SENATOR BARACK OBAMA ELECTED 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
CHICAGO — Sen. Barack Obama shattered racial barriers and ushered in a new era of American politics on Tuesday by decisively defeating his Republican rival to become the 44th president of the United States of America.
Obama, the 47-year-old son of a Kansan mother and a Kenyan father, topped Sen. John McCain of Arizona to conclude the longest, most expensive campaign in the country’s history. The sentiment in Chicago’s Grant Park, where Obama declared victory, was clear: America had gotten its money’s worth.
To become the nation’s first black president-elect, the Illinois...
First, because Michelle Obama can't say it without retribution, but I can: for the first time in my life, I am profoundly proud to be an American. I say that as someone with a thorough and deep understanding of world history and politics and our place in it. I have often been ashamed of what has been done in our name in our past, never more so than in the past eight years, but now...well, it is enough to make this atheist thank god.
Second, how is it PC for the YDN to presumptuously comment on Barack's race, but not McCain's, particularly when they are too PC to comment on the race of the perpetrators in campus crimes? I'm really really tired of a non-white person's race getting called out but not the reciprical description for white people.
For purposes of challenging the racial assumptions, can we start saying, "Barack Obama, the first half-white (as far as we know), president"? How can you presume to call him "black"? Where did you acquire your genetic data for this?
Shouldn't we speculate on the racial profile of all our candidates, as in: "John McCain, the presumably white senator from AZ"?
Shouldn't newspapers, which are supposed to report facts, stop treating what is a perception as a fact? Otherwise, you need to define how you are using the terms. If you're going to call Obama black, then you're doing it essentially under the old plantation standard of "one drop". I reject that standard. All it does is vaguely imbue the color of one's skin with judgment and value when it is irrelevant.
Oh editors, is race anything more than skin color? If no, then terms of black or white are insufficient to describe all the colors people come in.
So, to test your prejudices, why not use the actual descriptive adjectives, such as, "Barack Obama, the cafe-au-laite skinned candidate", or John McCain, the GOP nominee with skin the color of 3-day old snow".
Surely the newspapers have a responsibility to stop perpetuating these prejudices. I would like newspapers to question their assumptions when they use the the race descriptor--label everyone equally or stop it all together, please. Or rather, use real, meaningful adjectives if your goal is to describe the color of their skin, otherwise, tell me what the point of using race as part of identifying someone.