Presidential Hopeful Obama Has Legitimacy in White and Black America
By
Sherman N. Miller
1/21/2007
What is troublesome in the racial classification of Senator Barack Obama ballyhooed in the mainstream
media is that his mother’s parentage is being ignored in the debate? It appears that the definition of
yesteryear’s colored that came out of the State of Virginia’s infamous Racial Integrity Law of the 1924 is
live and well. “Section 1-14 of the Virginia Code: Colored persons and Indians defined--Every person in
whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood shall be deemed and taken to be a colored person, and
every person not a colored person having one fourth or more of American Indian blood shall be deemed
an American Indian. . . .”
Racially charged terms like mulatto, quadroon, and octoroon clearly affixed the Negro second class status
to anyone with a hint of black heritage. This suggests that whites should not accept their black relatives
no matter how white they appeared. This vilifying African American heritage was an excellent barrier
against the erosion in white racists hold on the economic bounty of the United States of American. This
vilification prevented the enfranchising of more and more people of black heritage who might be aided by
their white colored relatives. However, since the US Supreme Court knocked down the anti-
miscegenation laws, biracial people are now legitimated in both Black and White America.
We now read where Metro Columnist Courtland Milloy, writing in the February 21, 2007 Washington Post,
asks, “Is Obama black enough for the black vote? Is he too black for the white vote? With a black father
from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, can he expect to take the mixed-race vote? It's as if the
"color line" had been encoded into the American DNA.”
Obama has demonstrated an ability to garner white votes in the 2008 Presidential Primaries to the level
where presently he is in a dead heat with Senator Hillary Clinton on delegate votes. It will be interesting to
see if older blacks maintain yesteryear’s slave mentality that suggests that a person of African American
heritage can not win in the economic mainstream, so I had better vote for the white person to make my
vote count. What is silly in this defeatist mindset is Senator Obama demonstrated a penchant for getting
white votes when he became the United States Senator from the State of Illinois.
My guess is the 2008 Democratic Party Primaries will cause predictable black leaders some serious
embarrassment when Obama takes the black vote and these leaders appear to be out of alignment with
their constituencies. Clearly, the Obama campaign may mean that Black America will learn to split its vote
like other mainstream Americans. Will Obama’s heavy black vote rewrite the script on local black
candidates by turning many local primaries into real races by taking away yesterday’s civil rights
movement anointing because a new class of young mainstream black voters born after the civil rights
epoch get enfranchised?