Judge a book by its cover

i-89dc5023b76bfecead1b6eadc477f43e-barackbandar.jpgTo the left is Bandar bin Sultan. To the right, Barack Obama. Bandar bin Sultan is the son of a Saudi prince and his Sudanese "servant" (probably a slave). So we know that Bandar bin Sultan is 1/2 Arab and 1/2 Sudanese. Anwar Sadat had a Egyptian father and a Sudanese mother. In any case, here is Bandar's father. Because of the fact that violent terrorists are Arab Muslims and various East-West dichotomies Arabs are coded as "brown," but really many of them are not that brown (trust me, I'm brown, I know brown, and many Arabs are not the real deal). This is why Ralph Nader never gets any attention for being an Arab. Or why Tiffany (Darwish) was never profiled as an Arab American pop starlet (Lebanese American father). And why Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, is not usually considered a high level executive of color, and why the senator from New Hampshire, is not considered a fellow racial minority in the Senate along with Obama and the guys from Hawaii.

This is why this stuff about Barack Obama being Arab is crazy. There are plenty of black Arabs of course, mostly in the Sudan and East Africa. Arab is a cultural-linguistic identity, so race is no bar. But the fact is that most Arabs are a Mediterranean looking folk as the process of Arabicization occurred mostly in the Near East and North Africa. And, perhaps to the shock of Real White People many consider themselves white, and have traditionally had some contempt for dark-skinned peoples from Africa and South Asia. I go over all this to emphasize how retarded it is for people to say that Barack Obama is not black or African, but an Arab. Aziz pointed me to this post, claiming that Obama is Arab and not a "Negro":

Mr. Obama is 50% Caucasian, that from his mother. What those who want Mr. Obama to write history by becoming "America's first African-American president" ignore is that his father was ethnically Arabic, with only 1 relative ethnically African Negro - a maternal great-grandparent (Sen. Obama's great-great grandparent, thus the 6.25% ethnic contribution to the senator's ethnic composition.).

That means that Mr. Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother's side. He is 43.75% Arabic, and 6.25% African Negro from his father's side.

First, Arabic is a language. Arab is the people. Though I suppose that this a pedantic, and perhaps debatable point because of transliteration. Arabs are mostly Caucasian in ancestry; take a look at where the Caucasus are on a map, they're closer to Arab countries than they are to Sweden! There are Arabs who are mostly Sub-Saharan African in ancestry, and even those with substantial East Asian ancestry (via trade with Southeast Asia in Hadramaut). If Barack Obama's father was an Arab, he was a black Arab, and he would be identified as such in the Arab world and in the United States. There's no way that someone ends up looking like Barak Obama with just 6.25% African ancestry. OK, it is theoretically possible, but he isn't just brown-skinned, his hair form and facial features suggest a lot of African ancestry. He looks to have more African ancestry that some members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The likelihood that random sampling would continue to transmit African features down that many generations is just totally implausible. It is not impossible, but then space aliens kidnapping you in 2 minutes is not impossible.

Now, you must be asking yourself, "Razib, this is ridiculous, why spend your time addressing such a moronic proposition?" We live in moronic times I suppose. Genetics may surprise and confound on occasion, but at the end of the day water does not flow up hill....

Note: Comments closed to discourage crazies.

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