USA Presidential Race

[Ronn! Blankenship]

At 04:17 AM Tuesday 6/10/2008, William T Goodall wrote:
>On 10 Jun 2008, at 04:10, Wayne Eddy wrote:
> >
> > I am curious why Obama is being categorised as black?



AFAICT the principal reason is that he is the 
only candidate since the founding of the nation 
who has gotten this far in the race for POTUS who 
is known to have at least one black parent rather 
than being as far as everyone knows a descendent of 100% white ancestors.



> > Given that his father was black and his mother is white, surely he
> > is brown, or more to the point a person or an American?
> >
> > If he had three grandparents that were white, would he be black,
> > brown, gray, white or a person?
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
>
>"The one-drop rule is an historical colloquial term in the United
>States that holds that a person with any trace of African ancestry
>(however small or invisible) cannot be considered white and so, unless
>the person has an alternative non-white ancestry that he or she can
>claim, such as Native American, Asian, Arab, Australian aboriginal,
>the person must be considered black."
>
>African origin Maru



The fact that multiple people have brought up the 
"one-drop rule" in response to Wayne's question 
is sufficient explanation of why it should be 
emphasized in the strongest possible terms that 
there is only one race — human — and we should 
not consider the skin color of an individual or 
his/her ancestors as a more important criterion 
in choosing a political candidate (or a person 
for employment) than his or her actual qualifications for the position.



>Debunking bullshit is a thankless task.



Apparently this is also quite true when "bulls**t" = racism of any sort.


. . . ronn!  :)