Am I Black Enough?

My wife of nearly 9 years is white. We have three beautiful daughters who mean more to me than anything in the world. My oldest could pass as white. My second oldest could pass, perhaps, as Mexican. My youngest daughter looks more Native American than anything else. I myself am the product of a taboo relationship (at least it was back in the 1970′s). The son of a black father with baptist roots in Oklahoma and a white mother of German descent.

Am I black enough for you?

I don’t pose this question to you because I care. Rather, to challenge whether such a question really matters at all regardless of context.

Growing up, before making any decisions that I consciously knew would effect the perception of my “blackness”, I found fitting-in rather tough. In school and even within my own family, blacks would denounce my “blackness” and assign new race classifications to me such a “yella”, “gray boy” and the ever popular “half breed”. For those who required to be particularly nasty to me they’d even go so far as to call me “white boy”.

During the same time in my childhood it was boiled down to an easier distinction for whites, particularly white adults. They simply knew I wasn’t “white” and, therefore, was a black as any black person could be. As such I was afforded the same treatment as blacks in terms of stereotypes and racial slurs (“nigger”, “kaffir“, etc).

Fast-forward a bit to my days of running track. Fittingly wasn’t slow but I wasn’t the fastest guy out there…ironically reaffirming my “half-breed” status. In meets when I performed well I was afforded the honor of being perceived as just another “fast black kid”. On the flip side, I remember distinctly a track meet in high school where I was running the 200 meters and a white kid from Iowa City smoked the entire field…myself included. For those unaware, there is an unwritten rule for “blacks” that clearly states you cannot get beat by a white kid in a foot race. My take on it was that the rule went a bit further to state that this only included short races under 400 meters but could optionally include the 400 meter race itself at the discretion of the black delegation in attendance. If you can’t tell, there was a great deal of confusion for me back in those days. While those sorts of rules shouldn’t matter at all under any circumstance, for a young impressionable kid it was hard to tune it out. So on that fateful day, the same people that considered me the “high yella, half breed” choose to apply this basic rule of track-and-field to me and I thought I’d never hear the end of the taunting and comments of how I was afflicted with “white man’s disease”. Worst yet, I heard that exact phrase uttered to me by my own high school track coach during a practice one day (I won’t name names but his son was a Nebraska Husker running back recruit turned Iowa Hawkeye).

Indeed even within my wife’s side of the family my “blackness” played a role. My father-in-law always respected me, even back when I when Kate and I were dating. In fact I knew he took some pride reading a particular article in the sports section of the Quad City Times back in high-school. The 1992 article was a lead-in to the Iowa State Wrestling Tournament were I was ranked 2nd and a good buddy of mine, Manual Macias, was ranked 2nd or 3rd. The contents of the article weren’t really that important but what is key is that they noticed it and perceived this as a good thing. However, my father-in-law was susceptible to perceptions of others and being born and raised in Clinton, Iowa it is safe to say that blacks weren’t something the in-laws were exposed to and, as such, some stereotypes formed which eventually made their way to me. At the very least I can safely say that Kate dating someone that wasn’t white did bring some degree of tension that never fully went away until the day of our nuptials.

What’s my point in all of this? Simple. That these unwritten rules of race such as the track-and-field rule (I need to come up with a clever name for this) or the one-drop rule are applied at convenience as a way of ridiculing a person. Frankly it is ridiculous.

So as I look at the 2008 presidential race and how blacks are over-analyzing Barack Obama’s “blackness” I’d simply remind them that race shouldn’t be the only issue you vote on. Does a candidate’s take on urban issues matter? Absolutely but there is a difference on voting based on socio-economics versus race. You should consider both along with a list of other important issues (Iraq, foreign policy, alternative energy, education, etc) not just based on your racial affiliation. In fact, these so-called black political analysts don’t know how ridiculous the argument sounds. I mean, let me get this right…you are questioning Obama’s “blackness” because it is an issue you feel is important yet nobody at all can question Hillary’s “blackness” or McCain’s “blackness”. The suggestion seems to be that because Obama isn’t “black enough” blacks may choose to side with a white candidate. On the flip side I’m sure some whites will quickly dismiss Obama as a serious candidate because he is “too black” or “not white enough”.

If anybody reading this really feels that way, I truly feel sorry for you because you are also likely to be the same person using skin color as a crutch for all the injustices you’ve endured and your ability to achieve your goals. Please, please think for yourself. Learn to challenge what you read and hear in the media and formulate your own decisions based on the values you hold dear. And I should make this clear, I’m not endorsing Obama (well, not yet at least). But I am trying to do my small part is stopping this insanity of race in presidential politics.

Oh, and as a fitting close to all this, the “white boy” that smoked me in the 200 meters on that fateful day was none other than Tim Dwight. Not that I am bitter [smile].