ray245 wrote:Is there anyone in the US, who is from a mixed descent, and is considered to be a 'white' as opposed to a black or Asian?
If the non-white ancestor is a grandparent or great-grandparent and the rest of the family are white, and the person in question has predominantly Caucasian features, they will largely be considered and treated as white. Also, Native American ancestry and to a lesser extent other Asian ancestry is more likely to be "overlooked" in such a manner. In part, this is because certain features common in Asia, such as straight dark hair and epicanthal folds do occur in Caucasian populations which can make it easier to "pass as white". For example, epicanthal folds do occur among Celtic peoples so such a person might claim to be part Irish in order to explain such a feature, while perhaps claiming a Greek ancestor to explain having dark hair and (for a Caucasian) dark skin as well.
As an example, actor Dean Cain, who is 1/4 Japanese, could probably call himself "white" and be accepted as such and in an earlier era might well have done so.
Appearance has a great deal to do with how a person is treated in the US (hence my comment about Obama's appearance - he has clearly identifiable features that come from Africa). Estimates have been made that up to 1/3 of "white" or Caucasian people in the US have some black ancestry and while most estimates are not quite that high there is no question that some people did cross the racial dividing lines in the past. However, the sudden revelation that a white person has relatively recent African ancestry these days does not instantly invalidate their "whiteness". There was a time not so long ago when that was not the case, at least in some areas. The "one drop rule" meant ANY African ancestry meant a person was legally black in some parts of the US and subject to all the problems of such status, such as not being permitted to use motels, "whites only" public facilities, and so forth. That's one reason why race is a such a volatile subject in the US. Until 1964 whether or not you were black might well determine if you could find a public toilet or be forced to piss in your pants in many parts of the US. If you look at the newsreel of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech" take a good look at the faces in the crowd - the white people had access to plenty of public toilets in the museums and other public facilities in the area, the black people did not and a lot of the cute colored kids really did wind up pissing their pants by the end of the day because they did not have access to the perfectly usable toilets in the vicinity, because in 1963 Washington D.C. was a segregated city.
Depending on the region of the country, facilities may or may not have been segregated, and where segregated, may have been so for those who were black or might have have included all groups who were not Caucasian. The marriage of Barack Obama's parents in Hawaii in the early 1960's was controversial - in Virginia it would have been
illegal and his father at real risk of being hung from a tree branch by a lynch mob. (Prohibition of interracial marriage was not overturned across all parts of the US by the Supreme Court until 1967, when Mr. Obama was 6 years old.)
So, you see, there have been massive changes in the US society in the past 50 years. The year Mr. Obama was born he would not have been permitted to set foot in the White House except as a servant, through the back entrance. On January 20 he will walk in the front door and sit down it the Oval Office and take command. Meanwhile, there are still a LOT of people alive in the US who remember a
very different society, some of whom
prefer that old society. The latter will
never see him as anything other than a black man regardless of how white his mother was.
Prior to about 1970 anyone who chose to pass as white would have vehemently denied all other ancestry. As this change has occurred during about one human generation, old customs for determining race - which in some circumstances could have been a matter of life or death - have not yet faded or become unimportant. I expect that one day they will, and being of mixed race will be about as important as, say, being of both German and French descent - interesting genealogy, perhaps affecting family customs and traditions, but not something particularly important in the "real world". It hasn't happened yet, though.
