Obama: Black, Biracial and Post-Racial

As America's first black and biracial president, Barack Obama's patchwork heritage is an in-your-face example of how racial lines are blurring.

As Jelani Cobb notes in linking to a fine essay by Jennifer Brea, who herself is biracial, this is not a conservation that American is not ready to have "even if it did elect a brother President."

Some excerpts from Brea's essay:

The most recent census predictions hold that by 2042, whites will no longer be the majority. Americans who identify as biracial or multiracial are less than 2 percent of the population, but their demographic is growing at about 3 percent each year, more than 10 times the rate of the white population.

New immigration from Africa and the Caribbean is challenging old notions of what it means to be African-American. As the number of transracial adoptions and interracial marriages increase, the old lines, while far from vanished, are blurring.

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By telling his story of being raised by white grandparents in Hawaii, their love for him and his grandmother's utterance of racial stereotypes, and his adult quest to connect to his father's Kenyan roots, Obama has changed the entire dialogue about race.

He has managed to accomplish something truly rare: to both carry the mantle of African-Americans' struggle for justice and to transcend it. He is as much the fulfillment of more than 300 years of struggle as he is a symbol of the future: A president who embodies the changing landscape of our imperfect union.

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Before we become a "post-racial" America, we have to become one that is truly multiracial, comfortable with the fact that more and more Americans no longer wear their identities on their skins.

That you might not be able to tell from just looking at a woman if she is Dominican or Brazilian, or the daughter of a Belgian and a Congolese. She might consider herself many things at the same time, without planting a flag or declaring an allegiance.

Obama can help lead us into that new era, toward a more sophisticated conversation about culture and race. He should be celebrated as our first African-American president. He should also be allowed to be Kenyan and Kansan, Hawaiian, Indonesian, Luo -- all the legacies that have made him the man he is today.

Incidentally, Brea blogs at Africabeat, which sits atop the Kiko's House blogroll.