Quote Originally Posted by EntityX
It's interesting that people say that Obama is black. One of his parents was black and one was white. Since you can say he's black because one of his parents was black by the same token you could also say that he's white because one of his parents was white.

It's the same for Halle Berry. Her father was black and her mother white but everyone says she's black which is fine with me.
That's unfortunately ingrained in American culture because blacks were (hopefully were) seen as inferior. I don't know if it's unique to the US but I do know that some other cultures use words like mulatto.