Black as Barack

The dis-oriented author is black. At least I am as black as Barack Obama. Barack's father was black, my father was black. Barack's mother was white, my mother is brown. Hmm... Black and brown, maybe that makes me blacker than Barack.

One of the intersting aspects of the 2008 presidential campaign is the issue of race. Barack is not hte first black candidate for president, he is not even the first from a major party. When Jesse Jackson ran in 1984 nobody asked whether he was really black. If being black has only to do with skin color than Barack qualifies. If however being black is something different — if it involves the black experience — then perhaps Barack does not.

Based on ancestry, my brother and I are both black. Based strictly skin color, my brother is black but I am not. Based on our connection to the black experience neither of us are black — and neither is Barack.

Barack's parents separated when he was two years old. Barack's mother married an Indonesian student and he lived in Indonesia from age 6 to 10. Afterward he moved to Hawaii and attended the exclusive Punahou School. Educated at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law, Barack's black experience was to say the least, atypical.
Unlike Barack I was raised by both my parents. My father and mother were college professors and I grew up in a middle class college town. My black father, an intellectual schooled in the British tradition, never really lived the black experience either. When a black professor at his university stated that he was the first black faculty member at the school, my father did not bother to correct him. When black students called him brother — he was perplexed.

I recall an incident where a friend's mother asked me about the black girl she saw at our house. I had to think about it for a while, what black girl? Then I realized she meant my Jamaican cousin, Sharon. When I explained, she said to me, "I never thought of you as black." Funny, I never thought of myself as black either!

Recently Barack has taken to defending his blackness. On 60 Minutes he responded to questions about whether he was black enough, he said:

The truth of the matter is, when I'm walking down the south side of Chicago and visiting my barbershop and playing basketball in some of these neighborhoods, those aren't questions I get asked. ...

I also notice when I'm catching a cab, nobody's confused about that, either.

And Senator, when you were at your Hawaiian prep school, Columbia University and Harvard Law School, was anyone confused there?

In every way but skin color, I am white. I think of myself as white. But if I ever run for president, I will take a lesson from Barack. I will run as a black man.