With All Due Respect, Mr. Freeman

Morgan Freeman saying Obama isn't Black, he's mixed race. His mother was White.

Most so-called "Black Americans" likely trace their ancestry to historic slavery in the US. I have read this population is about seventy percent European genetically and many of them would be viewed as White in Brazil.

As I wrote about elsewhere, Blood Quantum is an attempt to "breed it out of them" for Native Americans but if you are BLACK and an American, you're not allowed to wash it off. 

Because historically slave owners intentionally impregnated their Black slaves who were actually Black and FROM Africa and everyone agreed "That obviously mixed race child isn't his son with inheritance rights and he isn't obligated to raise that baby as his own child and educate it, etc. No, that offspring of a Black slave is Black and a slave."

This is why in the US you can be merely one EIGHTH African ethnicity and you're STILL a Black American. In most other countries most Black Americans would be viewed as mixed race, not Black.

This includes Morgan Freeman who is similar in color to Obama and the Internet tells me he is "more distantly" part English.

I'm not sure what his point is. He's not exactly wrong. Obama is, in fact, mixed race. As are almost all "Black Americans."

Recent immigrants whose father came from Nigeria or whose mother is Nigerian don't typically call themselves Black Americans. They are more likely to self identify as Nigerian American.

Black American is a deceptive term that never meant 100 percent African ancestry. It gets applied to a population that long ago stopped being "pure blooded African ancestry."

I know it never meant that because it's a recent term. Previously, they were called colored people or Negroes.

So if you want to talk more broadly about the fact that Black Americans is a demographic descriptor of a mixed-race population similar to the slightly swarthy Spanish and Italians who are probably all slightly part African and Middle Eastern and that's why they have "exotic" looks distinct from pasty white Caucasians across more northerly parts of Europe, cool. It's all good.

But this framing implies Morgan Freeman is for realzy realz Black, honest and for true, unlike Obama who doesn't count as a representative of His People because the injection of White blood was too recent for us to claim him as one of our own...

Do you claim Mariah Carey? She has one Black and one White parent.

He's mixed race, yes. So are you. And that's actually in fact what the phrase Black American means and always has.

It means you're PART African and have been damned to a second class citizen status by the One Drop Rule where this racist country decided long ago if you have ANY African ancestry, you aren't White.

And then made a Pocahontas Exception to not exclude some of the upper crust from a mixed White -Native family which is likely why I get so much hatred for being interested in my father's cultural background: Because unlike Blacks, Natives not only can wash it off, we are actively trying to wash it off.

To the point where most likely a rather high percentage of Americans are PART Native but self identify as White.

Or even as Black. Because in the Deep South we classify almost everyone as either White or Black and actively gloss over the reality that most Americans are mutts and not pure blood anything.

Footnote 

There is a Follow up post