Pam and Mr. Kennedy, a great honor to have you both here at FDL.

Randy and Pam - Welcome to the Lake.

Welcome Pam, and welcome Randall. So good to have you both here today.

Happy to be here.

Welcome everyone. Looks forward to great conversation on this thought-provoking topic. I’d like to start off with a question — Randall, regarding Barack Obama’s candidacy and the public wrestling with this heritage, you cited journalist Debra J. Dickerson’s pretty novel new line in the sand for membership in the black community.

“Obama isn’t black,” [she] asserts, because “in our political and social reality [black] means those descended from West African slaves.” Rather, Dickerson continues, “by virtue of his white American mom and his Kenyan dad . . . [Obama] is an American of African immigrant extraction.”

Given that definition, that’s so narrow that uthenticity and loyalty are a a pretty high bar to clear. What do you think of this addition to the list of “qualifications?”

Hi, Pam! Great to have you here: You are becoming ubiquitous!

Hi, Randall!

With regard to the questions Pam raises — what has the response been to the book, relative to the Obama campaign? It’s great that your book is coming out just as the topic of race is one that the country is going to have, even if it’s quite reluctant.

Aloha, Pam and Randall!

Randall, what was you motivation to write this book?

Randall, I’m not sure if this is OT, but I wonder to what extent those who do not share the goals of the black community use this “sell-out” concept as a divisive wedge that furthers their own goals?

Bullseye Pam, thank you.

“[b]e particularly careful to distinguish between blacks, mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons. The word “black” should be used to describe those persons who have three-fourths or more black blood; “mulatto,” those persons who have three-eighths to five-eighths black blood; “quadroon,” those persons who have one-fourth black blood; and “octoroon,” those persons who have one-eighth or any trace of black blood.”

At no point were enumerators provided with a methodology for extracting this information or discerning these differences.

Our society isn’t much better off today, sorry to say.

I spend way too much time on a Notre Dame college football blog (it costs $100/year). This chat doesn’t even have space to merely survey the range of ethnically insensitive remarks, but I just wanted to mention here that we still have a lot of subscribers who want to know if a recruit is “white” or not. I frequently try to ask them who determines who is “white?” Does Joe Torre qualify, what about ARod, Derek Jeter, Jessica Alba, Halle Berry,… . Anyway I really appreciate FDL hosting this chat.

I don’t think that that definition of blackness is tenable.

There have been many definitions of blackness during the course of American history. Some have focused on appearance. Some on lineage. Some on the reputation of a person in his or her community. For me the most important criterion is a person’s honest self-identification. If a blond-haired, blue-eyed person with “white” parents says truthfully that he considers himself “black” that is fine by me. By the same token, if a dark-skinned person with “black” parents considers himself “white” then that too is fine by me. I want the boundaries of race to be porous and subject to the will of individuals.

Randall is here and is reading and in the process of answering the first posts.

I wonder to what extent those who do not share the goals of the black community use this “sell-out” concept as a divisive wedge that furthers their own goals

I eagerly await Randall’s response, but my two cents is that the problem is not outside forces creating the wedge, it’s within the community to ensure conformity of belief and common goals to succeed, aka peer pressure. Those who are successful are often viewed with suspicion, that the individual’s goals are upward mobility away from the community or worse, actively working against it.

That the schisms that form benefit the dominant community’s power structure (”The Man”) is the by-product this self-defeating hurling of “sellout” so casually.

My take is that a very high percentage of European Americans consider Barack to be “black,” someone who was raised in an African American ghetto. These European Americans, however, are thrilled that he doesn’t speak Ebonics and they wish more African Americans could be “clean and articulate,” [slam at Joe Biden] like Barack truly is.

snark
If Barack can be that way, why can’t they all.
/snark

Beyond that they really don’t care, because (per Pam’s accurate statements above) he’s tainted. He’s clearly not “white,” whatever the heck that is.

