Black pundits claim that he’s not black enough, too ingratiated to White pundits are crying that he’s too black; he lives in Chicago’s South Side, attends a “black church,” worked with the poor.
These are racial attacks shrouded to look like judgements of his character.
I’m gonna quote fellow Goon Preppy Bastard, who nailed it:
To some people, being “black” is an identity, sort of like being gay, or being Jewish, or whatever. And merely having African-American descent isn’t good enough. In order to be “black” you have to meet certain criteria that go along with that identity.
It reminds me of that episode of South Park where Stan falls in with the Goths who are “non-comformists” and they explain to him everything he has to do be non-comformist, too. The label of “black” as an identity (I keep putting it in quote marks to differentiate it from just plain black, as a race) has many criteria that some people don’t think Obama meets.
This is ludicrous. Would you say someone isn’t “gay enough” because they don’t like musicals or Madonna? Since when did being something require you to have groupthink? Obama is a role model for young blacks in America, in my opinion. He’s a testimony to what hard work and diligence can get you. That, of course, is what attracts him to MAINSTREAM America. Someone like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton–they may be “black enough” but they’re not seen as anything BUT “black.” They’re all about race. There’s nothing to their repertoire but bitterness and anger and what appear to be deep-seated issues towards people who AREN’T black (Jackson has made openly anti-Semitic comments, for example.) Thus they can’t get any support (both have run for president in the past) outside the black community. Obama CAN, and obviously that angers those who cherish identity over substance.
While the pundits prattle on, they seem to either willfully or ignorantly ignore the vast number of people who don’t give two shits about Barack Obama’s skin color, and are instead honestly drawn to the man for the content of his character, for the things he says and the ways he says them. That will be the test for the Senator in this election cycle, not whether he’s up on his Ebonics and down with the 50 Cent, yo.
