I am not happy about Emmanuel's appointment. Rahm Emmanuel subordinates US foreign policy, US interests, and US security to Israel's. Either that, or he thinks that what is best for Israel is best for the United States. His father was a member of an extremist Zionist group that conducted military operations inside Palestine for 15 years and was responsible for the bombing of the King David hotel. People describe Emmanuel's position on Israel to the right of George Bush.

I do not think that relations between black and Jewish people can ever be repaired until Israel repudiates its active support and affinity for apartheid South Africa. South African Jews were enthusiastic supporters of apartheid once they were assured that they would not suffer under it. It should be noted that one secular Jew in the South African parliament did denounce apartheid. She was a lone voice. Percy Yutar was the man who persecuted and finally imprisoned Nelson Mandela. He was a celebrated Zionist. In 1976, Israel invited South African PM Vorster (who was a Nazi sympathizer) to make a state visit. He was feted by Yithak Rabin. Rabin called him a freedom fighter and said that South Africa and Israel were both victims of foreign nations that tried to destabilize them. Israel and South Africa were kindred spirits, he said, because they were both fighting "dark peoples."

Israel did everything it could to help South Africa circumvent UN sanctions meant to punish South Africa for apartheid. Israel sold South Africa nuclear weapons, helped South Africa invade Angola, supplied South Africa with weapons used specifically to violently control black populations. Israeli and South African officials loudly professed their support for one another by claiming both were white minority states under siege by "dark people."

Israel was finally shamed into tamping down its public love for South Africa, but its security forces continued to support that vicious regime. And, it was during the 1980s that Israel and South Africa were closest. Shimon Peres and Gideon Mier refuse to repudiate their relationship with such a brutal regime.

I think Israel was supportive of South Africa because of racist beliefs and because they used the same tactics. The US is to Israel what Israel was to South Africa. As a black person, I am not comfortable with Obama appointing someone who is supportive of a state that does not like "dark people" and aided and abetted their oppression and brutalization. It certainly does not help mend black and Jewish relations.

I have always asked why Obama is referred to as black or African-American when he is biracial. He has just as much claim on black as he does white. I think that if he self-identified as white, he would be mocked, but I have yet to hear anyone in the media refer to him as biracial. I think it is racist to deny him access to the heritage of one of his parents because his appearance is not reflective of that heritage. Biracial persons are often placed in the position being forced to choose between the two races of their parents. For those who have a white and black parent, biracial kids are rejected as white (not by whites) but fit in socially with whites. I suspect that people refer to him as black because it would somehow make his election less historic.

When I hear you say that you wish Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, or Walter E. Williams had gotten elected, I hear you saying that you wish that a "good black" had been elected. White or black, the country has roundly rejected their politics. They are outside the mainstream of American politics. Clarence Thomas is widely regarded as the least credible Supreme Court justice because one can count on a single hand the number of times he speaks during oral argument each term and the opinions he has written. He hears what Scalia's views are and his response is "what he said." Neither Williams nor Sowell has held office, so why them?

You must acknowledge that black Americans are overwhelmingly disgusted by Clarence Thomas. I cannot say if your average black person (or white person) know who Williams and Sowell are, but I can safely say that they would be just as reviled as Thomas is. The black community sees Thomas as an Uncle Tom because he has gone out of his way to undermine the rights of people of color. However, when Thomas had to face the music for his treatment of Anita Hill, he fell into the same behavior for which he often condemns other blacks: crying racism when things got tough. Thomas had the nerve to call a tough confirmation hearing about sexual harassment as a "high tech lynching." What is more offensive is that a black woman (Anita Hill) is only worthy of being degraded sexually, but a white woman was marriage material to Thomas. Whether or not you feel that blacks' aversion to Thomas and other black people who think like them is fair, there is no denying that it is real.

The Republican party has gone out of its way to offend people of color, women, gays, feminists, and liberals in general. Black people have never voted for Republicans in large numbers. I cannot recall an election in which a Republican candidate for president got more than 12% of the black vote. While a great number of blacks were excited by the candidacy of a black man and did vote for him because they saw him as a black man, Obama would have gotten 95% of the black vote had he been white simply because blacks vote heavily in favor of Democrats.