I’d like that too, but that’s hardly the whole story. Self-identification is important, but when speaking of society and how race is viewed at that level, how one is identified by others is equally important.

Too many dark-skinned friends of mine have too many stories of walking into (for instance) a suburban clothing store and being tailed by store security. No one asked whether these friends self-identified as black — but their skin color was enough confirmation of ethnic identity for the security guards.

I’m going to dive in here with both feet, when I am done, you can call me a racist if you want to, flame me , I don’t care.
I do not consider myself racist, I give everyone the same chance to demonstrate their honesty and good will.
I have always felt an undercurrent with my friends who happen to be black.
It is never audible, but it is there like an unseen wedge, a watchful mistrust.
It is beyond me how to bridge that divide.People I have known for twenty years, it is still there.
It is incredibly frustrating and I would love to know how to bridge that unseen divide, any advice?

I asked this series of questions in an earlier post of mine that generated a lot of interesting results about people’s perceptions of race — and with it, what constitutes the “black community.” Randall’s book addresses the “dilemma” in the book in a number of ways.

In my post as use the example of Barack Obama, since he is biracial. I am a fair-skinned black person who has to go many generations back (so many we haven’t found the documentation) to find a white relative.

1. Two people who are standing before you, one biracial, one fair-skinned black, and both appear to be black because of their physical features. How would you categorize them?

2. Two people who are standing before you, one biracial person who appears to be black, one fair-skinned black who appears to be white because of their physical features. How would you categorize them? What if the situations are reversed — any difference?

3. In subsequent conversations with them, it can make a race assignment solely on appearance more difficult; how will you weigh:
* the whole “articulate” thing (the Acting White phenomenon playing itself out)
* their perceived level of education
* how they personally identify re: race
* their political affiliation (and/or identification with the perceived leaders of the civil rights movement)
* the amount you identify with them (the cultural commonalities versus the physical differences)

There are no right or wrong answers here — it’s simply a chance to think out loud about how it takes a great deal of deliberate thought to analyze how we view race, class, and culture in our daily lives. What we choose to do about it as a result of that self-reflection is our choice.

A lot of people ask me whether there is much sellout anxiety surrounding the Obama campaign.

There is some. Most blacks are delighted that a black person is contending so seriously and marvelously for the presidency of the United States — not for the presidency of black America but for the presidency of all America. But there are an appreciable number of blacks who view Obama’s popularity among whites as a disquieting signal that perhaps he is attractive to them because he has signaled that he is willing to “play ball” with the white folks and soft pedal if not betray altogether the key needs of black communities. That view is ridiculous given Obama’s record as a civil rights attorney and community activist and given the substance of his votes in the Senate. The existence of that view, however, is a testament to the persistence of the sellout anxiety.

Mr. Kennedy, Pam, when Americans discuss differences between Germans,and French, it’s been my experience that they refer to those as “ethnic,” differences.

Suddenly, when the differences shift to someone who has European ancestors and someone who has African ancestors, now they’re RACIAL differences.

Has this been your experience and do you have any strong opinion either way?

Great question Busted.

I used to post under a different pseudonym, so I know you well and have great respect for your character and authenticity.

I would invite you to consider it’s a process. You’re being here is a great step.

Your being here is a great step.

I have always felt an undercurrent with my friends who happen to be black.

My first reaction: how close are you to these friends? If you are indeed close, having blunt, even emotional discussions about race, while perhaps awkward at first, should be able to help bridge that gap. We all have to acknowledge that it is much easier to be friends with people who are more like, rather than less like ourselves culturally (and that goes for class as well, the other third rail). It takes extra effort to step outside of that comfort zone and a desire to break down those ingrained implicit biases we all have.

Most white people don’t have close black friends (and vice versa) to have these difficult discussions with, and the problem is exacerbated by a PC culture that encourages silence over probing miscommunications and misunderstandings due to cultural differences that may exist.

Thank you.
Pretty high praise!

