Hapa, Halfrican, Barack Obama and Racist Brian Sussman

Hang in there if you're an adoption-oriented reader. This post is long but it gets to adoption at the very end.

As I touched on in my last post, when it comes to cultural and racial identity, I believe in showing people respect by calling them what they want to be called. Of course, this depends on reasonable knowledge of what they want to be called. It also depends on common sense... I mean, there's no way I'm going to refer to someone as a "Vampire-American," even if they ask very nicely.

I use both "black" and "African-American" as group names. Although the boundary is a bit vague, it's my understanding that black is more of a racial word and African-American is more of a cultural and ethnic word. And then of course there's "Black" with a capital B which has a much stronger meaning (power, pride) than the more neutral "black" with a lower case b. There are many black people in America whose status as African-Americans is dubious. One example: Haitian-Americans. Another more ambiguous example: Ethiopian-Americans. And then there are white South Africans and Northern Africans like Moroccans; non-black people from Africa almost never make the attempt to claim the word African-American because it tends to really irritate existing African-Americans, plus they already have other ethnic descriptors.

I think we'll have to wait a generation to see if African-American turns into a word able to encompass Haitian- and Ethopian-Americans, and if they want to claim it. For this reason I try to only use African-American to describe people 1) who specifically call themselves African-American or 2) whose families have lived in the United States for several generations.

It's also my understanding that multiracial African-Americans with some white ancestry prefer to simply classify themselves as black, or sometimes as "biracial" if they have one white parent, and that this is often a reaction of solidarity against institutionalized racism pitting light-skinned against dark-skinned. It's an issue that I'm very interested in, and one of the reasons is that my 5-year-old niece is black/biracial and her mother, my sister-in-law, is white. Her father is not around but her father's family are a very important influence in her life. In fact, I'm a little worried she may start to have uncomfortable feelings about being light-skinned, because I heard her say on a recent visit that she needs more sun to get a tan because she's not dark like her cousins. She's going to have to work through some racial identity issues as she grows up, and I really hope she can do it successfully, from a position of strength and pride.

One new word I've heard for biracial black/white is "Halfrican". Just looking at the printed word, I have bad feelings. The word "half" generally has negative connotations when it comes to race, because it can be read as the opposite of "whole". People who are only "half" sound incomplete. That's why I like "mixed" or "multi" or "bi" terminology much better. I've never heard black/biracial people call themselves "Halfrican" in a positive way. When people of other backgrounds call them that, it sounds like a nasty insult.

This is a meandering introduction to a very racist thing that someone said about Barack Obama on a radio show. The remarks are offensive to all intelligent human beings, and specifically offensive towards African-Americans AND multiracial people. Of course I'm not African-American but I feel directly insulted as a multiracial person, since they attack my own right to self-identify.

Melanie Morgan co-host on "Halfrican" Obama

On the December 4 broadcast of San Francisco radio station KSFO's Sussman, Morgan & Vic, in speaking to a co-host -- apparently Brian Sussman -- co-host Melanie Morgan referred to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) as an, "as you call, 'Halfrican.' "

....

From the December 4 edition of KSFO's Sussman, Morgan & Vic:

MORGAN: Senator Obama, who is, as you call, a 'Halfrican' --

SUSSMAN: Halfrican and, again, his father was -- his father was from Kenya, his mother's white. OK, now, I have nothing with mixed -- nothing against mixed-race people [atlasien: yeah, right] but, my point is, when this guy stands in front of a black audience, pretending like he was born and raised in the hood, and he can identify with their problems, he doesn't allow -- he is not, in my opinion -- 'cause my opinion is your average white guy -- he is not allowed to wear the African-American badge because his family are not the descendants of slaves, OK? He can't identify with the discrimination and the slavery and all of that that's gone into these black families for generations; he's a kid who was raised with a silver spoon in his mouth in a white family in Hawaii, OK? You wanna call me names for saying this? Go right ahead. I'm just telling you what the guy is.

MORGAN: Well --

TOM BENNER (aka "Officer Vic," KSFO morning traffic reporter): And you're not making this up. I mean, it's documented, for goodness sake. You can look it up.

