Posted 11:06 AM by magnu231
Obama, the "Clean Black"

I find the scuttlebutt surrounding Barack Obama's "blackness"interesting. According to Drudge (though I'm unable to get to the article at present), Biden said in an interview that "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy..." Stanley Crouch wrote a column in the NY Daily News a while ago entitled "What Obama Isn't: Black Like Me". I think these two columns rather nicely illustrate one of the major pitfalls of the left, racial profiling. Now, of course this exists on both sides, etc, etc, but since this a blog, permit me to overgeneralize. The left has long refused to accept certain people as black for the simple fact that they believed in conservative principles, or voted the wrong way, or refused to hate George Bush, who after all, does not care about black people (at least according to Kanye, and he should know, because he had a crown of thorns in a picture on the cover of Rolling Stone). After all, somebody cannot be truly Black unless they agree with what the Black leadership says to agree with. But it's alarming that this trend is being extended to those of slightly different heritage, or whose speech is a little too precise. And I think it's a problem that cannot be fixed by ignoring it. Racial prejudice, though not a problem in our country to the extent that it is in other parts of the world, is still a problem that needs to be confronted directly. However, those that will be quick to denounce the opinions of Crouch and of Biden (if it turns out that the quote is accurate and in context), should also be quick to fight for those disenfranchised and shunned by their ethnic group for daring to disagree.

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