Feeds: 
symbol identifies content for paid subscribers only.
ONE FOR THE MUTTS.
During Obama's first press conference as president-elect, he answered a question about his intention to buy a dog for the family with an ironic sobriety, in the same tone of voice he used to talk about genuinely serious matters, like terrorism or the economy. He explained that because his daughter Malia is allergic, they would have to get a hypoallergenic dog. He also said that they wanted to get a dog from a shelter, where most of the dogs are "mutts, like me."
During the campaign, Obama's biraciality was lost except as a marketing tool to reassure white voters. Had he identified explicitly as biracial, rather than black, it would have been seen as a rebuke to the black community. Because of the nature of race in America, black folks have always claimed our mutts, and white people have traditionally refused to. But it's clear from Obama's off-hand remark that being a mutt is never far from his conception of who he is.
Obama will be our first black president. But while the rapture of black voters has been given the attention it deserves, what this means to the mutts has been lost. For many of us, growing up was a lonely and confusing experience -- no less so for Obama, who chronicled his journey of race and inheritance in his first book. Seeing one of us ascend to the presidency, someone who has found his balance, who is at peace with the warring tides of identity within him, is incredibly meaningful. To know that he is still a mutt at heart, that he still stands in defiance of the simplistic and inevitable binaries to which his run was subject, means the world to those of us who could never be anything else.
--A. Serwer
COMMENTS (6)
I've been a mutt for a long time - straddling cultures, never fully accepted by either culture but having to answer to and answer for the injustices committed by both. I hadn't realized how much the potential of an Obama presidency meant to me personally until I voted - and cried. He was a mutt. Just like me.
Posted by: Greytdog | November 7, 2008 3:48 PM
as far as I'm concerned, Obama gave his stamp of approval to the notion that people can and should be easily sorted into the 5 census boxes of the past. big missed opportunity.
on a personal level, I just don't understand how he feels right doing it. I can't call myself anything other than biracial. Just doesn't feel right to say that I'm one or the other. Of course I recognize that being black and white is a different experience from being white and asian, but I mean, doesn't he feel like he's doing wrong by his mother? Anyway, I just wish we could have had this conversation as a nation.
Posted by: jf | November 7, 2008 4:56 PM
His casual remark was important because it pointed out the obvious without dwelling on it. People who are uncomfortable with talking about race often pretend like it doesn't exist at all, which is silly. I hope Obama's presidency will help us discuss these things more openly without getting fixated on it. Whew...a lot to pull out of one remark!
Posted by: RM | November 7, 2008 5:06 PM
Like jf, I am Asian and white, but like greytdog I loved Obama's "mutt" remark. In my experience, people of mixed race often refer to themselves as mutts when speaking to one another, but not in "public." I liked seeing our new president proudly claim the word and the status it refers to rather than being embarrassed or ashamed about it--just a bit like gay people claiming the word "queer."
Posted by: Karl Weber | November 7, 2008 11:56 PM
While I'm all for embracing one's identity, heritage or culture (or not, for those who simply wish to say they're human or one that embraces the good in every culture and etc). I don't know if I'd use the word "mutt". I'd rather say "biracial" instead. But that's just me.
Being an American of Indian decent (my parents are Indo-Trinidadian). I don't really follow anything within that culture. I don't eat the foods (only when my mother cooked them once in a while when I was growing up). I don't listen to the music or watch the films either (the films are basically the bollywood stuff). That's doesn't mean I don't respect the culture, it's just not for me. In the past there was some music from that culture that I did even listen to since I grew up in a community of Indo-Caribbean people as a teenager in NYC.
My mother and my late father never really pushed the culture on me they let me explore on my own. So like many Americans I simply take things out of everyone's culture.
Great post and great thread. I do enjoy discussions on identity.
Posted by: Jason Gooljar | November 9, 2008 11:24 AM
Before he was a mutt, Obama was "hapa". The rest of the country is just going to have to catch up.
My kids, too, are hapa (half Asian, half white) in, if marriage patterns persist, what will become a pretty large group in their generation. And each of those people will probably negotiate the race issue in their own, slightly different ways, which is as it should be.
At some point it would be nice to move beyond the one drop rule, as has been long accepted and internalized by everyone (including blacks) so that we don't impose a heavy handed external institutional rule about how people should be perceived on top of the personal decisions people make for themselves.
Posted by: JMS | November 10, 2008 10:29 AM