America's label game misses diversity of race

The term "African-American" does less to define blacks than divide communities. But some hope one man of mixed heritage can ease the tensions.

	[AP photo]
	Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama, 42, identifies himself as African-American.

In the literal sense, rising Democratic star Barack Obama is African-American.

His father was a black man from Kenya, his mother, a white American from Kansas.

African. American.

But racial identity is hardly so simple.

When Obama captivated viewers at last week's Democratic National Convention, what did Americans see? What he calls himself and how others perceive him provide a sharp prism through which to view the meaning of "African-American" today.

Who is African-American?

Secretary of State Colin Powell? Golfer Tiger Woods? New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter? Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's wife?

Powell, born in the Bronx, extols his Jamaican heritage. Woods has labeled himself "Caublinasian." Jeter has said some people can't figure out what he is. Teresa Heinz Kerry, born in Mozambique, has stated she is African-American, "a daughter of Africa."

The term "African-American" gained common currency in the late 1980s, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson urged a racial designation based on culture and geography, rather than color. Such emphasis benefited other hyphenated Americans, he mused, why not African-Americans?

But refocusing the way Americans think about race has proven problematic. For many, the terms "black" and "African-American" are not interchangeable. For others, African-American simply doesn't fit.

Black immigrants - Africans, West Indians and South Americans - chafe at being referred to as African-American. They tend to prefer prefixes that harken back to native countries and tribes. And as the biracial and multiracial population grows, simple labels are coming unglued.

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."

For some biracial Americans, embracing or rejecting the African-American label can seem like a test of allegiance to the black community.

Why do people label someone who is biracial as black? asked Fredrick C. Harris, director of the Center for the Study of African-American Politics at the University of Rochester in New York. "It goes back to the "one drop of blood' black rule," he said. "We have a legacy of ways that divide people by race."

"We force people to take sides and choose sides," said Laura Washington, a professor at DePaul University in Chicago and a newspaper columnist who writes about racial injustice. "My sense is that many biracial people have not been given that choice, because America doesn't give them that choice."

In the 2000 census, almost 7-million Americans identified themselves as members of more than one race - the first time those filling out the forms were able to indicate more than one category.

But self and society don't always see eye to eye.

Tiger Woods raised the ire of some African-Americans, whatever that means, when he referred to himself as black and Thai and came up with "Caublinasian" to reflect his multiethnic heritage. Halle Berry, on the other hand, who has a white mother and a black father, is said to have campaigned for her Oscar on behalf of her previously spurned African-American sisters.

Obama confidently walks the tightrope of race.

"I stand here today," he told the enraptured delegates at the Democratic convention, "grateful for the diversity of my heritage."

African-Americans and Africans each claim Obama as their own, said Washington, who has known the Harvard-educated lawyer for about a dozen years.

"He himself has talked about how strongly he identifies as being a black man, as opposed to Tiger Woods, who identifies with many races and doesn't see himself as a black man. A lot of African-Americans resent that and therefore are more likely to embrace Barack Obama, who does not identify that way," she said.

"People are excited because he is biracial and he's married to a black woman, so that makes him really black."

Russell Adams, chairman of Afro-American Studies at Howard University in Washington, believes the white community also sees Obama as black.

"The racial thing still says that in a biracial situation that the person is assigned the status of the lowest person in the hookup," said Adams, who is black.

The labels given to blacks have changed over the years, Adams said. Until the American Revolution, blacks were referred to by inherited tribal designations, such as Mandingo and Wolof.

The term African-American was adopted in some form in the 1880s by institutions and organizations, examples of which were the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper and the Afro-American League, which predated the NAACP's founding in the early 20th century. During this time, Adams said, individuals were referred to as Negro or colored, hence the organization's full name, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey made the term "black" both political and positive during the 1920s, Adams said. That term, though, did not come into full force until the civil rights movement. That gave way to Afro-American and eventually, in the late 1980s, to African-American.

The term recognized "an ancestral link," Harris said. Black immigration, though, is causing people to raise questions about what African-American really means.

"I've never heard a black immigrant refer to himself as African-American," Washington said. "I think that they see themselves in terms of the country of their heritage, or Africans in terms of their tribes. ... There's always been tension between African-Americans and black immigrants.

"I think there have been stereotypes," said Washington, who is black. "The things I grew up hearing is that Africans didn't respect us because we allowed ourselves to be enslaved and (Africans) came to enjoy the spoils of this country."

Obama's mixed heritage could improve the relationship between African-Americans and other blacks in America, she said.

"I think that one of the exciting things about this is that he is both a child of an African immigrant and is an African-American. He could help us break down some of the long-term tensions between black Americans and black immigrants."

In putting the national spotlight on Obama, the Democratic Party has set great hopes on the man who could be the third black person elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

"Any time you have an African-American who is as young as he is and as accomplished as he is, he is bound to stand out," Washington said.

"I think that was the intent of the party, and they wanted to choose someone who would be embraced across racial lines. I think that the era for the Jesse Jackson model is passing."

"He is almost like Sidney Poitier years ago that fits a certain groove of expectation," Adams said.

"There is a nonthreatening quality about the dear fellow. He will not break the dishes. Secondly, there is that intangible stuff that Harvard puts on folks. ... I think that comes across. The other part is the exotic personal history."

Times researchers Kitty Bennett and Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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