*DISCLOSURE:  I. AM. BLACK.

It's been an issue from the very beginning.  From the second Senator Barack Obama stepped on the national scene, and I'm sure since well before, the questions of Obama's race have come.  Today, they abound and thrive.

I am bringing up this much ballyhooed subject now for several reasons.  First, the "is he black enough" question is foolish as well as small.  Second, Robert Novak, the pontificating prick of the right wing, on Sunday's white-boy-a-thon, also known as Meet the Press, commented that the GOP has little to be giddy over, that is, except for the possibility that the Democratic Party might nominate a Black man or a White woman for the highest office in the land.   The implication is obvious; America is too narrow-minded and bigoted to make a woman, or an African American its leader.  I do not believe that is true today.  Of course, it has been true for most of American history.

In the paragraphs to follow, I will attempt to lay out my understanding of Obama's race, as well as race in general, and particularly race in America, from an historic and contemporary prospective.

WHY IS BARACK OBAMA BLACK?
Some have insisted; my black brothers and sisters, included, that Mr. Obama is not actually black because he is the son of a black Kenyan and a white Kansan.   I say to those people: Oh please!  Let us not engage in the last vestige of the ignorant child - naivety.  Mr. Obama is black precisely because society's conventions have told us that he is black.  Were he not, "Barack Obama, International Man of Mystery," what would the beat cop on the south side of Chicago see in him, strolling down the boulevard?  Forgive my bluntness, but that beat cop, if he a racist, would see a nigger!  If he an enlightened law enforcement officer, would see a BLACK man promenading, and so would I or anyone else of some reason.  We would see that because society has taught us that blackness is not a genetic condition so much as it is a SOCIAL and PSYCHOLOGICAL condition.

BLACK ENOUGH?
I will dispatch with this pathetic argument as quickly as is feasible.  As I have LIVED it (and LOVED it, by the way), blackness is a binary state: you either are, or you are not, Mr. Obama, as established above, is.  There will always be questions posed like this, even until the end of the Earth.  Many black people that I know have posed it.  And I have told them of their wrongness within it.  By "black," they mean, has he not sold out?  And from my extensive research on this man, I know that he has not sold out his ideals, the same ideals that I have come to cherish myself, nor has he sold out his race.  His has been a life of championship for all those who are downtrodden, regardless of their race, there is no wrong in that, and it does not betray the race to which he has been socially assigned.  Anytime some ignorant black people see another black person who has done well for themselves, they will always ask about the person's commitment to blackness; as if being successful were somehow unblack.

RACE IN AMERICA
DuBois said famously that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line; I pray nightly that that will not be the problem of the twenty-first.   So I return now to Robert "The Prince of Darkness" Novak, and his assumption that America's bigotry will win the Republicans another four years to destroy this land that I love.  History might well prove The Prince correct; I personally, do not believe that it will.  It is testament to the Republican Party's use of hatred, not necessarily their own hatred, but certainly their use of it, that Novak would make such a statement.  

But the whole reason I have brought up the topic is because of a post by John Ridley, on Huffingtonpost, concerning His Evilness' statement on MTP.  In the comments to the post, some have suggested that to point out this hate-speak is somehow racist in and of itself.  How little they understand.   Some have gone as far as to say that there is no black or white, just "human," and again, I can see that naivety has become a favorite past time in the blogosphere.  To suggest that Mr. Obama, or anyone else, has chosen their race is to belittle the history of race in these United States and throughout the world.  We can all choose to live in Stephen Colbert's fantasyland of unseen color lines, or we can acknowledge reality and learn from it and then move forward to a better place.  The choice is ours, but I also wish that we could all understand that centuries upon centuries of human interaction have created the issue of race, and it cannot be wiped away by wishful-thinking or the belief that just because we say it isn't so makes that fantasy a reality.   The work of race relations is hard work that requires the facing of hard truths.

So, will Mr. Obama, should he become the Democratic Nominee, or Mrs. Clinton, should she, for that matter, lose simply because people aren't comfortable with the precedent that either of them would create?  I do not believe that to be so.  I think either of their nominations would actually cause an excitement that we have not seen in presidential politics in some time.  Obama would cause a skyrocket of black turnout, and it looks increasingly likely he would do the same for youth turnout.  Mrs. Clinton would most likely unite and energize Democrats in the end, as well as energize women.  Could either of them lose?  Of course!  They are Democrats after all.  But will they lose due to bigotry?  I don't think so.  For the most part, bigots belong to the Republican Party, and even if they don't have membership cards, they vote that way and are going to vote that way unless the Democrat is George Wallace, back from the dead.