Hello Pam and welcome, Mr. Kennedy. Thanks for the book; this is a thorny, multifaceted topic that I’ve dealt with all my life as a Black man (and it gets old quick, lemme tell ya!). I think that after actual racism it may be the number one impediment to the improvement of life for Black Americans.

Your African American regardless of where you are from when the police pull you over.

I have been thinking for a while about the topics I address in the book. For one thing, I have been on the receiving end of the sellout indictment because of things I have written. Some people called me a sellout when I defended interracial marriage and interracial adoption in my book Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption. I was also roundly condemned in some quarters because of my book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. A few detractors claimed that my title was a sordid, opportunistic, money-grubbing effort to attract attention. Another experience that prompted me to write the book was my interaction with black students who, in my view, have been all too burdened by a feeling that they must pay heavy racial dues in terms of “giving back to their community” or else justifiably suffer ostracism as sellouts.

Hello Pam. Thank you for making this possible.

Thank you Mr. Kennedy for spending time with us. I recently revisited your interview on City Arts and Lectures on Obama. There was much food for thought and an array of perspectives to consider when looking at Barack Obama and the entire racial and ethnic discourse. I’ll mention one.

Barack Obama isn’t typical of anyone other than Barack Obama. The mother is a powerful influence on a person so he will reflect his mother’s influences, greatly. He lived in Java during his formative years thus was greatly influenced by that culture. His sister, like himself, is mixed race being Javanese and European American. They must have influenced each other greatly. His grandparents influenced him. His multiethnic school influenced him. The result is this unique individual who bears the name, Barack Obama. Add to this mixture his unique personality, intellect, drive that only he has and there are no two like him on the face of the planet.

Can you give us your insight into the many influences that are unique to Barack Obama and how that individual can equally claim any number of groups? Or, can identify with the uniqueness of so many peoples?

I agree with your observation. It seems that to many people “ethnic” differences are less polarizing than “racial” differences.

That is, ( lost for words, if you can imagine such a thing!)
more difficult than just blurting things out.
I have much more in common than I do not, but articulating it is difficult because the minute you bring it up, boom, off they go. It is mutually uncomfortable it seems. How to get close enough to obtain that comfort level seems to be the issue.
Ah well, keep trying, eh?
That we are friends is enough, I know and they know, we have each others backs.

Suddenly, when the differences shift to someone who has European ancestors and someone who has African ancestors, now they’re RACIAL differences.

The difference (IMHO only, of course) is that the physical characteristics that human beings have often used to define race (hair texture, skin color, facial features) are what cause that differentiation. The social construct of race falls apart quite easily because of how tortured the whole thing is. The range of features, hair texture and color in people identified as “black” is so broad that some could just as easily be seen as hispanic, white — or ethnicities within “white.” It’s crazy.

Hi Busted — since you’re jumping in with both feet, so will I. I read your post and had to wonder about what sort of signals you’re sending out to your Black friends, because in your post you seem to have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder: You seem to expect to be flamed or called racist for your views, you give people “chances to demonstrate” things to you…people pick up on this kind of anxiety, and Black folks in particular learn to attune themselves to it.

I don’t want to come off harsh or turn this into psych 101, but those things jumped out at me, and if you’re looking for a good way to bridge divides, maybe check to make sure your end of the bridge is structurally sound. Hope I haven’t offended.

I’m actually mixed myself, but i was adopted by a white couple(that as far as i’m concerned ARE my parents.) I grew up with odd looks my entire life because of that. A gold skinned little girl with thick black, curly hair with two white parents. So of course, i have none of the grounding in the black community. If anything, my ‘grounding’ is in that of canada, because my mom is one. I’ve actually grown up being able to compare the ways i’ve been treated in both countries. I grew up going between them for pretty much most of my childhood life.

