Would somebody please explain to me why President Obama is described as "black" in this New York Times story? He is as much white as he is black. His mother is as white as mine. He is not the first black president. He is the first not-entirely-white president, the first biracial president, the first mixed-race president. Perhaps "black," to the reporter, means not entirely white. But isn't that perilously close to the one-drop rule of the Old South, and isn't that offensive? I don't get it. I honestly don't understand how someone who is half X and half Y can be described as X.
If I may comment on the incident that gave rise to the president's comment, isn't it interesting how quickly Professor Gates interpreted the incident in racial terms? It's as if he wanted to be involved in a racial incident. Why would he want this? Many reasons: (1) to give himself street cred; (2) to link himself to the likes of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr; (3) to put his theories into practice. Think about it: The man has been working in the ivory tower his entire life. He works with words, not things. He sees white people as oppressors and black people as victims. These categories inform and shape his worldview, which functions as a filter to allow in only confirming evidence. The moment he had a problem with a white police officer, his prejudices kicked in. How is that not racism? When he saw the police officer, he saw a white man. The color of the officer's skin was the salient fact about him. I wish to hell the officer had been black. Gates would have been dumbfounded. Oh wait. What we would have then is false consciousness on the part of the black officer. He would be the Clarence Thomas or Condoleezza Rice of the Cambridge Police Department, doing the White Man's bidding. He would be an Oreo, an Uncle Tom, a Stepin Fetchit.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 