Did anyone ask the Race Detective Charles Johnson about this?

by James Nye

Oscar winning actor Morgan Freeman has declared that the U.S. is still waiting for its first black president as Barack Obama does not qualify because he is of mixed-heritage.

Making the controversial comments on NPR, Freeman said that even though President Obama identifies himself as African-American, the fact remains that his mother was a white woman from the Great Plains.

‘First thing that pops into my head regarding our president is that all of the people who are setting up this barrier…they just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white – very white American, Kansas, middle of America.’

Expanding his own take on Barack Obama’s ancestry, which the President outlined in his memoir ‘Dreams from My Father’, Freeman made comments which might not be considered acceptable from a white political commentator

‘There was no argument about who he is or what he is,’ said Freeman.

‘America’s first Black president hasn’t arisen yet.

‘He is not America’s first Black president – he’s America’s first mixed-race president.’

Freeman is the respected and popular star of films such as the ‘Shawshank Redemption’ and African slave history, ‘Amistad’, and was attempting to make the point that while some oppose Mr Obama because of his race, they are missing the point that he is ‘mixed race’ and not African American.

The context of Freeman’s comments were meant as a wider criticism of Donald Trump and his fellow birthers and were meant to attack Republican’s and the presidents opponents.

‘He is being purposely, purposely thwarted by the Republican Party,’ said Freeman.

‘Who started out at the beginning of his tenure saying, ‘We are going to do whatever is necessary to make sure that he’s only going to serve one term.

‘That means they will not cooperate with him on anything.

‘So to say he’s ineffective is a misappropriation of the facts.’

Despite identifying himself as African American, President Obama’s struggles with his identity are well known and his memoir followed his journey to discover his Kenyan roots and how he came to feel more of a black man than a white man.

However, for Freeman, himself a prominent African-American, to deny Mr Obama the right to identify with one half of his heritage more strongly than the other is sure to cause debate, especially as Freeman has been a finanical donor to the president’s election fund.

Indeed, during the 2010 U.S. Census, the president did not check multiple boxes on his form, or even elaborate on his racial heritage.

He ticked the box that said, ‘Black, African Am., or Negro’.

For Obama, whose mother Ann Dunham, a white woman from Kansas, married his father, the Kenyan native Barack Obama Sr., the question of his racial identity has been a lifelong struggle.

Before he was president, Mr Obama was a community activist in Chicago and always self-identified as African-American, and wears the mantle of America’s first black president with pride.

On a visit to Ghana in 2009, he took his wife and daughters to see Gold Coast Castle, the one-time slave trading depot from which thousands of Africans were sent in shackles to a life of toil in the New World. Mrs. Obama is descended from a South Carolina slave.

 The president’s multiracial heritage has been a subject for oceans of commentary in America and around the world. But it’s also been a cause for teasing, and even satire.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2012 at 9:13 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Headlines, Racism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.