What next? A black president?!

 

Seems like an auspicious beginning for a week of black firsts.

 

Basketball.

Football.

Tennis.

Golf.

Now F-1 Racing?

Today Lewis Hamilton won the Formula One Championship at the Brazilian Grand Prix. At 23, Hamilton is the youngest F-1 winner in history and the first black man to win the championship. He grew up in Stevenage in public housing, the son of black Grenadian father and a white British mother. Being multiracial and multiethnic has not been without its pains for Hamilton but he has largely shrugged off the racially motivated attacks made against him.

Touted as the ‘Tiger Woods of F1’, he has avoided the golfing superstar’s controversial approach of describing himself as multi-racial rather than ‘black’. Some viewed that approach as Woods denying his Afro-American ancestry, even though he is more Thai than black.

For a long time the F1 champion chose to keep quiet on the subject.

But last October he took a stand on the issue of his race, naming Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King as his heroes.

“Being black is not a negative,” he told Black History Month magazine. “It’s a positive, if anything, because I’m different.”

Alisa

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  • rakia

    There’s a Black History Month magazine?! Seriously?

  • simplyscott

    This is another one of those instances in which I find myself cheering the accomplishment of the individual — to achieve his dream of winning a major race. There will be more wins, I’m sure. One win generally means the person has enough talent to win again.

    I also have no problem with the idea that we are celebrating this as another victory for “blacks” (even though, like Obama and Woods, this man is multi-racial). Positive male role models, I’m sure we can all agree, seem to be few and far between in ‘Black America’, and so it’s important for everyone to push this as yet another example of hard work coming to fruition.

    But I’m more interested in his multi-ethnic background and his past. This “fairytale ending”, as the linked article shows, is a story of a family sticking together, despite divorce and the issues of having ethnically-mixed parents, and the dedication of a father to his son. It’s even inspiring to me because I struggle with staying involved with my kids, who live 5 hours away.

    In the end, whether you are black or white or pink or green, family support is something that most of us are severely lacking and could benefit from greatly. Who knows where my kids will end up in their 20s and 30s, but I’m hoping that my involvement as the long-distance dad can lead to good things like they did with this fellow.

  • More importantly, why is he so adorable??