President Barack Obama has just released his memoirs (again?). The big media will require us to genuflect before them. Obama was a skilful politician, a polished orator, a graceful presence, and a mediocre president.
But we are told that all this is less important than the fact that he is black. Pardon? Why do we have to regard Obama as black? Of course, if he wants to call himself black, that is his right. I suppose I have the same right to call myself black, with my swarthy complexion, brown eyes, black eyebrows and black hair – when I was younger, at any rate – and to classify myself as African, since I am a Homo sapiens and all Homo sapiens originated in Africa.
But why are the rest of us expected to call him black? His mother was described as white and his father black. Why does that make him black? Surely we could call him white if we want, since 50% of his parentage is white?
As far as I can see, the only justification of this is the ‘one drop’ theory, beloved by extreme racists and the extreme woke (frequent bedfellows). Adolf Hitler, Hillary Clinton, the Ku Klux Klan and the ANC are in agreement with this. This theory holds that there is some fictional entity consisting of a pure white race, and that the slightest injection of genes from any other race – ‘one drop of blood’ – contaminates its white purity and makes it black.
The ‘one drop’ theory seems to have been formalised in the American South in the 19th Century but was widely accepted by white racists long before that and is now enthusiastically endorsed by Black Lives Matter.
Human race
The facts about the human race are these. Homo sapiens originated in East Africa about 200 000 years ago (research keeps pushing this date back). About 60 000 years ago (another contested date) a small group of humans, probably about a hundred in number, left Africa, crossed at Suez into the Middle East, and then radiated around the world, forming European, Indian, Chinese, Australian and American people.
Since all these people originated from a tiny population, their genetic variety is tiny, and their number of races is very small. Among those who remained in Africa, the genetic variety is enormous and the number of races huge. ‘White’ people, which usually just means ‘Europeans’, are a miniscule and biologically unimportant fraction of the human race. Yet the ‘one drop’ theory gives them gigantic importance.
Under apartheid, anybody who was not pure white (joke! joke!) was ‘Non-White’ or ‘Non-European’. Today the woke racists describe people who are not pure white as ‘Persons of Colour’! This must be the most patronising, arrogant racist term ever devised. The vast majority of the human race all over the planet consist of ‘Persons of Colour’, separate from the tiny pure white elite.
In the US, the Democrat ruling class is obsessed with ‘identity politics’. This contradicts Martin Luther King’s plea; it means you must judge people by the colour of their skin not the content of their character. And there is not a multitude of skin colours but only two: ‘white’ and ‘black’ or ‘persons of colour’. Adolf Hitler was even more enthusiastic about identity politics, but in his view the two categories were ‘Aryan’ and ‘Non-Aryan’. And whereas modern identity politics sees whites as superior but wicked, he saw Aryans as superior and good.
It is interesting to look at Hitler’s own racial identity. He upheld the fair-skinned, flaxen-haired Nordic man as the highest Aryan ideal, and stated that he himself, with his dark features and black hair, was the perfect example of that ideal.
Racial nonsense
In 1938, a famous and rather sad boxing match took place between Joe Louis of the US, the World Heavyweight Champion, and Max Schmeling of Germany. Schmeling, a clever boxer with a devastating straight right, had knocked out Louis in 1936 in a sensational upset. The re-match was pitched by both sides as a clash between Nazism and Democracy, between Hitler’s Aryan superman and democratic America’s Man of Colour. It was nothing of the kind. Schmeling, a decent, kindly man, opposed the Nazis and had a Jewish manager he refused to forsake. Louis, an innocent, was bewildered by the racial nonsense.
A reporter, who had not seen Schmeling before, was at the ringside. He looked at Louis, with his light caramel skin, and then looked at Schmeling with his swarthy features, black hair and dark beetling eyebrows. He cried out, ‘This guy is almost as dark as Hitler!’ (Louis overwhelmed Schmeling in the first round. My guess is he was still scared of his right hand and rushed him before he could use it again.)
I judge Obama by his record as president. I suppose this shows what a racist I am. The correct thing is to judge him first and foremost by the fact that he is black – and never to ask for a definition of blackness.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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