Race Politics in America

President Obama has an African parent, and a Euro-American parent, but he is called "Black". if he had a Japanese parent and a Russian parent, would he be called Japanese, or Russian? or would the more inclusive title Euro-Asian be used? if his parents were French and Italian, would everyone simply call him an Italian? why then, is it considered appropriate to call him "Black", but never "White"? does this go back to the old American rating system of human beings, judging them by the drops of negro blood they possessed? i am told it's because "he looks black". but the recent statement by senate majority leader Harry Reid - that he was voted into office because he didn't look very black (and "speaks so well") doesn't quite fit in with that premise.

modern humans came into being on the African continent, and lived there for about twenty thousand years before they started migrating to the rest of the world. their first trip out of Africa took them to southern Asia. it was their second migration (another twenty thousand years on) that brought them to Europe. so anyone who lives anywhere in the world is a hyphenated African. that is, Europeans are actually Afro-Europeans, while America's 'White" people are Afro-Euro-Americans, and America's Asians are Afro-Asian-Americans. that makes African-Americans the American people with the closest link to our mother country, so to speak. it also points out the utter absurdity of referring to anyone by something as superficial as skin color. we might as well use hair color or body fat content as our identifying criteria. (thus "another red-headed president" or "the slightly overweight president said..." or "Mr. Obama, the thirty-first president to have brown eyes...").

in my opinion, President Obama has done nothing that would differentiate him from any of the previous run of "White" presidents (except, perhaps, to speak better than most of them). like him, they were all wealthy, and like him, and no matter what they said to get into office, they all looked after the interests of the wealthy. he has continued the same foreign policies and wars (which continue to support the military-industrial complex, which also supports the wealthy). one of his first acts as president was to hand over billions of tax-payer dollars to wealthy banks and corporations (which amounts to welfare for the wealthy). he also addressed "African-Americans" in a speech, admonishing them to not assign any blame for their current place in American society on the hundreds of years of slavery, dispossession, hate, and discrimination that they and their ancestors have endured (discrimination which continues, to judge by the increase in hate crimes against people identified as "Black" since Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign - while hate crimes against all other racial groups have declined, or to judge by Mr. Reid's statement, or by spending even a few minutes watching Fox "news").

President Obama is an American president, which means, by definition, that he is part of the ruling class. let's call him the "ruling-class" president, or the "wealthy" one. that way it would be obvious that what we actually have is what we've had all along.