Barack Arab-American and Not *gasp* African-American?
OK, I thought I was done with politics for today because it's getting old. However, I was thinking about something I'd heard recently about Barack Obama and since this issue was always an irritant to me (the fact that he claimed to be black without appropriate acknowledgement of his half white side from his mother). I came across some information today:
I am reading on blogs that Barack Obama is not legally "African-American" but Arab-American. I am reading that he is 6.25% African-American and you need to be 12.5% African American to claim being such. Is this true? I don't know. Nobody reports about it though everybody is quick to rave about the "first black president." Is he a liar? A lot of web sites online are claiming he is.
From this site, I've read this:
Mr. Obama is 50% Caucasian, that from his mother. What those who want Mr. Obama to write history by becoming "America's first African-American president" ignore is that his father was ethnically Arabic, with only 1 relative ethnically African Negro - a maternal great-grandparent (Sen. Obama's great-great grandparent, thus the 6.25% ethnic contribution to the senator's ethnic composition.).That means that Mr. Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother's side. He is 43.75% Arabic, and 6.25% African Negro from his father's side.Put another way, his father could honestly claim African-American ethnic classification. He was the last generation able to do so.Sen. Obama could honestly say, "My father was African-American." Racist presumptions led an Ivy League admissions committee, and lazy "newspapers of record" factcheckers, to presume that if his father is African-American, then Sen. Obama must be African-American also.
Other sources:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_L0MGwzqUk
http://mediamatters.org/items/200806260002
http://africanpress.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/barack-hussein-obama-will-be-if-elected-the-first-arab-american-president-not-black-american/
http://www.derekpgilbert.com/?p=2688
LOL, http://bumperstickers.cafepress.com/item/barack-obama-arab-american/272297199
I'd like to know if this is true. Ya know? How much is lie and how much is truth?
There is just SO MUCH that doesn't add up about this guy. His judgment on his friends and people he's given money to through his organizations is scary stuff.
1 comments:
No, it's nonsense. The paternal side of his family is Luo Kenyan; the "Hussein" name entered the lineage when Obama's grandfather adopted it after converting to Islam (which Obama's father would later reject). I know it's not dispositive or anything, but just as a gut check, pull up a photo of Barack Sr. online and ask yourself whether that breakdown sounds credible. Of course, the gene counting is sort of silly anyway: For practical purposes, race is a matter of how you're treated by others -- being "black" is mostly a question of looking black enough that people treat you that way.
Anyway, all the myriad "sources" on this ultimately trace back to that one guy Lamb, who just asserts it baldly without a scintilla of evidence. It gets repeated and passed around because some people shut down their critical thinking about any rumor that concerns a political figure they dislike.
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