Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 December 13

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December 13

President Obama’s children's racial identity

President Obama is considered to be by many as multiracial because his mother is white and his father is black. Michelle Obama is pretty much considered to be a full-blooded African American even though she may have a white ancestor in her lineage. So, is President Obama’s children classified as multiracial like their father or is their white ancestry too insignificant for them to be considered to be multiracial since they only have one grandparent who is white, President Obama’s mother? Willminator (talk) 03:27, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

In so far as the question has any objective meaning, and we accept the notions of white and black as held in America, they are three quarters black, and one quarter white. You are quite aware of this, having asked the question. How multiracial is defined depends on the definition you want to use. We can't tell you what sense of that word is PLATONIC TRUTH. You have to provide the definition you want to use, and do the math yourself, rather than invite us to offer our opinions. Be aware also that WP:BLP applies to this question. μηδείς (talk) 03:35, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The long and short answer is you'd have to ask them. The operative term in racial identity is identity, so we'd have to know how Obama's daughters identify themselves. --Jayron32 04:46, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

So, would that mean that in the case of Barack Obama, it is an objective truth that he is multiracial since he is 50 – 50? In other words, that fact is indisputable, not even by him. But in the case of his children, would that mean that it is subjective truth that they are multiracial, meaning that they can be considered multiracial or not based on their answers they would give, and both answers can be right since they are 75% black and 25% white? Willminator (talk) 05:03, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

How sure are you about those percentages? Almost every modern "black" person in the US probably has some European ancestry due to the behaviour of slave owners towards female slaves. Many "pure bred" whites have different "colours" in their ancestry too, whether they know it, or acknowledge it, or not. It's just too easy to destroy arguments about "pure" racial issues. Most of the world (not just the USA) regards Obama as the first black President of the USA. That's certainly going to be a major aspect written about him historically. Your attempts to seek certainty down the multi-racial path are dangerous. HiLo48 (talk) 05:23, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not trying to do anything dangerous here whatever that means. I just want to understand what the minimum percentage in terms of background is to be officially considered or recognized as multiracial, as is evident on Wikipedia's list of multiracial Americans on its article about multiracial Americans, and where Obama's children would fall in this as examples. This is simply motivated by curiosity and wanting to attain more knowledge. Also, I'm just giving out the percentages based on how most people would perceive them as. Of course, they are just estimations in reality, not exact percentages. Willminator (talk) 06:17, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

You are writing as if race is a definite thing. You need to look at our article Race (human classification), and some of the other sources linked to from there, to begin to understand the problems with that view. Personally, I think Multiracial American is a very bad article, again seemingly based on the kinds of certainty about what race is that you are exhibiting. And your use of the expression "most people" suggests to me that you need to meet more people. HiLo48 (talk) 11:15, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

This is getting silly. Words like multiracial are concepts invented by men to classify the world--not inherent truths. The OP is repeating the request that we identify something as a truth of nature that is a question based on human-invented concepts. The answer is, the children will be multiracial depending on your definition of multiracial.

The OP hasn't defined his terms, so we can't answer his question. μηδείς (talk) 05:30, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Obama's father's line is not known very far up the tree, but it was Kenyan, with no known European ancestry. However, his mother's line includes a black slave a couple centuries back or more. So, based on what's known, Obama is slightly more than 50 percent black. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:11, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually, there is an elaborate patrilineal genealogy of Luo lineages, to which Obama's father can be slotted in... AnonMoos (talk) 08:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Willminator -- according to the traditional U.S. one-drop rule, Obama and his wife and children are all black. If you're looking for an "objective" or "scientific" definition of who is black, then you won't really find it in currently-accepted mainstream science. However, Obama filled out his 2010 census form as black, not multiracial. AnonMoos (talk) 08:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The one-drop rule, as with the rumors about Warren G. Harding. Oddly enough, certain commentators who would have gladly invoked the one-drop rule in the old days, tried to have it both ways when they referred to Obama as "Half-rican" American. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Obama's white mother also had African ancestry many generations back, per African-American heritage of United States presidents. Genetic analysis shows that most African -Americans have some European ancestry, and few are more than 80% African. The cited article also discusses the common 19th century view that Lincoln's mother was part African. Lincoln claimed that some anonymous wealthy planter had impregnated his grandmother. Genetic testing sites often find a small African ancestry, such as 0.5%, in American whites who had many lines of their ancestry in the southern US a couple of hundred years ago, due to intermarriage with mixed race part-African people who were "passing" as being part Native American or Southern European. Edison (talk) 15:47, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