Over there? My gold skin means absolutely NOTHING. I was just one kid out of many.Here? I’m expected to speak in ebonics and get strange looks when i don’t. Only those that know me for any length of time relax and totally forget that it doesn’t matter. But i’m not comfortable at all with the black culture that many expect me to be a part of on first glance. It’s another flavor of undercurrent, like Bustedknuckles mentioned. Just from the other side.

I grew up thinking nothing of my skin color. As far as my family’s concerned i could be purple and i’d still be their daughter. I knew i was mixed(mulatto in the legalese), but it was(and still is) the least part of me of all. I’m still of that mindset, and there’s still that undercurrent of ’sellout’ with those that i run across that grew up in the black community. It drives me nuts because i am who i am, my culture isn’t theirs just because of the color of my skin. I’m more proud of my intelligence, and my musical skills than to be part of a culture i have no background in.

Thanks for your note ! I think that fear of betrayal or abandonment is an important and, on balance, a destructive force in black American life. At the same time, I do not want to exxagerate the significance of the phenomenon I address. Lots of black folk who face the sellout indictment rightly dismiss it as a mere nuisance.

When I was in the USAF stationed in Hawaii, I had a couple of Black roommates. We’d joke about how I was trying to get dark enough to “pass” (tanning). But they also understood that as a White man in Hawaii, I was seeing a limited example of the discrimination that they had grown up with

Find new African American friends?

I see your point, but my defensiveness was for the public at large.
There are thousands of lurkers here and the concern trolls are always ready to jump.

Being an Anglo-Saxon, and raised in Hawaii, I’ve learned to adhere to one of MLK’s tenets… Judge one for the content of their character, not the color of their skin… It really works!

In this house we look forward to the day, come next January, when Senator Obama takes the oath of office as the next president of the United States.

Thanks for that.
That was what I was awkwardly trying to say.

Bullseye.

“Lots of black folk who face the sellout indictment rightly dismiss it as a mere nuisance.”

True — I think though that the mindset that it engenders, namely the fear of doing things which make you “seem white” has really blocked off huge areas of opportunity or just plain experience from massive numbers of people, for no other reason than fear of not conforming. It’s bigger than the individual instances.

I am a half breed. I take no dissatifaction with that fact. I am an Oklahoman too. But most importantly, I am an American.

As an anthropologist, I taught in a school of 52 nationalities. The richness of the diversity and the respect engendered to one another taught me that each person is unique and wonderful. Thanks for this dialogue.

Busted: the minute you bring it up, boom, off they go.

As in what? Shutting down discussion? Acting defensive (oh there goes dumb whitey again)? Remember, we’re all “trained” that discussions about race are so fraught with danger that you’d think the world would explode if someone asked a basic question about cultural difference, what offends someone, etc. I’m an advocate of open discussion, to not chastise someone for asking what seems to be an obvious, even racist question that is borne of ignorance.

In one post at my pad I recalled a white classmate of mine at Fordham (this was 1983) and I were sitting outside and she asked me whether I could turn browner in the sun. My response:

was to calmly say “yes,” and I took off my watch so she could see the contrast between my tan and what was underneath my timepiece. I then held my arm up next to her olive-skinned Italian forearm to show her that my non-tan color was lighter than her skin tone.

I suppose I could have gotten haughty and pissed and just jumped up and got in her face and called her racist, right? But the problem here is that she’s a victim of growing up in a world of cultural, institutionalized racism and lack of exposure to people of another color. At least she extended herself outside her comfort zone to ask the question, certainly risking a negative reaction.

Bullseye.

Most European Americans live under the illusion that they have transcended concern about ethnic issues.

The reality is that they live in a country where virtually 100% of the leaders (and police) have for centuries been European American.

Suddenly African Americans are talking about “race.” You can almost see the disgust as European Americans wonder why all these others can’t just “get over it.”

I eagerly await Randall’s response, but my two cents is that the problem is not outside forces creating the wedge, it’s within the community to ensure conformity of belief and common goals to succeed, aka peer pressure. Those who are successful are often viewed with suspicion, that the individual’s goals are upward mobility away from the community or worse, actively working against it.

