First, learn your terms. Italian can refer to an ethnicity or a nationality. As an Italian-American, I use it as an ethnicity. Africa is a continent. It is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.
Think about it. I'm an American who is 100% ethnic Italian. Therefore, I am Italian-American. If I choose to classify myself racially, then I am 100% Caucasion-American. In either case, I do not classify myself by continent.
Obama's characterization of himself is racial although he expresses it as continental (African). I do not classify myself as a Europeon-American; it is more correct for him to classify himself as Black-American. However, in either case, he's left out his caucasian genetics which constitutes 50% of his entire racial genetics.
In addition, his father is from Kenya. That's a nation; it is not a continent nor an ethnicity. As I classify myself as an Italian-American, he should more correctly classify himself as a Kenyan-American. However, that still ignores his caucasion genetics.
As I pointed out in a previous post, his daugthers are more black than he is: 50% black from their mother and 25% black from their father. Thus, while Obama is only 50% black, his daughters are 75% black.
No one on the planet is 100% anything. There are just various shadings and groupings. In America it is usual custom for anyone with "visual" or "discernible" "African" heritage to identify as or be identified as "Black" or lately "African-American". Other countries or societies could look at the same person and reach an entirely different conclusion.
Obama never had the "choice" to identify as "white" and if he tried to do so most Americans would think he's lost his mind.
As an aside, as late as the 1940's it was still a question in America as to whether Italians (especially Southern Italians) were really "white". So again, much of these designations are social constructions, not biological realities.
Obama is fortunate in that unlike the overwhelming majority of Black Americans he can indeed identify a specific region and country of origin on the continent.
As far as the racial heritage of his daughters let's get real. It's exceedingly unlikely that Michelle Obama is 100% Black just as it was unlikely that Barack Obama's mother was 100% White. These terms are just shorthand for other things. Bottom line is that Barack Obama self-identifies as a biracial Black man. As he said repeatedly in various venues it's not about denying his mother or her family.
Determining what someone else should identify as is pretty dangerous. In America "African-American" can include everyone from Jennifer Beals or Halle Berry to Henry Louis Gates (who is likely 50% Caucasian by his reckoning).
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
