Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
I agree with Dawn Turner Trice’s column that there’s more to race than meets the eye (Metro, Jan. 29). However, I disagree that Barack Obama “looks like a black man.”
People who think Obama is either black or white suffer from a severe mainland United States bias. As an Asian American, I think Obama looks like he could be of Samoan/Polynesian/Pacific Islander descent.
I’m pretty sure that in Hawaii, where Obama spent many years growing up, whether he was black or white never entered people’s minds there because many people are biracial and/or of Pacific Islander descent.
To say that Obama looks black is rather limiting and such a label doesn’t acknowledge the Pacific Islander-Americans among us at all.