What are the criteria for acting White? My great niece is mixed-race AA-Euro. She when to private grade school because of after school child care. When it came time for middle school, public school was the first choice because of economics. When her parents talk to their AA friends about the public school, “good students acting White” was a big social issue. My niece and her husband “sucked it up” and sent her to private school. It seems to me that stigmatizing good students for “acting White” is very destructive.

I like what you are telling us.

Randall, please explain a bit about how were assigned the “Sellout” label for your thesis in “Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.” The Black Commentator was pretty harsh.

I don’t think there is some universal definition that will ever be agreed to as to what entails “black”. Some will say descendants of slaves of African ancestry, some will narrow it to West African ancestry (but that would leave out some descendents of Angolaan and Mozambican slaves, certainly), some forget that some early African-Americans were essentially indentured and freed. Many of the early founders of Spanish Los Angeles were black (or mixed) and were never slaves in the sense most were in the United States.

Then you get folks from Puerto Rico, elsewhere in the Caribbean, Latin America who have varying degrees of African ancestry yet identify with Hispanics from their own communities. Outside white communities (and sometimes “inside” communities) would identify them as “black”, just as much as they would Obama Barack or Tiger Woods.

Obama Barack admits that his experience is not identical to what many blacks in America experienced. He has noted that he, in fact, struggled with issues of identity, given that his parental (and grandparental) role models were definitely NOT black. Outsiders identified him as such, however.

If anything this retrospection perhaps has led Obama to examine the black experience in a less monolithic manner, to see points of shared experience between and with other ethnicities, as well as distinctions. He’s also able to see the role of poverty, the issues of labeling, and how those labels impact success. He’s in an odd position…black to the white world at large, but not African American to many in the community. But it’s clear that he shares “existentially” some of the black experience (if not the historical journey). He’s a bit like the character in “Black Like Me” who has the experience of feeling the day-to-day discrimination that confronts African-Americans. But Obama couldn’t remove the skin darkener.

I think that what really is critical is no longer the issue of whether a person comes “from” a particular community or not. Many people who are want to run away and hide from it, and the problems that exist within those communities. Others are focussed exclusively upon THOSE problems and don’t see the connections with other communities and their issues. This makes the likelihood of solving those problems with larger outside causes unlikely. Perhaps the fact that Obama sits on the threshold of different communities and can peek inside them both enables him to do something special?

still have these problems in the 21st century - regardless of skin color - if we ALL treated people as fellow humans i think we’d be a lot better for it - i havent found any person to bleed a separate color of blood….

What is a sellout? Perhaps someone who puts the interests of another group usually white over not equal to the the interests of the group they were born in, in a pathetic attempt to be accepted by the new group.
Growing up in the suburbs I saw this a lot.

Alen Keyes comes to mind.

I agree with you. All too many black youngsters think, for instance, that seeking excellence in school is “acting white” and somehow abandoning blackness. That notion is so pernicious and wrongheaded, especially given the historical record which shows so vividly that blacks have sought education and prized education in the face of daunting obstacles.

Ron Christie also.

There is a similarity here to what every immigrant group has gone through, and it is a generational and class problem. By aspiring for something more - to leave the neighborhood, the traditional professions, the traditional politics - are you betraying your group? There will always be those who resent those who move up or out.

In the African American experience it is compounded by the organized and systematic efforts of the majority culture to prevent the rise of the group and the individuals within it. This breeds an additional suspicion of those who make it - what did they do to get out, what did they sell out, and to whom? It’s the shadow of the talented tenth.

Mr. Kennedy it’s been my experience that European Americans are largely ignorant of your Harvard colleague Randall Robinson and his work on the debt. European Americans have no clue about the real economic injustice in present value terms done to the slaves and their descendants. “Even though they benefit from it, it’s not their fault.

