The election of President Obama was historical and will be remembered for as long as our country exists. President Barack Obama was the first elected African American president of the United States of America. His election has generated extensive academic and news media discussions about the significance of race in America today. President Obama represents a sign of further ethnic and racial division.
America is the land of the free and created by immigrants. Migration of different ethnicities resulted in mixed cultures and races during procreation. America has slowly become more diverse as traditional ideals on race have changed over time. In the past family heritage was often related to color, which, as Pauli Murray has suggested, was the "yardstick by which everyone measured everybody else'' (Gatewood, 1988, pg. 29). Nowadays, the rate of multicultural families are at an all time high. President Obama was born into a multicultural family.
Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents were of contrasting ethnic backgrounds. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas. She was American of English and Irish ancestry. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born in Kenya’s Nyanza Province. He was of African heritage, belonging to an ethnic group called the Luo. Barack Obama is considered “multicultural.” Multicultural is defined as of, relating to, or constituting several cultural or ethnic groups within a society. With this being said, Barack Obama is 25% English, 25% Irish and 50% African. When put in this perspective we are able to note that while Barack Obama has a diverse background, he is 50% white and 50% black. To consider him the “first black president,” or rather the first African American President, would be incorrect because he is not solely African American, but rather multicultural.
During campaigning, President Barack Obama advertised and exaggerated the fact that he is a black man. According to the Washington Post, Obama excelled with “understanding problems of people like me” (Wilson, 2012). Meaning, he attracted multicultural and minority voters. Obama shared stories of being raised as an African American by a single mother. With this, Obama gain support from African Americans, multicultural citizens, immigrants, and white Americans. Due to his multicultural ethnicity, Obama was able to identify with the majority of all Americans no matter what race. Many people were attracted to his background that suggested being a part of the minority group and middle to lower socioeconomic class. However, Barack Obama is classified as being part of the upper-class. He attended the prestigious Columbia University and later attended Harvard Law School. While President Obama shares a multicultural background with the minority population, he does not share similar socio economic status.
Recently socio economic margins have widen. The rich are richer. The poor are poorer. Socioeconomic status is often correlated with one’s race, however not always. According the Nation, “Schools are resegregating, legislation is being gutted, it’s getting harder to vote, large numbers are being deprived of their basic rights through incarceration, and the economic disparities between black and white are growing” (Younge, 2014). In many areas, America is becoming more separate and less equal.
According to research recently conducted by ProPublica, “black children across the South now attend majority-black schools at levels not seen in four decades.” A recent Nation article illustrated how this trend is largely by design. In suburbs across the region, wealthier whites have been seceding from their inner- city school districts and setting up academic laagers of their own. The result is a concentration of race and class disadvantage in a system with far fewer resources. In a 2012 report, UCLA’s Civil Rights Project noted: “Nationwide, the typical black student is now in a school where almost two out of every three classmates (64%) are low-income (Younge, 2014).
The division is not a direct result from race, but rather of socioeconomic class which may be influenced by race.
Ethnicity is defined as “the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.” With the attraction of simply the color of his skin Obama was able to win over millions of votes, however, socially and economically he couldn’t be more different of many of his supporters. President Obama represents a sign of further ethnic and racial division.
Gatewood, Willard B. (1988). Aristocrats of Color: South and North The Black Elite, 1880-1920. The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 54(1), pp. 3-20.
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