Participants & readers of this thread may be interested in this dailykos dairy about race & racism.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/6/1735/10696/636/470253

As point of information, that diary [essay] is written by a Native Ameican.

Here's a long excerpt of that dairy:

Racism in 21st Century America
by Meteor Blades
Wed Mar 05, 2008

Not so very long ago, there was a great deal of talk around various progressive parts of wwwLand about how the "half-white, half-black" Barack Obama had "transcended" race and racism. Well, actually, not so much talk about that, but rather talk about why talking about racism is by its very nature divisive.

Racism is divisive. However, not talking about it doesn't make it go away.

Many people find straight-up discussions of the subject uncomfortable. Or irrelevant. One expression I have heard for the past 20 or so years from whites – both friends and others – goes along the lines of: why do black people (Indians, etc.) keep bringing up racial issues? Things are different now. True. In my lifetime, progress has been made. But race and racism still factor greatly in the social, cultural and political life of this nation. Look at voter suppression. Look at our prisons. Look at our reservations. Look at the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

As idiotic as it sounds, not so very long ago, every child born in Louisiana with at least 1/32nd degree of African-American ancestry was categorized as black. In other words, you could be 96% "white" and still be "black" for the sake of "separate but equal" laws, including, most ironically, the prohibition against miscegenation, which obviously didn't work as well as its racial "purity" advocates desired. Homer Plessy (of the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson separate-but-equal case), was actually seven-eighths white, one-eight black. One of the claims his lawyers brought forth in his suit against Louisiana was that state law deprived him of the property of his whiteness without due process. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed with him in a 7-1 ruling almost as terrible as the Dred Scot ruling of 40 years earlier.

A hundred and twenty-five years ago, after being heavily criticized by his enemies and many of his friends for choosing Helen Pitts as his second wife, the ex-slave abolitionist Frederick Douglass - my No. 1 hero - put the whole matter into a perspective that too many Americans still have not come to grips with: "My first wife was the color of my mother, and my second wife, the color of my father."

When I was a kid in the South, we were referred to as "red niggers" and placed alongside blacks in the category of "colored" when it came to using drinking fountains, restrooms, cafes, motels, movie theaters, swimming pools and buses. It didn't matter that half my family could – out of our home stomping grounds – "pass white" because we were a mix of Seminoles, Scots and African-Americans. The situation epitomized the idiocy of "racial" classifications, the idiocy of "blood" prejudice, and the idiocy of separating human beings from human beings.

Race is a human creation (just like class), not a product of biology, though it is created out of, and with, the markers and tools of biology. Five years ago, the PBS Special, Race – The Power of Illusion, pointed out what's become scientifically irrefutable in the era of DNA studies: there's only one race, the human race. But years of misguided science, stereotypes, imperialism, and culture clashes have created the concept of race to the point where, basically, it is now entrenched in the human psyche, and no amount of scientific evidence can undo it. Just how idiotic this is can be seen in what is designated as "white." Let's face it, any "race" that includes both full-blooded Swedes and full-blooded Sicilians is a very elastic definition.

But because of its history, race now has a significance that it is anti-progressive to ignore. Once introduced into human society, race has implications and human experiences are shaped by it. To ignore the implications of those experiences is a wrong-headed approach, I believe. We are all humans, but our histories and experiences have not all been the same. The question isn't to pretend that this isn't the case, but what we do with that knowledge and recognition.

In a perfect world, perhaps, we'd all be colorblind. But in my experience it's mostly been white people who have claimed to be colorblind and black people who have said they want their blackness to be acknowledged. Black and proud. I've heard black people lament how many times they've been told, "I don't think of you as black," as if that's supposed to be a compliment or as if they're being separated out from other blacks and praised as "one of the good ones." ...

One of the media conversations I'm peripherally aware of ... is the "why do people call Obama black?" It's quite fascinating, really, that this is an issue. The same issue was raised when Halle Berry won her Oscar. I'll try to be kind to those raising it, but they really seem to have a view of race as being genetic or "in the blood," which is, uh, a rather interesting view of race. The "one drop rule" still exists -- not because it's government imposed, but because if you look black people categorize you as black. Now, I look forward to a colorblind society but it doesn't exactly exist right now. Obama is black because people see him as black. The content of "black blood" in him is irrelevant. I highly doubt any of the people saying this didn't think of Obama as a "black man" before they discovered that one of his parents was white. ...