So, are some of you saying that in reality, there is no such thing as multiracial, that one is either of one race or ethnicity, or the other? Willminator (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anybody is saying that. I think most people are saying that there is no workable objective definition of any of the terms ("black", "white", "multi-racial" etc) and the only reasonably satisfactory way to apply them are in terms of what each person defines themself as. --ColinFine (talk) 00:45, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Some of us (at least me) take the view that seeing a single human race is a healthy thing to do. HiLo48 (talk) 00:54, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Willminator, it's like you're being willfully obtuse here. There are definitions of "multiracial" and "black" and "white" and any of a number of other identifiers. Those are real classifications with real meanings. No one has said that there aren't. The problem is, that you want the definitions to be different than they are. You want a person to be either black or white or multiracial or Hispanic or whatever in the same way that you can say that an object is either a tree or a table or a ham sandwich, and that every person would universally agree, at a simple glance, that something is either a tree or a table or a ham sandwich. Race and ethnicity doesn't work that way. It doesn't mean that someone isn't a particular race or ethnicity, however, you don't get to define for anyone else what their race or ethnicity is, and race and ethnicity are also does not have simple Boolean truth values. People have a variety of cultural groups they can and may identify with to varying degrees at varying levels, at varying times in their lives, for varying reasons. Cultural identity (race and ethnicity) is real, but it is not simple, and you keep trying to make it simple; that you can call a person "black and thus not white" in the same way you can say "that's a ham sandwich and thus not a table". It just doesn't work that way, and you can't simple place people into a closed box and keep them there. We keep trying to explain these nuances to you and you keep ignoring these explanations. When you ask "Is XXXX Black or White or Multiracial" or "Is YYYY Hispanic or not" based on some tiny set of arbitrary characteristics, or some arbitrary number of ancestors, your question is unanswerable because the premise of the question itself (that race or ethnicity can be deduced merely by counting ancestors) is completely and utterly wrong. That's not how it works. --Jayron32 04:20, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with everything you say, and I've said the same thing on the desks before. However, I'd like to pick it apart a little further. Take a statement like "Obama is black". No-one could reasonably argue against the truth of that statement. But what does it really mean? If self-identification is the only reasonable taxonomy, then what the statement is really saying is "Obama self-identifies as black." But does he? Has he made any such overt statement of self-identification? Does he need to, and if not then how else is self-identification communicated? --Viennese Waltz 08:33, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

See the video of him filling out his 2010 census form or Dreams from my Father... -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:13, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I think AnonMoos has answered that specifically for Obama. A more overt (and perhaps better) example is songwriter Johnny Otis as far as racial identity goes. But again, it is nuanced and complex. Cultural identity is not something that we can pigeonhole people into ourselves just to satisfy our desire to categorize our world in simple terms. Cultural identity is an important part of a person's life, and we cannot ignore it; we should honor it. But to do so doesn't mean we get to decide for a person how they identify with one culture or another. That's my main point. If Barack Obama feels one way or another about his own cultural identity (and indeed, that doesn't mean he feels ONLY unidimensional, but that also doesn't mean that he doesn't strongly identify with one particular culture or not) the point is that we should not oversimplify what is a complex and nuanced issue. --Jayron32 02:35, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Michelle Obama and Helle Thorning-Schmidt

I've heard (and think I saw) that there are images of Michelle Obama talking friendly with Helle Thorning-Schmidt just minutos before (or maybe after) those more famous ones were taken and thus disproving she was actualy jelous but I can't find them. Could you? Would that be a suitable article for Wikinews if they were found?--85.52.83.144 (talk) 10:25, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The fourth picture in this Guardian article? I'll let other more experienced editors comment on the Wikinews question, but personally I don't think it's relevant news at all. ---Sluzzelin talk 10:35, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