Closely tied to this in my opinion is that African Americans have been unfairly blamed for Affirmative Action. It’s my understanding that Affirmative Action simply replaced a more direct repayment for what is known as “the Black Holocaust.” It’s also my understanding that there is 20th century precedent for precisely these kind of war reparations. Hitler routinely forced Europeans to work for the Third Reich and he never paid them. Some of their descendants have received compensation for their work. WRT African Americans, I think the period after the Civil War, and prior to the 1960’s Civil Rights, legislation should be considered eligible for similar consideration, but that’s just my opinion.

I do not ever expect actual cash payments, but I think recognition of what savage and institutionalized discrimination can do to any ethnic group over a 400 years is an issue. Although lynching and chain gangs understandably get more attention, imo it was segregation and the systematic denial of equal access to education, the courts, and access to credit that drive so much of what we say today. My hope has been that Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare, HUD and Social Security’s Ticket to Work program might be able to help mitigate the consequences of institutionalized injustice. If nothing else, those options are a lot less expensive than incarceration.

Pam, please feel free to chime in

We all bleed the same color of red.

One thing I love about my country that scares the pants off these idiots who are trying to use immigration as the big scare.
We are all immigrants,one way or another.
We all have the same needs and wants.
Working together, we can do it.

Good example! I wonder what how the mental conflict of selling out like he has, has cost his mind? Are there such things as racial identity conflict disorders?

That’s interesting.

As frustrating as it is to have all the sexism openly thrown around with a seeming lack of awareness, I often think it’s easier to deal with that way than the topic of race, which is still very third rail. If you know what someone is thinking you can approach them with reasoned arguments; if you don’t, you feel like you’re swinging at air because there’s nothing you can point to.

It seems to me that stigmatizing good students for “acting White” is very destructive.

It can be. The criteria for “acting white” for young people can include:
* speaking the “King’s English”
* focusing on academics instead of sports
* college-bound ambitions

It is a peculiar phenomenon that perhaps Randall can shed some light on. The saturation of anti-intellectualism and materialism foisted upon and soaked up as “culture” by some in the black community obviously has played a role. I recall being on the receiving end of insults of “talking white” and “acting white” because I was doing well in school (this was 7th grade in NC). It was made worse by the fact that I didn’t have a southern accent (I’m a NC native, btw, so the lack of an accent is an oddity).

From an article on the matter:

Smart black students being accused of “acting too white” is an issue Triangle educators are debating at a youth and race conference this week.

Students say the stigma is keeping some of their peers from doing well in school. Tenth grader Anais Guzman is on the honor roll. She says some of her peers see the achievement as acting too “white”. “They can get high grades but they don’t want to because they’ll be considered as acting white, so they put white people down,” Guzman said.

That’s the argument some educators say is fueling the achievement gap in North Carolina schools. Smart black students being accused of “acting too white” is one issue they discussed.

“It’s a serious issue in North Carolina,” said William Darity with the African-American Research Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill. He says while the “acting white” stigma does play a part, student performance has more to do with school structure and curriculum for minorities. “We argue it’s due to the school context and because of a pattern of exclusion of vast numbers of black kids from the most challenging curriculum,” Darity continued.

But students say the “acting white” theory is a reality. “Some people might say some people are acting white, or acting black or different things like that so I see it often,” said tenth garder Vance Cherebin.

Patrick, yeah, I’ve been there — not in my adult professional life, but in my youth as a high-achieving student, you’d better believe I felt the stigma of being perceived as “acting White”. I understand it completely and repsect the urge to resist being mentally colonized or buying into, in ANY way, a system which has had a great interest in keeping people of color down.

It’s when it starts blinding people to possibilities that it bugs me. The cutting off the nose to spite one’s face part of it.

Welcome Pam, and welcome Randall Kennedy. You certainly have a penchant for the otherwise undiscussed topic, or word. What’s on your horizon next, sir?

FWIW, Tiger is receiving huge criticism from some for so gracefully accepting Kelly Tilghman’s comment about lynching him without even mentioning Jena.

