Is it correct to classify Obama as the first black president"

[Rev. Rye]

While his mother is white?
Doesn't this just make him just another white president in a long line of white presidents? I don't know about the Luo people, whom constitute his paternal descendance, but is it the case for his maternal descendence, where your ethnicity is determined by your father, or your mother?

Well, technically, for the longest time in America, if a person had any black ancestry, even if they looked white, they were considered black.

Case in point:

This is Homer Plessy. In 1892, he was kicked off a whites-only train car because it turned out he had one-eighth black ancestry.

For what it's worth, over 58% of Black americans have as much (or more) white ancestry as Homer Plessy had black ancestry. And I have no doubt that, if we were to find the percentage of Black people who had any white ancestry, the number would be higher, for obvious reasons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e33aW5PYegQ
Indeed, black intellectual Henry Louis Gates has more than 50% black ancestry, so, technically, he should be even less Black than Obama. So, in the end, ultimately, all this goes to show how malleable our concept of race really is.

And besides, everyone knows that Bill Clinton was the first Black President!