Shades of grey

Thursday, 18th December 2008

I thought this piece on the "Is he black?" mini-controversy did a fair job of capturing the nuances:

Rebecca Walker, a 38-year-old writer with light-brown skin who is of Russian, African, Irish, Scottish and Native American descent, said she used to identify herself as “human,” which upset people of all backgrounds. So she went back to multiracial or biracial... “Of course Obama is black. And he’s not black, too,” Walker said. “He’s white, and he’s not white, too. Obama is whatever people project onto him ... he’s a lot of things, and neither of them necessarily exclude the other.”

And the views of North Carolina congressman G.K. Butterfield [left]:

Butterfield, 61, grew up in a prominent black family... Both of his parents had white forebears, “and those genes came together to produce me.” He grew up on the black side of town, led civil rights marches as a young man, and to this day goes out of his way to inform people that he is certainly not white. Butterfield has made his choice; he says let Obama do the same.
“Obama has chosen the heritage he feels comfortable with,” he said. “His physical appearance is black. I don’t know how he could have chosen to be any other race. Let’s just say he decided to be white — people would have laughed at him. “You are a product of your experience. I’m a U.S. congressman, and I feel some degree of discomfort when I’m in an all-white group. We don’t have the same view of the world, our experiences have been different.”