But, as for why this issue is coming up now specifically, Obama himself says it much better than I ever could:

"If I was arrested for armed robbery and my mug shot was on the television screen, people wouldn't be debating if I was African-American or not. I'd be a black man going to jail. Now if that's true when bad things are happening, there's no reason why I shouldn't be proud of being a black man when good things are happening, too".

[posted as a block quote with a link to an archived article; hyperlink will not work; source:THE SPEAKER; A Surprise Senate Contender Reaches His Biggest Stage Yet; Monica Davey, New York Times, Julu 20, 2004]

[African American blogger Steve] Gilliard weighed in with his own remarks:

"In America, there are two classes of people, white and not-white. If you are white, then you are white, but if you are not white, you are NOT WHITE. Have you ever heard of anyone described as half-white, unless they were visibly another race? No matter how pretty or how smart, if you are not white in America, you are not white.

But Obama didn't have to use the example of armed robbery, all he had to say is if he got into an elevator, some white woman would clutch her purse. The double Ivy League grad (Columbia, Harvard Law) is not white in America, to what degree doesn't matter, he could be half-Mexican like Bill Richardson or Jeb Bush's kids, and they are not white. It's not the degree of blackness you have, but the lack of whiteness.

In Latin America, any white heritage makes you white. Whiteness is the positive value, because when they were shipping slaves west, there were so few whites that interbreeding wasn't only essential, but encouraged. Of course, when you get to Brazil, which had slavery until 1888, blacks are still the vast majority, but still discriminated against based on skin color. One of my professors said that when he was in Brazil, the family he visited hid their black child.

But because of chattel slavery in the US, and the limited number and expense of slaves, meant that any black blood (later to be expanded to other ethnic groups) meant you were black. Now, my great grandmother was Native American, but no one calls us Indians. Most African-Americans from the Carolinas have some native heritage, but black is the catchall phrase used to describe us all. ...

When some of Thomas Jefferson's black descendents were found, most of who looked as white as any other white person, some of their neighbors began to treat them differently, of course, this was on Staten Island, where racism is a local sport, but still. Any black heritage was seen to make them black, even though Sally Hemmings was only half-black to begin with. She was Jefferson's sister-in-law. It took decades for the white Jefferson descendents to allow their black relatives to be part of the family.

I was watching the Super Bowl with my friends and someone said something about being black. My friend said, well, I'm not all black. I said, "well, 25 percent makes you a member of the club and 50 percent gets you a seat at the table."

Italians love to insult Sicilians by saying they're part black. It's one of the most common jokes heard.

Barack Obama is black because he looks black. His actual heritage is not relevant. His upbringing is not relative. All you have to do in America is look black to be black. Because that is how people will treat you"

[end of block quote]

The "half-white, half-black" theme simply fails to acknowledge the reality that both Obama and Gilliard pointed to.

We can and must talk about what the ideal would be. But we don't yet live in an ideal world, not anything close to it, and we have to address the world we live in, a world in which multiracial people are considered black, or, as Gilliard preferred, "non-white." I've seen enough change in my life to believe that my grandchildren may live in a world, or at least a country, where race won't matter as much. And perhaps not at all by the time their grandchildren come along. Where anti-racism will be unnecessary because redundant.

Getting there means pointing out and ridiculing the irrational 17th century groupings of humans and striving for a broader and more moral view of humanity. It means acknowledging the realities of racism today and simultaneously pushing for a better conception of humanity. Same as it always has"...

-snip-

Needless to say, I wholeheartedly agree with the comments made by the diarist and the comments that I've quoted here which were included in that dairy. I consider this essay and the comments which are posted to it to be very interesting & informative and I strongly encourage Mudcat members and guests to take some time to read the entire essay and the comments in response to that diary.

As point of information, dailykos is a Democratic progressive online community whose membership is racially & ethnically diverse. The community surveys its members annually to ascertain their race, gender, age, income, geographical location, political party, and other demographics. And the results of those separate surveys are publicly posted in a forum dairy. It's not unusual in discussions about race [and less frequently, in other discussions as the person considers it pertinent] for a dailykos member to make reference to his or her race or ethnicity [with "ethnicity" as I'm defining it here meaning "Latino"]. The majority of that blog's members are White, but/and there is an active "contingent" of dailykos who are non-White. Given its mission to promote the election of Democrats within the USA, it's not surprising that the overwhelming majority of members of dailykos are from the USA. However, there appears to be a much smaller number of dailykos members from Canada, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Unlike Mudcat, no guests can post on dailykos. For what it's worth, I am a regular lurker to that website, and am not now nor have I ever been a member of dailykos.