Why is Barack Obama incessantly referred to as 'black'? His mother was white. If he'd had only a black grandfather and three white grandparents? Still black? I suspect for some at least the answer would be yes. Extending this to other races - American Indians are for the purpose of federal scholarships routinely identified as such with as little as 25% true indian ancestry. Australian Aboriginals are generally more subtly (dare I say, intelligently) defined, in particular, ABStudy scholarship requires both a degree of ethnic descent but equally importantly continuing membership of an Aboriginal community. Nonetheless, it was interesting that when Real Life began on Australian tv in 1992 with Stan Grant (of partial aboriginal descent), he was widely lauded as the first 'Aboriginal' anchor (interestingly this is much less emphasied nowadays).
However, other mixed ancestries, eg Chinese/English, or Indian/English, aren't subject to this same imbalance. If they are referred to by their ethnicity at all, they are (from a European perspective) inevitably 'half-Chinese', 'half-Indian'.
In short it seems the degree to which ancestry from a particular ethnic group is required in order to be assigned to that group is a measure of racism. The more 'inferior' an ethnic group is perceived to be, the less ancestry is required for membership. It would be interesting to see how this theory held up to a more scientific analysis but I suspect the answer would be very well. Obviously this post has only taken a purely european viewpoint as well - I can only speculate on how applicable this is to say, China.
In the meantime, would everybody *please* stop calling Barack Obama black. By doing so you're revealing far more about your own racism than perhaps you realise.
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