Not This Again

You would think that with the world's economy on the brink of collapse, terrorists rapidly regaining their strength and our plant dying faster than ever, journalists would have more than enough serious topics to discuss.

Yet, when I turned on CNN Tuesday morning, what was the topic that merited a special panel of experts? "Is Barack Obama really black?" The other day the Washington Post ran a column that said that people calling Obama black are really mistaken.

Seriously, WTF?

I thought we'd cleared this up months ago. Look, Obama's daddy was African, his momma was white. They made a little mixed-up baby in 1961. Back then, the "one-drop" rule was still in effect, so if you had some black blood and looked like it, you were black. Period.

Obama recognized this early, bonded with the brothers, and whenever anybody asked him about his race, he told them he was black. Not mixed, not bi-racial, not half-black. Obama is blackity, black, black. Simple, right?

Wrong.

Truth is, some folks don't like how Obama took the whole "black president" mantle and ran with it. Some of these people are mixed race people themselves who never liked the idea of having to choose between their parents, but many of them are just white people who want to steal black people's joy. Happy Negroes just give some folks heartburn.

For the mixed race folks, I understand their pain. After all, if Obama viewed himself differently, he would be first bi-racial president, which would likely give mixed race folks the same sort of feeling that black folks have today. Y'all know what I'm talking about, that whole "I can do anything" vibe that's been going around.

However, while I have sympathy for their plight, I'm perturbed that some of them are trying to force Obama to be bi-racial instead of being just plain black. These same folks have a problem with anyone trying to stuff them into a racial box, but they're doing the same thing to Obama. If Barack wanted to check "other" on the census, that would be his business, but he doesn't, and they should leave it at that. Some folks don't mind choosing one race over another, particularly if they grew up in a time when the world wasn't as accepting of riding the race fence.

Now, the white folks who are making this argument out of spite just tickle me. After all, these same people were the ones willing to call Obama a Muslim because his father was a Muslim even though Obama says he's a Christian and he was raised in a non-religious household. These folks claimed that according to traditional Islamic law, if your father was a Muslim you are automatically a Muslim, no questions asked.

Apparently these folks have never heard of the traditional rules of blackness.

See, before he became a senator or politician, Obama was just another nappy-headed Negro to most white folks. The rules of blackness said that his daddy was black, so he was black, end of story. Add in the fact that he wasn't light enough to pass, and there really was little wiggle room. The fact that the same people who established these draconian rules of limitation on black people back in the day are now trying to change those rules because a black man beat the odds is ridiculously ironic.

Y'all got some nerve.

Thing is, this new flip-flop shouldn't pass the smell test and should be roundly deconstructed and vilified by any intelligent person. And I'm specifically talking about all the intelligent people who make up our media. We should not be having discussions about Obama's blackness. His blackness is like Hillary Clinton's womanhood. Damn the pantsuits and rumors, when Hillary was born, she was a woman, she will always be a woman. And despite his lovely white grandparents and mother, when Obama was born, he was black and he will always be black.

Let this thing go, and explain to me how to survive when civilization collapses.

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