A comment on my recent post (Rule Book Racism: Can a Black Athlete Celebrate?) deserves a full response.
Lanny writes:
“A young, black, athletic man will soon be our president.” Why don’t you call him white? He’s just as much white as black. Is my wife, Karina, yellow or white, Japanese or American? Her mother is 100% Japanese, and her father from Georgia is white with a touch of Native American.
Lanny has an excellent point, and one that I have often shouted at the screen when cable news pundolts do as I did.
Mea culpa. I reflexively adopted the bigoted and long-established Jim Crow “one-drop rule” which states that to be white is to be pure; even one drop of Negro blood makes one black. Continue reading “Racial Identity: “Hapa” Obama”