Survival of The One Drop Rule?

There is a lot being written about Barak Obama these days. Most articles refer to Obama as the first 'serious' Black candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, even though his mother was white. I don't know about you, but sometimes the media's fixation on Obama's blackness hints at the survival of the old-fashioned "one drop rule".

The infamous rule, which dates back to the Jim Crow days of the early twentieth century, says that a person is Black if they have even one drop of African blood in them. In other words, if your great-great-great grandmother was an Ibo slave, you are black, even though you are only 1/32 Ibo. The purpose of the rule was to identify who qualified for white-only preference and who could legally be discriminated against.

I realize that Obama identifies himself as an African American, has married an African American, and attends an African American church. I also realize that, for most people at least, ethnicity does not matter when evaluating a political candidate. Or does it? It was not so long ago when pundits wondered whether Kennedy's Catholicism would harm him at the polls.

Perhaps it is good that Obama is running for the highest office in his country. It may just help the US put the issue of race behind it. It would be nice to see an America where the land of a candidate's ancestors was less important than his or her political platform.