IMHO, it’s not about the “black experience.”

African Americans in the U.S. aren’t “born” knowing how to be “black.” They learn ebonics, because that’s what their parents speak. Their parents learned ebonics, because it was the only linguistic option open to them. It most certainly was not by choice.

The level of conformity in many African American ghettos on certain issues (Stop Snitching) is simply a reflection of the centuries of lethal and legal discrimination their ancestors faced at the hands of the dominant European American culture.

The African America, heck most minority communities are under attack from many quarters and are using culture and religion as ways to stay unified. The desire to belong somewhere is understandable. But it creates an in group bias against members of the community who for various reasons don’t fit in the culture, religion or values of the majority of their group.

I do not ever expect actual cash payments, but I think recognition of what savage and institutionalized discrimination can do to any ethnic group over a 400 years is an issue. Although lynching and chain gangs understandably get more attention, imo it was segregation and the systematic denial of equal access to education, the courts, and access to credit that drive so much of what we say today.

How about 40 acres and a Mule? ;-)

But seriously, Today, Hindu India is grappling with the ‘Untouchable’ caste members that has endured similar treatment for over a thousand years, and, ironically they have the same color skin and features… It was solely which segment of the caste system they were born in…!

Randall…I’m a biological anthropologist…and while I don’t advocate/discourage openly on such positions as interracial marriage in my classes, one of the things I do point out is just how mixed genetically the African-American population is genetically. The average admixture of black Americans is about 25%. That’s the equivalent of one in four grandparents. My West African friends can “see” the admixture quite easily. So issues of actual genetic mixing is something that has long occurred. Many black Americans have a good dollop of Native American ancestry, as well. Interestingly, of White “Old Americans” (pre-early 20th century European immigration) the admixture level is about 6-7%.

Now inter-racial marriage also entails a mix of culture and communities. That’s where the difficulties arise. People feel that they don’t want to lose their religions, traditions, and “value” to another (sometimes more dominant) culture. They also fear their kids will be mistreated by one, or both, communities (and even families). That fear sometimes comes off as antagonism to the other partner, or other culture. The couple sees this as a lack of love and support. I think that the more successful mixed marriages out there will allay this fear. It’ll take time, but it’s happening. Then people will begin to find that there are ways to integrate both cultures, and the kids will have unique, and just as compelling experiences.

If president Obama does a good job, and I think he will, that will go a long way to breaking racial perceptions. Who knows, one day we might even have a woman Native Indian as our president. Now wouldn’t that be something?

Some people thought that I was hurting my fellow blacks by putting the term “nigger” on the cover of a book that would appear in every major bookstore in the country. The claim here is that the term itself draws psychological blood whenever a (right thinking) black person sees it or hears it regardless of the circumstances. Others thought that I was being altogether too soft in my assessment of people who use the term inasmuch as I argued that while the word is presumptively a racial slur it cane be put to other non-racist uses. It can be used as a term of endearment or a gesture of solidarity the way that many in the hip-hop community use it. Or it can be used as a weapon of anti-racist propaganda. This is the way it was used by Dick Gregory (see his memoir Nigger:An Autobiography) and Richard Pryor (see his great albums of social satire That Nigger’s Crazy and Bicentennial Nigger). What really angered some folks is that I defended the use of nigger by whites who used the term in what I view as a justifiable (ie. non-racist) way — people like Mark Twain or Quentin Tarrantino.

Black folks I consider sellouts –

* Clarence Thomas (though Randall does a pretty balanced job of looking at him in a long chapter in the book)

* Just about anyone in Project 21 (The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives). These are black conservatives corralled to show up as talking heads on Fox News to bleat the GOP line.

* Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson. I consider this brother a truly unwell self-loather (and a homophobe) who said this in the aftermath of Katrina:

If whites were to just leave the United States and let blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. The audience, shall we say, disagreed with me strongly. Now I have to disagree with me. I gave blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder.

