PATRICIA WILLIAMS: Well, I think that he is, on the one hand, our first African American president. And some people call him our first bi-racial president.

BILL MOYERS: Right.

PATRICIA WILLIAMS: Some people say that he is, or really consider him still much more acceptable because he has a white parent. I think that part of that internecine warfare within the black community based on skin color.

I think one of the freighted problems within the black community with hearing words like "bi-racial" is that, you know, African Americans have always been multi-racial. We are, I mean, you know, since slavery, at least bi-racial. And so that some of that vocabulary within the black community I think evokes images of half-breed, quadroon, mulatto, the kind of color coded, tragic mulatto conversation that induces a kind of hierarchy. And I think that that's going to be part of a new American vocabulary in dealing with that unconscious level of distinction.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think about that?

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, so for me I suppose the notion of Barack Obama as our first bi-racial president is troubling. And it's troubling in part because, as you point out, African Americans have always been a multi-racial people, or at least for all of contemporary American history they have been a multi-racial people. But the other thing is that race is not simply about biology.

Race is, of course, socially and legally constructed. And at every point in American history Barack Obama would have been in the category of black. He would have been enslaveable under the slave codes. He would have been Jim Crowed in the context of the Jim Crow South.

Homer Plessy, who is the litigate in the Plessy v. Ferguson, which establishes separate but equal, the legal code that we think of the civil rights movement as finally breaking open, was so visibly or physiologically white that he had to go to the conductor on the train and tell him, "I'm passing the color line here. I'm breaking the color line. You need to arrest me."

So all of the moments of American racial political history hinge right around a space where multi-racial, sometimes much more sort of in appearance white-black people, have been a part of the story. So it's very hard for me to imagine that now, at the culmination of one part of the black political story, we would start to break that off and assign it to a group that simply does not exist as a matter of law, the bi-racial group.

I suppose what I find exciting about the upfrontness about Barack Obama's patchwork, racial identity is that it allows him to be empowering to many different kinds of people. But at the same time, to take away that this is a particular moment of ordinary black folks on the ground who came to D.C. in numbers like nothing I've ever seen, who stood there in the cold.

That is the accomplishment and the achievement of ordinary black folks on the ground as voters, as those who survived the Jim Crow South. So I just can't take Barack away from us. We need him.

BILL MOYERS: Does this change life for those ordinary black Americans, this election?

PATRICIA WILLIAMS: I think it changes the self-perception of African Americans. Obviously nothing is going to change life overnight. But I think that it is too easy to dismiss the symbolism of this particular election. It's too easy to dismiss the sense of investment of identity. I hear over and over again people, not just African Americans but particularly African Americans, who felt so disenfranchised for so long, feeling so deeply, deeply American.

People saying that they picked up a flag and waved it for the first time in their lives and waved it with such enthusiasm. And not in a sense that this is just an African American administration but that they feel united to all Americans, that he represents all Americans. And in that, the constituency of African Americans feel connected to other constituencies from whom they felt quite segregated and dispossessed.

BILL MOYERS: Obama himself once said he was trying to raise himself as a black man in America and, quote, "Beyond the given of my appearance, no one around seemed to know exactly what that meant." Have you given any thought as to why he chose to be African American instead than bi-racial?

PATRICIA WILLIAMS: The word "choice" is probably a little bit overstated because I don't think that anyone really chooses when you are apparently

BILL MOYERS: Right.

PATRICIA WILLIAMS: -dark skinned. And at the same time, I do think that the question of African American manhood is a very freighted cultural identity. And I don't think it's just somebody with his background that struggles with that. I have a 16-year-old son who was struggling to understand what growing up as an African American man means. I wouldn't separate it from the general struggle of what it means to be, to appear to the world, in a particular way that, to which people assign, you know, extra cool or a particular way of dressing or a particular way of speaking. And I think it's quite complicated for anybody.

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, there seems to be some evidence in the first autobiography, "Dreams from My Father", where he suggests that part of that choice has to do with angling towards being his dad, that that absent parent gave him something to which he was trying to aspire, that he'd heard lots of stories about what an enormous personality and an important man his father was. So I think part of the choice of blackness had to do with him trying to come into being like Barack, Sr.

But the real symbol that we see every moment is his choice of Michelle Obama. And in many ways, Michelle Robinson, who becomes Michelle Obama, is representative of a very particular choice on the part of Barack, that as a multi-racial, Harvard Law educated, African American man, those of us in the black community get what the choices for dating and marriage were for Barack.

And he chose a woman as tall as him, as smart as him, and black from a distance. She's a woman who is not someone who could have ever opted out of blackness. And here he is rearing two African American daughters, on the South Side of Chicago, with a smart, tall, fabulous black wife. And it, you know, it helps me forgive a lot of policy ills for Barack when I see Michelle, only in the sense that there is for me a sense, at a core level —that he sees me, that he sees my daughter, who's seven years old, that whatever our disagreements are, there is a fundamental goodwill around his sense of the humanity of African American women. And that is, I think, a very empowering connection back with African American voters.

For being a lawyer, Patricia Williams ain't that informed. For one thing, Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez don't look alike, and Beyonce wouldn't be readily identified as Latina. Secondly, Kimora Lee Simmons doesn't have a black phenotype, and as far as I can tell, has never publicly identified herself as strictly black, and for the umpteenth time, Tiger Woods DOESN'T IDENTIFY AS BLACK!!!! Claiming he does don't make it so!! Additionally, Ms. Williams has no business talking about Native American law, because it's quite obvious that she doesn't know jack about tribal membership criteria. It differs from tribe to tribe and is based both on blood quantum, and whether the tribal member is registered on paper, including rolls from back when Indians were being put on reservations. Lastly, Patricia Williams is obviously misinformed about how the ODR worked back in the day. Although mulattos could be enslaved, it was, as pointed out in a previous post, based on whether the mother was free, thus Obama wouldv'e been free. Even if Obama had been enslaved, his racial categorization would've been on a tiered system, with mulatto, quadroon, octaroon, etc, being sub categories of black, so technically speaking, he wouldn't be black. Oh,and Ms. Williams can kiss my mulatto a**, dismissing my heritage in such a way. No, Ms. Williams, mulatto ain't a separate category on most forms , but it is a different experience. It's a mulatto thing, you wouldn't understand!  Man, this post is chock full of ignorance and hatred. Arrrghhh!! I'm gonna go off and pray for patience and understanding, after all, that's what our new President would want for us.  

Why do you content yourselves with so little? Why so little? Is it good enough that a few mongrels who understand what the ODR is about actually think Obama is biracial? When for the vast majority he is black?

Are you that weak?

Mongrels who want to be niggers. The only way for you is the example Obama has given, you need to pass as niggers. If you pretend you like it, then blacks might even help you... hahaha.

How sad.