Monday

‘Homie has some rings to kiss and a kente-cloth pocket square to buy’

As I've documented in the past, nobody loves hyperbole more than me. That's why I couldn't pass up reading an editorial that claimed as its main argument that Barack Obama is not black.


Read that line again. I'll wait.


Salon's Debra J. Dickerson holds off on harsh criticisms of the senator's platform, but she does go after the one fact that everyone seems to agree on


"Black," in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics. At a minimum, it can't be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won't bother to make the distinction. They're both "black" as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term.


Wow. And you thought Scott McClellan was the king of spin (truth be told, he was *so* 2006).


Though I am wholly unqualified to debate the attribution of "blackness" in 21st Century America, I can't get behind the argument…even as I find it intoxicatingly original.


Barack Obama is not black? What's next – Hillary Clinton is not a woman (I knew her hands were too big! Someone check under the skirt).


Maybe John McCain isn't really a war hero (in reality, he spent four years at Cambodia's Club Med).


Perhaps George W. Bush isn't really a douchebag (uh…well…uh…no, I can't come up with a plausible defense. He really is a douche).

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