Who decided to call Obama black?

Sen. Barack Obama is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. So why is he “black”?

He is, to be accurate, biracial, equally black and white. Mr. Obama could choose to identify himself in a way similar to golfer Tiger Woods, who describes himself as “Cablinasian” — a mix of his Caucasian, black and American Indian father and his Asian mother (although “Kensan” or “Kanyan” don’t have the same ring).

Or Mr. Obama could label himself with obvious legitimacy as white - he was, after all, raised by his white mother and white grandparents after his father abandoned the family when he was 2 years old.

Yet he describes himself as black, and news organizations around the world have followed suit.

The Associated Press said June 3, when the Democratic candidate secured enough delegates to win the nomination, that the biracial senator is “the first African-American to lead a major party ticket” as he seeks to become “the nation’s first black president.”

But a debate over the topic of race has been raging since he entered the presidential race a year ago. Throughout the primary campaign, political pundits have addressed the question of whether Mr. Obama is “black enough.” (A Google search of the candidate’s name and the phrase pulls down 152,000 hits.)

Says who?

On another front, Debra Dickerson, a contributing writer and blogger for the liberal Mother Jones magazine, said at the Salon.com Web site in January that Mr. Obama is not even technically black, defining the term “in our political and social reality” as applying only to “those descended from West African slaves.”

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said last month that Mr. Obama calls himself black to appeal to “white guilt” over slavery and the rampant racial discrimination that reigned in America from its birth until just 50 years ago.

The Obama campaign would not answer when asked why the biracial candidate calls himself black.

“It doesn’t seem especially topical,” Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said when asked.

However, in recent weeks, Web sites and news publications big and small have asked the question. “Why Do We Call Obama Black?” best-selling author Karen Hunter wrote in Connecticut’s Hartford Courant. After an examination of the two sides of the question, Miss Hunter, who is black, concluded only that the question “is forcing conversations about issues that have been easier to ignore for centuries.”

Top editors at Associated Press said they asked themselves the same question — is a half-black, half-white man black or white? — and looked to Mr. Obama for the answer.

“I would say the answer has to do partly with the way Senator Obama has defined himself and partly with the way American society defines someone who is biracial,” said Senior Managing Editor Mike Silverman.

Mr. Obama, who in recent TV commercials has prominently featured his white mother and white grandparents, tells in his book “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” how he decided about 30 years ago to call himself black and take his place in the black community.

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