Obama race questions show issue is not black and white
Barack Obama: Black or white?
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Tuesday, 09, Dec 2008 06:12
The election of Barack Obama as the United States' president-elect shows race is about more than skin colour, a sociologist has suggested.
Research by University of Oregon sociologist Aliya Saperstein suggests race is as much about social status. It shows unemployed, incarcerated or impoverished Americans are more likely to be classified and identified as black.
Many Americans are currently debating whether Mr Obama – the child of a black Kenyan man and a white American woman – is 'black'.
"What I find fascinating about Obama's case is that people are asking questions about it," Prof Saperstein said.
"In the past, it wouldn't have been a question what he was, or how we should talk about him. There would have been no debate."
She said people's assumptions about people play a key role in defining how they are perceived in racial terms. Skin tone, hair type and ancestry dominate but social status also plays a role.
One in five of over 12,000 respondents to a survey begun in 1979 and repeated in 2002 found perceptions of racial status changing during the intervening 23 years.
"Those who went to prison were more likely to stay black, but those who didn't go to prison might move themselves to another identity," Prof Saperstein said.
She concludes by warning that racial stereotypes can become "self-fulfilling prophecies".
"Although black Americans are overrepresented among the poor, the unemployed and the incarcerated, people who are poor, unemployed or incarcerated are also more likely to seen and identify as black and less likely to be seen and identify as white," she added.