SUSSMAN: I'm not making this up, so I just -- I get offended and I know I have many black friends [atlasien: yeah, right] who get offended when he stands in front of that black audience talking like he's from the hood, born and raised, and I can -- can identify with all of their issues. He can't!

MORGAN: Well, and guess what? It's working. It's working big-time.

Ooh, that whole conversation was so so wrong. These racist white people think they get to decide who's African-American and who isn't. I see an image of them guarding swimming pool entrances in 1960s Birmingham, turning away any too dark little kid, chuckling to themselves about how wise and powerful their decisions are. I love that description of the "African-American badge" too. I guess his idea is that real African-Americans have to have suffered discrimination and slavery, and then white people come along and give them a nice shiny badge for it.

Personally, I don't care whether Barack Obama describes himself as African-American or not. He could very well present a case that he's black, but not African-American. He chooses African-American, and his case for doing so also makes sense.

America's label game misses diversity of race

Obama was born in Hawaii and moved with his mother and Indonesian stepfather to Jakarta after his parents divorced. How does he define himself?

African-American.

"The reason that I've always been comfortable with that description is not a denial of my mother's side of the family," he told the New York Times.

"Rather, it's just a belief that the term African-American is by definition a hybrid term. African-Americans are a hybrid people. We're mingled with African culture and Native American culture and European culture."

He added: "If I was arrested for armed robbery and my mug shot was on the television screen, people wouldn't be debating if I was African-American or not. I'd be a black man going to jail. Now if that's true when bad things are happening, there's no reason why I shouldn't be proud of being a black man when good things are happening, too."

Obama shouldn't be forced to constantly justify himself and his identity. But he does it anyway, with good grace. I like the way he articulates his reasons for identifying himself as both black and African-American.

Asians are privileged, especially economically, in that we face much less job discrimination and criminal profiling than black people. But I've had to face so many other kinds of discrimination that I totally understand his reasoning in the last paragraph. That's why I call myself Asian and hapa, but not white. First of all, if I told white people I was white, they would make a little coughing noise and think I was crazy. Second, if I told Asian-American people I was white, they would think I hate myself. Third, since I've faced the bad issues Asian women face in America, I want to lay claim to all the good things that Asians have contributed to America. I'm proud of my white mother's side of the family, but I choose to be proud of them not in a racial way but in an ethnic way: as English and German settlers. These ancestors aren't all shining examples of humanity. I know some of them fought in the Civil War on the wrong side, and others were likely in the KKK. So I'm not proud of them in an unmeasured way, but most of them were just people trying to live their lives the best way they knew how.

I'm getting back to this Brian Sussman guy. Now here is the worst part. He is an adoptive father and according to one of the critical listeners he might have adopted black children.

From Spocko's Brain

--Now I know that Sussman has a whole patter about why he feels he can use this term (I get the impression that he has adopted children of mixed races, but I'm not sure) he clearly has a strong story to explain why he can say things like this whereas Morgan can't. But as my friend pointed out to me,

So what if he can? That's still a slur and racist, and *he's* not black. Hell, that would be derogatory if a black person said it about another black person, kind of like how it's derogatory for a black person to call another black person an "oreo," (black on the outside, white on the inside) or for a Native person to call another Native person an "apple" (red on the outside, white on the inside) . It's derogatory because it says negative things about *both* groups he's talking about, and he doesn't get to make that call, black adopted kids or not.

And always remember folks this commercially supported broadcast radio is brought to you by The Walt Disney Company! And ABC Radio! Advertisers should know what they are funding so they can make their own decision if they want to support this "Hot Talk".

I just can't believe this. It makes me mad on so many levels. Just on a selfish level, here I am, stressing about my possible transracial adoption, spending innumerable hours thinking through how to raise a black or white or ANY child with a healthy self-image, even wondering how to raise a biological child who looks white when I don't, debating when to be colorblind and just take it easy and when to bring up race, and here's this racist dork that someone let adopt black or multiracial kids. If this is true, I sincerely hope his children manage not to get too traumatized. But I really I hope it isn't true. Please, please please. I am going to email the blogger "Spocko's Brain" and see if he has more information later.