The answer to the first question, at least, seems obvious to most of us. But as this story by AP writer Jesse Washington demonstrates, it’s a question that won’t go away. Perhaps that’s a good thing too. Why? Because definitions matter.
In a world where we are told that definitions are unimportant or that “labeling is disabling”, we have become squeamish about defining things in specific ways. But discussing complex issues like racial and spiritual identity requires useful and useable language, including definitions of the things under consideration. In other words, we can not have a meaningful conversation about the importance of electing our first black President, unless we share a definition of what it means to be black.
But the need for clear definitions does not require them to be simplistic. In fact, the very idea that anything as complex as a person’s identity could or should be reduced to a simple formula is wrong. In fact, the question about Barack Obama’s blackness, which at first seems silly and then perhaps ugly, provides a great opportunity to reconsider the importance of definitions in our culture.
The question about the President-elects blackness, or who is Jewish or what it means to be Christian reminds us of both the importance of such questions and that the answers may be as multi-faceted and nuanced as the people they seek to define. Gone is the era of one definition that can be imposed on all people. Gone is the presumption that we can not be many things at the same time. And gone is the ability to assure our own identities by denying others the right to claim the same label. So what’s left?

We are!
The role of self-identification becomes increasingly important in a world that both demands definitions and recognizes that they are more elastic than previously imagined. And although this makes some purists uncomfortable because they think it demeans the value of that which is identified if “anybody” get to define it, they have it backwards. In a world where one is free to define one’s self in a variety of ways, the definitions we choose are particularly precious.
We need to distinguish between the fact that people may define their blackness, Jewishness, Christianess, etc. in ways that violate our understanding of the terms, and the fact that such “heterodox” definitions dilute the importance of the categories. In fact, it is the opposite. When one could choose to be anything, their choice to define themselves in any particular way is especially powerful and meaningful. And it need not undermine the importance of shared definitions which allow for shared conversation.
We must shift from assumed definitions to affirmed definitions. I am what I say I am, not who you presume me to be. Ironically, that phrasing recalls how God tells Moses to explain who God is to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. And if that kind of definition is good enough for God, shouldn’t it be good enough for us?
Barack Obama is black because he says he is, I am Jewish because I say I am, etc. And that doesn’t spell the end of meaningful shared definitions of identity. It spells the need for a way of valuing self-identification that is as real and useful as identities created for us by others. And that can be done.
In fact, a useful model can be found in the deep recesses of Talmudic tradition. According to the rabbis, one seeking membership in the Jewish people, was accepted as a member of the tribe based primarily on two things: first, their affirming that they were a part of the community and second, their willingness to accept no only the benefits of such membership, but the costs.
Taken together, those two elements combine to make a model that is both deeply respectful of the centrality of self-identification to all forms of identity, and protects against it becoming so idiosyncratic as to be meaningless. Labeling is actually not disabling at all. It is powerfully enabling as long as we respect each other as labelers of that which is most important to each of us and are willing to enjoy both the benefits and the burdens of the labels that we choose.