How Black Do You Need To Be, To Be Black?

Tonight, on his TV show, Bill Moyer's referred to Barack Obama as 'black candidate of mixed heritage'. Why a black candidate? Why not a 'white' candidate of mixed heritage? True, Obama exhibits some discernible some 'black' features; but why do we have to call him 'black'? How about this way of looking at things: Tiger Woods is a mixed heritage Thai golfer. Barack Obama is a racially mixed heritage presidential candidate.

In truth, isn't the appellation of Obama as being a 'black' candidate a racist remark in the first place, hearkening back to the days when anybody with even a little black blood in him/her was categorized as irretrievable and totally black?

(There is a great and delicious irony, by the way, in the fact that most African -Americans want to co-opt this half-white man as a black. Oh well, we all want to co-opt winners!)

Let's face it, we are almost all these days of mixed heritage. I'm a Turk mixed with German and English, and predominantly white with some 'black' blood running through me. (After all, Turkey sits at the crossroads of Asian, Africa and Europe; and I didn't get to be olive-skinned by being 'pure' white.) If Obama's black, so am I. The differences between all of us, including the 'progressive' Bill Moeyers, is just a matter of percentages.

Where is the cut-off? So I'll know how to categorize me and my Granddaughter; whose father by the way is Latin American. Such a conundrum.