"We do not have our first black president," the author Christopher Hitchens said on the BBC program "Newsnight." "He is not black. He is as black as he is white."

A Doonesbury comic strip that ran the day after the election showed several soldiers celebrating.

"He's half-white, you know," says a white soldier.

"You must be so proud," responds another.

Pride is the center of racial identity, and some white people seem insulted by a perception that Obama is rejecting his white mother (even though her family was a centerpiece of his campaign image-making) or baffled by the notion that someone would choose to be black instead of half-white.

"He can't be African-American. With race, white claims 50 percent of him and black 50 percent of him. Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all," Ron Wilson of Plantation, Fla., wrote in a letter to the Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

Attempts to whiten Obama leave a bitter taste for many African-Americans, who feel that at their moment of triumph, the rules are being changed to steal what once was deemed worthless _ blackness itself.

"For some people it's honestly confusion," said Favor, the Dartmouth professor. "For others it's a ploy to sort of reclaim the presidency for whiteness, as though Obama's blackness is somehow mitigated by being biracial."

At a time when our our country is falling apart around us, I can hardly believe people are fussing about whether our President is black or white. Let's face it. He's both. He identifies as Black. How could he not? White mother or not, he would have had a tough time trying to "pass."

Can't we just let him be black?  Why would any white person want to co-opt that? I guess in some bizarre way it made it easier for some white folks to vote for him because he has white blood (huh? When did blood become black or white? I thought it was red...) But come on...can't y'all just be glad for all of us that he's our President and let it go? One of the things that ran through my mind on election night, tears pouring down my face, was that now, black children would grow up knowing that in America, they can truly grow up to be ANYTHING they want, something my children have always known...Why would anyone want to take that away from them?