It's Official - Obama is black

Remove all ads!

Fair enough -- is there anywhere that has any exit polling that can give us a general idea of how the vote broke down in terms of race?

 

The guy's a politician. Of COURSE he was going to check the box marked as black. That's his thing. That Washigton dudes thing was about not lying, George W was about being incompetant, our primeministers thing is being a 'one-eyed scottish idiot'...it would be a wonderful world if these peoples 'things' were just how much they cared or how good they were at their job but it's not

 

Count me in the "why should we care what Obama puts on his census" group (Hola, starfox!).

Just curious btw - is Powell also biracial? Every day I meet people who are technically caucasian and have a darker skin tone .

 

The census is nationwide, but it is tabulated individually by state. It is the census that determines how many representatives each state gets in Congress.

While I strongly disagree with your statement that most blacks in the US are less than 50% black (but agree that there are many that are not 100% black), the census allows you to check as many boxes as you want. If you are have one white and one black parent, it would be logical to check both boxes.

Yes - 95% of the black vote went to Obama. That alone doesn't tell us much though, as Kerry in 2004 received 89% of the black vote. As Chandos pointed out, blacks tend to vote Democrat. What was remarkable about Obama's election was that a far greater number of the black population turned out to vote for him. In 2008, the black turnout (as a percentage of the total population) was approximately equal to the turnout of the general population. Most elections, the black turnout is lower than that of the general population.

Yes he is. The people with the widest variety of skin coloration are probably hispanics, because they have white, native American, and black ancestry. I know hispanics who have blonde hair and green eyes, and hispanics that have just a dark of a complextion as most black people.

 

Now that I think of it, if I ran the zoo, census forms would be frigging CONFIDENTIAL -- just because he's President doesn't mean that he doesn't have a right to privacy. Why is such a document being made public in the first place. And as Shaman said, why is much mention being made of it?

 

Actually, I would expect it is confidential; it definitely should be. Other people really don't need to know what you put on your form - it is private information, if they want to know they can ask you and you decide if you want to tell them... Pretty much the only exception I can think of is, say, the police checking the forms when it relates to, say, tax evasion or corruption investigations.

From what I can see from the article the WH press folks "confirmed" what Obama put, so I would suppose someone asked them about it first. Personally, I would say they shouldn't have to answer such a question, but probably decided that politically it would be an even worse move. Kittens.

 

Census information is confidential. It's not like you are asked to put down your Social Security number, or even your address on the form. (Although it does ask you if you own or rent where you live.) You do put down your name, but without an address or SS#, just having a name is not really a means of identifying you.

 

DOB is king in the states. People worry about their SSN all the time (and they should), but they rarely protect their DOB (but they should).