I hate that bitch, but she actually made a valid point yesterday on ET, and as objective as I am, I acknowledge the rare occasion when she does so. The issue was mulatto people later in their lifes playing up their colored parents' role when he (it is usually the father) didn't even play any (or very little) role in the kid's life. 3 examples were brought up, Obama, Halle Berry and Alicia Keys. In the case of Alicia keys the father disappeared when she was 3, and her mother struggled to raise her alone. For Obama, the contact between father and son was also very limited nevertheless he wrote a book called Dreams from my father...
Everyone has strange relationships with their parents and when you don't really remember someone or only got to meet them a few times they might become glorified in your mind. But if you remember how they treated you wrong your memories aren't as skewed.
I saw that segment also, it was interesting indeed, eventhough I despise Man Coultergiest she raised some interesting questions. However, in Halle Berrys case, her Mother communicated that she raised Halle as a Black Woman because society wouldn't accept her as being White. Still, I don't know why they romanticize their deadbeat fucking Dads though. For once I partially agree with man Coulter.
I didn't know Obama credited his father with much of anything? But I must admit, I just skimmed the book. Obama looks African and so he does understand exactly what it's like to be treated like an African. A student of mine is half Indian and half Belgian. She once asked "What I thought she was". I said French. She said no I'm Black. I said, OK, but you are lighter skinned than me and you "look" French Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I've dated an African and she looked African. The thing was, she said she "felt" black. Fair enough, but on a little more conversation she said what she really felt was she is Aussie. It's just some knucklehead teased her a lot in school and so she kind of got a chip on her shoulder - I mean, she was Indian and Belgian after all! I think it's this teasing/or treatment that "gives" a person the right to identify with a culture. Obama is right to claim his African heritage as much as his European one.
That is not the issue here. Read the OP again. Ganymede is right, they give there deadbeat fathers too much credit..
The title of this thread made me go, "Buh?" I don't personally know what the president-elect attributes to his father. A friend of mine read Dreams From My Father, so maybe I'll ask him. Or can you enlighten me, Syzygys?
The literary thread of memoirs attributing significance of various kinds to deadbeat dads has a lot of non-mulatto authors in it. Angela's Ashes, say. What's so surprising about someone finding significance in a father who bequeathed them their racial identity, in the US? That's a fairly important legacy.
Much of how we identify ourselves comes from how we are defined by others. That's completely natural, at times helpful and completely unavoidable. Obama is black. That's the colour of his skin. Simply because he has a white mother doesn't change how other people would have looked at him most of the time. Coulter has no point. She never has any point. She's a rambling lunatic that represents the most disgusting form of American news media.