Black Or White?

There's nothing that grabs my attention more than an argument about race.

A lot of the arguments of late can be blamed on the USA as usual - or to be more specific, Barack Obama.

Now I have a friend with a long-running severe obsession over the man. Any less-than-gushing remark about Obama could potentially spark off a rant and more.

I tried once to gauge the source of her enthusiasm for Obama. Between various torrents of emotion, I gathered that she was excited about him being the "first African American man to become the president of the USA".

Frankly, I beg to differ.

He is not an African, a Negro or a Black man alone. He is also White, something that the rest of the world seems content to dismiss.

Exceptions exist, in the form of Jason Haap of Cincinnati, USA who (rightly, in my opinion) protests the "one drop rule" - that old racist theory that claimed one drop of black blood made someone forever black.

Haap is a White man who is married to a Black woman and has two multi-racial sons. But not everyone in the same situation agrees. My friend, Ax is also a White man married to a Black woman.

He, however seems to be fixated on the notion that Haap is claiming being Black is less than an ideal condition to be in. Or in his words, "offensive".

But that is the USA. What do other people around the world think?

David Aaronovitch is half Jewish. He writes for The Times. His children are also multi-racial or in his words, "who are not black and are not white, or who are both".

He makes an observation that I have, in the past, put forward before as well: "To say that Mr Obama is black is to say, in effect, that his mother had no race or that her race was somehow obliterated by her choice of husband."

It is interesting to note that in the UK, the fastest-growing ethnic category is that of mixed race.

That can never be a bad thing. I note with approval that Britons in general have become better looking in recent times, evidently a positive side-effect of miscegenation.

On another note, take a look at this two-tone miracle, repeated yet again.