The color and the culture, not the same thing- Ellie Short

What does it mean to be fraction of a race? I’m a fraction of a race (I am so confused as to how much of this and how much of that I really am to tell you in real terms.) so I can honestly tell you that it doesn’t matter much. I’ve noticed something of late that surprised me more than just a little. The world has a warped view of what a race and a culture is and what that has to do with the new President-elect Barack Obama.
This year is the beginning of the first term for our newest president. President Barack Obama is the forty-fourth president of the United States of America, and happens to be black. I’m not taking anything away from him and his race, but I chose to point out a few things first.
The media is showing President-elect Barack Obama as black, and he is, but they’re playing that up just a little too much for my liking. I’m more than happy that we have a black president, but the media is forgetting one important fact.
He’s not just black I’m sorry if you just found this out (it probably blows your mind)
Obama was raised by his white mother, and lived in many places, including Hawaii and Thailand, having more than one set of ideas instilled in him. His mother taught him the ideas of a white American, he learned the ideas of people all over the world, but we chose to focus on his race. It’s important and it’s a landmark event for African-Americans, but he’s not just one race, he’s bi-racial.
If he messes up in office could it possibly be blamed on his race?
Yes, it could. He is the first black president, and so his actions can effect the out comes of future elections involving black runners, but he isn’t just black. His ideas are his own and have nothing to do with the fact that he’s black, or with the fact that he was raised by a white woman. Those things play a role in his life but not in every bi-racial person or black person, just like Bush’s ideas aren’t the ideas of every white person or ever person from Texas.
I’m bi-racial, so is my mother, who was raised by my white grandma, but that doesn’t effect who I am, my race doesn’t effect my personality, just like my name doesn’t.
The things that make Obama great aren’t his race, but how he was raised, and his own experiences. not his color or his fathers color, or even the color of his mother, but the ideas they instilled in him and the things they taught him.
Some African-Americans say that Obama isn’t “black” enough, but what makes a person black. Is it the way someone acts? How someone talks? Where someone’s from? No.
Being a race is having that blood run threw your veins, and that make Obama black, just because he doesn’t talk/act like the stereotype of a “black” person doesn’t mean he isn’t black. Just like how someone can’t act white or Latin. It a race, and no one is exactly the same in that race, I could be white and talk like I’m from Spain because I lived there all of my life, but I’m not acting a race. It’s a culture not a race, and just because Obama might not fit into the stereotypical idea of a black person’s culture doesn’t mean a thing. He just so happens to not fit the culture, not the race.
So the next time you hear someone comment on how Obama is African-American or how is he isn’t “ black” enough, speak up, politely, remind them that he isn’t just black and that the way he acts isn’t “ white”, but his own personal style or culture not his race. That his race and his culture don’t necessarily go hand in hand, it just so happens that in most people they do.