Under the eighth part rule I would be Dutch. That rule was devised to oppress and segregate black Americans. I am not thinking about genes in terms of the scientific definition and distribution, I am simply acknowledging that President Obama has white relatives and in terms of race - he is of mixed race origins. He ought to be able to celebrate his white cultural origins as well as his black (and I am sure he does). Of course, it is much more important for him to be seen as black and I totally accept this. However, I can't help thinking that it would have been very difficult indeed for him to get as far as he has if he was totally black. It's something people hardly dare mention because it has been such a step forward for Obama to have got this far.
I hear what you say Oldspice. I hope you understand that my rejoinders are intended in a friendly and positive way. I can only assume, that his relatively light skin tone has made his election more palatable to those that might have some axe to grind with regards to his ethnicity, if we might call it that. However, this is an assumption and I would hope that he would have been elected had he been of the tone of say, Lennox Lewis.
What actually constitutes being black is not an easy thing to assess. Ultimately it is arbitrary and I don't think the term 'totally black' means very much. For reasons I explained very briefly in my first reply, blacknes or whiteness is a bit fuzzy and cannot be tested scientifically.
It is interesting to note a few facts revealed by genealogical inquiries by the Church of the Latterday Saints (Mormons). They have put together something called the International Genealogical Index (IGI.)
This was done simply by sending out hundreds of people to churches and records offices and copying BMD data. They now have the birth records of a billion people! What was found in the USA among the black population was quite startling. Of all black Americans, 75% have at least one white ancestor. While 25% have more white ancestors than black. By this definition 25% of black Americans could quite legitimately call themselves white, even some of the darker ones!
The concept of Race itself is now not accepted by most human biologists. The problem is that man has travelled so much within the last 10,000 years that all the characteristcis which might have been present before the last great Ice age have been mixed up and now everyone is just a mixture of bits and bobs from around the globe.
Of course certain features predominate in certain areas, like the pronounced epicanthic fold in Eastern Asians and the darker skin of Africans, but these are characteristics from of hundreds of thousands of years of adaptation and have very little to do with their genes.
