Black

Louis Chude-Sokei's article in today's LA Times "Redefining 'Black'" separates my man Brack-O Bama from the section of the population defined as African American.

Brack's father is from Africa. But his mother is as white as can be. This would drop him in the "mixed" category. Same as Tiger Woods. I'm sure that it was easy to pitch him as spokesman to the board of American Express, right?

I understand that the common usage of the word "African American" refers to "an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Sub-Saharan Africa...(and who) descend primarily from enslaved Africans brought to the United States, especially the American South, between 1565 and 1807." (Thanks, Wikipedia)

Doesn't my man's one degree of separation from The Motherland define him better as an African American? Tell Jimmy O'Bannon, a Boston native whose father was an immigrant to this country that he's not an Irish American. F*ck...tell him he's not Irish. When the paramedics finish removing the pint glass shards from your stupid face, call me, so I can tell you about your stupid face again. People's ancestry, before ten or twenty years ago when a white college professor decided that "black" was a negative term (it's NOT), used to define the prefix of their Americanness.

Chude-Sokei uses the above definition for African Americans in his article, but refers to all other immigrants of a dark persuasion "black". So - Jamaican Americans are black. Jamaicans who's ancestry tells the same stories of people being ripped from the same villages in Western African and taken East on the same ships, with a generation or two stopping in Kingston before settling in Queens, are different than their neighbors whose great grandfathers were taken a stop farther to Charleston. They are black immigrants to this country.

Huh?

BOB is blacker than me. He's blacker, certainly, than most of the people whose houses I hung out at in Alexandria, VA. For those people for whom their potential vote for him hinges on his "blackness", I would offer that not supporting him for his supposed lack of it may ruin any chance to vote for a President who has "more."