probably refer to it more in his speeches, linking to the unity theme.

Perhaps MSM will pick up on it more then.

[Hepburn]

34. For the reasons that you mentioned.

A long time ago I represented an AA daddy in a child custody battle against his ex wife who was white. While waiting in the courthouse hallway for the case to be called, I was talking to my client's sister, who obviously was also AA. We were discussing the issues involved: The ex wife was the primary custodial parent and she had remarried and her new spouse was also white, etc. My client's sister said to me, in essence, if a person has a bit of black blood, he/she is seen as black to both blacks and whites. I thought about that for a second and I realized that she was absolutely correct: I as a white woman and she as a black woman both saw the half AA and half white child as an AA child.

Now with Obama's racial heritage, as of late I have often remembered that conversation with the sister of my client that took place many, many years ago as two moms, one the lawyer and one that aunt, sat outside a courtroom and discussed a child involved in a custody litigation. IMO, what my client's sister said to me back then still holds true.

FWIW

[Buzz Clik]

35. Wouldn't it be nice if race and gender were not worth mentioning?

[sam sarrha]

40. they have called him a "Hafracan", whadayawant...

:shrug: :wow: :rofl: :banghead:

[WinkyDink]

42. His visage. Let's be real; nobody thinks of Tiger Woods as Asian, either.

Even Obama has called his church a "Black" church.

Another example: "Black" F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, with a white English mother:
http://www.blackathlete.com/artman2/publish/Motorsports_29/Landmark_Achievement_Hamilton_Becomes_First_Black_Driver_To_Win_F1_Race.shtml
http://www.obv.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=673&Itemid=124

[AllentownJake]

43. They paid alot of attention to it

Before South Carolina and he got the Black vote...than suddenly he wasn't only black enough he might be a little too black. I always wondered what the right color of black was.

[nolabels]

49. The one with the uncle tom color

Shhhhee.............quiet. Don't tell anybody but I'm pretty sure there are numerically more disenfranchised Euro's milling around the streets of the US than any other group. It seems fitting to have somebody like Obama, who has lived in the middle of this race crap. He knows this is just some more B.S. spill the establishment needs to keep people divided.

They (the establishment) has more of issue of who and what he represents than they will ever have of him as a person. That though, quite frankly will never be discussed

[Bad Thoughts]

44. Black + White =Black

Race doesn't work logically, and anyone who is not completely white/of European descent is a minority.

[Vinca]

48. Why does it matter? Can't he just be a man? nt