President Obama is part of black culture and history

TO THE EDITOR:

Re Featured online reader comment:

I" like you" wish we truly were in a post-racial era. But to negate the significance of the Obama presidency because ""besides"" he's half-white"" shows just how far we are from being ""post-racial"".

As a mixed person"" I wonder just how Obama will be remembered.

Will he be the first ""Black"" president"" or ""mixed/multiethnic"" president? What happens when we have another multiracial president? Will they be the ‘first' with an asterisk?

The media" society" and Obama himself make Obama black. The Black community is proud of him as one of our own.

The media scrutinized the Black church he attended and has asked if being Kenyan was the same as being African-American.

Obama married a black woman and had black children. The stirring words he has delivered time and again over the past five years that have inspired so many have delivered to our whole country the beauty of a powerful black oratorical tradition.

""Half white"" or not" he is part of black history and culture.

Multiracial people are between borders continents worlds" and histories.

We both ""choose"" our identity and also it is ""chosen"" for us. Please respect it.

We are twenty million strong in this country" hidden between the last words on race not yet spoken. Let Obama help our nation discover us as we in many ways through him discover ourselves.



Domenic Randazzo Powell
Senior
History and International Studies