/lit/ - Literature

>>12392341
His father was 1/2 black, making him 1/4. This is a portrait of him. Yeah, once you know about his background, the black ancestry is sort of obvious, but he's pretty white passing for a guy who's a quarter black. There's nothing inaccurate about describing him as "mixed race" or "part black", but saying he's black sounds weird. There's obvious a social element to race and the degree to which certain genes express themselves is obviously going to be a factor in how someone's categorized, and this can sometimes be tricky. Obama is 50/50, but pretty much everyone would call him black because he looks black. Someone who's a quarter black and looks black? Again, people would also probably say he's black. Or mixed, depending on how light-skinned he is. But Brittany Venti is a quarter black, and most people would id her as white because she looks white. Some might describe her as mixed knowing her background, but almost none would describe her as black because of her skin color/features/etc., even though there are people with the same amount of black DNA who would be considered black. Race is... weird.