President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans’ black community taken action, most would have been out of harm’s way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves.

african-americans are no more a monolith than are other ethnic people - sheesh!! if we could only get over that……

Wow, that’s destating. So, where to begin? What does it take to begin tearing down a belief system that to perform well academically is to betray one’s self, one’s identity? And who/what is to lead us out of this? Are there leaders who are making a difference? “Programs?” Movements? This seems to be such a core problem that without an approach for addressing it, everything else gets overwhelmed.

I think this is where Obama opens up some space. His refusal to be categorized - indeed his rejection of categories - is what is simultaneously attractive and disturbing about him. Is he black enough? Is he liberal enough? Does his notion of bi-partisanship mean the same thing as Joe Lieberman’s?

Watching my son and his friends in high school is amazing to me. Race doesn’t ring the same bells or set of the same alarms that it does in my generation. Their history is different. They’re aware of the struggles and complications, but they are living a different reality.

Shoot. One of these days we might even have a gay president.

Racism is a result. It’s not a cause. Racism doesn’t cause violence. Racism doesn’t cause segragation. These are the result of something much deeper in human nature. I have my own ideas and it is in every part of the world among every people.

I take it you think my understanding of the term sellouts is valid. Or am I missing something?

Sellouts? There is Collin Powell. And Condi Rice. Afterall.

We have a substantial number of black medical students at my university, but almost all of them are Africans who attended elite private schools in Africa, followed by college in Europe or the US.

Openly Gay President… I wouldn’t be too sure we haven’t had one already…! ;-)

Colin Powell coudda been a contender.

I really have no wisdom on how to take this on. This is a relatively recent phenomenon; my mom grew up in the Great Depression in NYC and didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but academics was the first priority, and the means to make something of themselves. The consumer culture, I have to believe, has “dumbed down” and disengaged so much of the American public from their own self interests in terms of education. That popular culture has become so pathologically anti-intellectual is frightening. That children have to suffer social ostracism for being academically focused is something we all have to be willing to figure out.

The School of Hard Knocks is open to all comers.

Interesting comments.
Sometime around 1815????, it became illegal to import Africans into the U.S for slavery. (I believe the Amistad was carrying slaves to someplace other than the U.S.

My guess/fear has been that a majority of that 6-7% resulted from European American males working on plantations and unwilling African American women. All the economic pressures on the plantation owner favored such reproduction. See Frederick Douglass’ autobiographies. His Mom wasn’t real fond of him, his grandmother raised him until he was six.

“You’re African American regardless of where you are from when the police pull you over.”

Exactly. If Eldrick “Tiger” Woods drove a snow plow for a living, would he even try to sell us on being “Cabla-whatever”? I doubt it. Don’t get me wrong; he’s free to identify as he chooses. I would be less than honest however, if I didn’t acknowledge my disappointment as a Black man that he doesn’t identify with us more closely.

I am and always will be one of his biggest fans, but if for some reason all the wealth went away tomorrow & he had to join us in a “conventional” job and lifestyle somehow I think he’d become more Black as well.

Again, not hatin’ on him, it’s just my opinion.

I am thinking about a book that I would entitle GWP— Good White People. It would be a history of anti-racist struggles on behalf of people of color undertaken by whites such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia Maria Child, Abby Kelley Thaddeus Stevens, Albion Tourgee, the white founders of the NAACP, the whites who denounced white supremacy before the Civil Rights Revolution, the whites who joined with the valiant blacks who confronted Jim Crow segregation in the 1950s and 1960s.

Do you think that there is a need for such a book? If so, who are some neglected figures who I should be sure to highlight?

Any impressions are most welcome !!!!!!

Agree with your list…I’d add Ward Connerly, Mr. Anti-Affirmative action…sometimes I think people like Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg deserve the tag for making their fortunes by exploiting negative stereotypes about Black people…(their beats are pretty dope, though, so I don’t know…)