Is Barack Obama A Black?
November 7, 2008
It looks wrong, doesn’t it? Don’t even answer that.
And yet that’s what Pulitzer Prize winning Sunday newspaper Republican American called the US President Elect and its future head of state.
OK, maybe they were pushed for space when they wrote the sub-header of sending the “first black to White House”.
Nope, it turns out, because from looking at the larger image, the picture caption also describes him as the “black”.
Have a good weekend, I guess.
8 comments
::: sharp intake of breath :::
It certainly looks, sounds and feels wrong to me. But then probably according to the “Republican American” I’m probably a Wishy-Washy Lily-Livered Socialistic Eurostate-Living Liberal err… White.
There might well be too many instances of the word “probably” in there… almost certainly, actually.
That is the accepted, common word usage here, Cliff.
Then I stand corrected. It just seemed odd to me. In the UK, we wouldn’t leave out a noun and call someone “the first Chinese”. But it’s wierd because it wouldn’t be jarring to hear “the first Asian” (which here means Indian, Sri Lankan or Pakistani, unlike in he US where it means Vietnamese, Korean or Chinese), but you’d never “the first black”.
I remember my first Chinese – sweet and sour.
Looking at it again, I see the point being made was just that…he is the first black to be elected president, because we all know he is a man already, as evidenced by the picture below it.
It is curious how speech patterns and word choice can be different, as you point out in how Asians and Chinese would be referred to in Britain in the same context.
Did the wording sound disrespectful to you?
At least there’s no ‘is he black or is he mixed race’ thing going on?
Bonnie Greer was up in arms in The Guardian last week after having been asked that very question by Sarah Montague when she appeared on Radio 4.
They know that Obama is black
Describing someone as “a black” sounds disprespectful to me. Describing someone as “a black man” sounds better. Unless it’s about a woman, of course.
Leave a comment. Play nice. I will turn this blog around.