It was a minor brouhaha for a day or two on shows like Entertainment Tonight. The much bigger story is how did that bogus sign-language interpreter got past everyone. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:46, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Slightly relevant article here, if you're interested, OP. Dismas|^(talk) 11:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

There is no reputable source that claims Michelle was jealous. The photographer claimed that Michelle's stern look was purely a coincidence--seconds after the selfie, she started joking around with the others too. Also, only the ignorant believe that the selfie was somehow inappropriate for the situation. You can see a recording of the memorial service here. Notice how the mood was extremely jovial--people were dancing, laughing, singing (including many of the speakers), jumping up and down, and waving flags everywhere. --Bowlhover (talk) 20:28, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

This is a BLP issue so we should be careful. There are multiple pictures posted by the Daily Mail with an annoyed look on MO's face. But making judgments on still photos is notoriously problematic. As for reliable sources, I am not sure what they would be. But comments are all over the written and broadcast media, so it is not like the professional comentators have remained silent. In any case, the issue is hugely unimportant, as is the "translator". This is tabloid, not encyclopedic material, for now. μηδείς (talk) 22:05, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anything I said comes close to violating BLP. For a reference on the photographer's account of the event, see [1]. --Bowlhover (talk) 22:13, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

No, it doesn't come close to violating BLP, because absolutely nothing meaningful has been said, by anybody. I'm not American. I've been away on holidays (that' a vacation to Americans) away from big cities and the like for the past week and a bit. I knew Mandela's death and funeral occured (couldn't miss that news), but what on earth did Mesdames Obama and Thorning-Schmidt do that was earth shattering? My guess is, nothing really. My measure of whether something is significant enough to be in an article is whether anyone will care in ten years time. I say no more. HiLo48 (talk) 23:04, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, when I said "we should be careful", I really meant to say I had read your minds Bowlhover and HiLo, and could see the stain on your souls. WtF? A caution is just a caution. μηδείς (talk) 01:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

The tabloids constantly look for ways to make something out of nothing. Doing a selfie at a funeral was perhaps in poor taste, but that's about it. The fake interpreter is rather more important, not so much because of the comical nature of his "signing", but because it reveals a serious lack of due diligence on the part of the South African government. We're just lucky that the guy was able to keep himself under control enough to avoid bringing physical harm to anyone. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:46, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Cambridge applications

I recently had an interview to study History at BA Level at Hughes Hall college, and I was wondering this: the university says that there are 200 places available for their history course and 3 applicants for each place, making 600 applicants on average each year. If they were to make 350 provisional offers and 300 applicants met the requirements of their offer, would all 300 enrol or is this impossible because of the limited number of places? If they don't make enough provisional offers they run the risk that the course wont have the required intake. Do they create new places, offer alternatives or do they have a way of trimming down to only the very ablest students. I find the Cambridge and Oxford systems very unusual as admissions are decided by college tutors and not necessarily members of individual departments, which seems quite decentralised and haphazard way of coordinating their admissions. Any thoughts — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrandrewnohome (talk • contribs) 21:43, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

"Places" at Oxbridge are really rather vague concepts, particularly in subjects like History. If they have only 200 places but get 300 successful applicants, then yes all 300 will enrol. It just means you might end up in (for example) a series of tutorials with four students in them instead of three, and in a lecture hall that has more seats crammed in than it's generally designed for. (Or else they will just swap the lecture hall they already booked for a larger one...)

Yes it's all very haphazard. My college accepted six students per year in my subject in "good years", and only two in "bad" years, but of course had the same teaching capacity (number of tutors) all along.

Haphazard but quite effective! --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Interesting because in the case of Cambridge, it's not the "university" that makes you an offer, it's the "college". Generally, Cambridge will make about two or three offers for every one place, unlike other universities (besides Oxford) who tend to offer far more places than are actually available. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)