Black and White

If only things could be all in black and white. We wouldn't have to think too much and there would be simple answers to most moral and intellectual problems that face us .



Thinking in Black and white terms makes things easier to label , to categorise and ultimately helps us avoid having to think too deeply about things.It is one way of displacing the inevitable meaninglessness that presents itself once we dare to look at the world without imposing on it the template of our own beliefs and subjective perception. .
Now recently , On 4Th November 2008 , history was made by the election of Barack Obama as the 44nd president of the United States of America. The historic aspect was that he is the first 'black' or 'African American' to be given this sacred throne.

'African American' seems to be the phrase that is replacing 'black' for the term Americans use to describe their citizens that have a darker skin colour and originate from the African continent. Therein lies the puzzle.Just as the word 'black' was being deleted from the American English vocabulary the issue of colour sprung up in very black and white terms.

Obama , in actual fact is of 'mixed race' i.e his father was a black African of Luo ethnicity from Kenya and his mother a white American woman of English and Irish stock. The fact that he has made history by being the first Black president of the states has highlighted the the black and white way history or society has perceived ,labelled and subsequently persecuted people.

Now what makes a 'white man' white and a 'black man' black? This the question we must ask in order to understand the nature of this puzzle.
If we look at people from all parts of the world we eventually come to the conclusion that there is no real white coloured skin or black coloured skin; no black and white at all .In fact only various shades of brown from very dark to very light beige like brown. The black and white people being in reality the various poles of this spectrum. In addition to this there are various racial anatomical features that lighter skinned or darker skinned people may be identified by ,e.g people originating from the majority of African countries are likely to have tightly coiled dark hair , whereas people originating from certain northern European countries could have straighter ,blond hair and possibly blue eyes .

So it can be established that President elect Obama or any human being with a similar racial heritage is biologically of mixed race , a neutral skin colour somewhere in the middle of the human colour spectrum. Hence he is physically as much 'white ' as he is 'black' .
Such a person is biologically , chromatically , mathematically , genetically and logically of joint back ground and therefore should 'belong' equally to the 'white' group as much as he should 'belong ' to the 'black' group.




However this is where things become so complicated to the point that many resort to the 'black and white ' way of thinking in order to simplify things. People of mixed race, and particularly the offspring of one white European parent and one black African parent , although as described above ,are as much 'white ' as they are 'black', politically they are 'black' This is what many people of such mixed race seem to experience as far as I have gathered .This also applies to people who are not 50% mixed race but to those who could have 25% or even less African genes , for example people whose skin colour is as 'white ' as the 'white man's' but they have some genetic features that identify this e.g hair type ,shape of the nose or lips .

Now establishing the fact that although , biologically , genetically etc Barack Obama is as white as he is black , in political terms he is destined to be America's first a black president .

For politics , that is how people run their affairs , has constructed this division .This has obviously to do with the history of how white Europeans see themselves in relation to other races throughout their history. This is particularly evident in The U.SA where as a settler state whose founding inhabitants where descendants of white Europeans who established the United states of America by cruelly abusing other non European races , initially the indigenous peoples who they called Indians and virtually wiped out of the face of the earth.And secondly the Africans that they enslaved and took to America by force. This White dominant group saw itself as superior , and still there are many who share this white supremacist , condescending racist view towards other peoples.

So from this constructed ,racist view of the value of human beings we could imagine that the white people who feel superior to other races see themselves or their 'colour' to be more precise ,as a white sheet of linen, pure and unadulterated .When this white ,clean sheet is mixed with another race or colour it could be seen a 'dye' which once applied immediately takes away the 'whiteness' and hence even a trace of brown , yellow or blue for that matter has resulted in the clean sheet being seen as an 'off white' or a non-white.

As ludicrous as the analogy sounds this is what the thinking or lack of it suggests. With this logic any human being that is not completely apparently of 100% European , white stock,and particularly of the northern European type ,then that person is non white . With this premise we have the many people of mixed race , who having even a trace of recognisable African blood become excluded from the white group as it sees itself.

In practice the implications include outright racism , bigotry exclusion etc resulting in the person being part of the other group or 'black race' and more readily accepted by that group as the whole value judgement is held and imposed by the group that has political power and is thus perpetuated by the thinking of white people , a thinking that has influenced how black people see themselves .

But human beings are not linen cloth and in reality Obama is really as white as he is black , his mother is white , but logic becomes meaningless here and history has been made.
This perverted view of racial difference does not only exist between 'black' and 'white' races just described .One has only to look at the Indian sub continent where a phenomenon more ancient than the one discussed is where people are divided into social castes with boundaries set on various attributes according to race , religion, language or social background, with the result being an elite of very light skinned people who run the show and wield power and at the bottom of the pile the very dark skinned 'untouchables ' .

Another man of mixed race who has made history recently is Lewis Hamilton ,The youngest ever Formula One racing champion as well as being hailed the first 'black' man to do so. He was the victim of some nasty racist demonstrations when in Spain recently , where certain 'spectators' dressed themselves up with black ,ape-like masks and had t-shirts with 'Hamilton's family' printed on ,thus drawing attention to the fact that he has some black African ancestry and suggesting that this was also sub human.

How things boil down to this simple and poisonous black and white view of the world is quite disturbing .On the other hand as this seems to be the status quo, then by the premise imposed by institutional or historical racism, black people in response claim the glory of these two great successes.

When we learn not to see these issues or even need to debate them, then maybe we can have some progress.



The slogan used by Barack Obama in his presidential campaign was 'change' lets hope he does bring some political change to the very tarnished reputation that the incumbent imbecile George W Bush brought upon the United States' .Lets hope the unprecedented change that he has already brought in by being elected will continue .The related issues about how we define his racial category could also bring progress and 'change' to our ways of thinking .
But politics also is extremely complicated and nothing is as simple as black and white.