Why does anyone find it necessary to play the race card for Obama? And if there IS a reason, where is an article on why anyone finds it necessary to play the "woman" card for Shrillary? These are not legitimate reasons to vote for either candidate. We should be looking at qualifications along with the acknowledgement that this country cannot survive another four years under McBush and the Republicans. Come On, folks, don't sink to this level. Please.

There is no "One Drop Rule" in the United States

You're right. It was ruled unconstitutional in a 1967 Supreme Court case and is no longer law. Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was overturned in the specific, but to my knowledge the Tenn. statute may have been the first in 1910. In any case it was a state by state legal issue and generally every state had a one-drop style classification law on their books by 1925, which stayed there until the 1967 ruling.

Blacks are the ones who are the backbone of the "one drop" myth and use the mainstream media to promote the MYTH that there is a law requiring those "tainted" with "black blood" to call themselves "black."

I think your confusion is two-fold.

First, I think it is reasonable to assume (as far as I had read) that the one-drop phenomenon was only being discussed here in the colloquial, de-facto sense as it shapes American cultural attitudes, and not as any strictly literal translation of existent law - I would give you the benefit of the doubt and presume this confusion was innocent and not the willful affectation of some ideological agenda.

Second, This was - when the laws were in place - exactly what the laws required. Instead of allowing that commentators on race are simply recognizing pre-existing cultural bias that informs a host of social attitudes among both white and black Americans, you seem to be arguing that there is a secret cabal which is acting in the interest of inventing, reinforcing and popularizing negative social stigma against their own persons. For that to make the least bit of sense these people would either:

A) be driven mainly by self-destruction as a group (the premise of which requires a fundamental group inferiority which is itself a racist concept) or,

B) the benefits of such a social fabrication would have to outweigh the cost in some Münchhausen-by-proxy way. As a thinking person I frankly cannot imagine a way in which that would be possible.

Regarding Anatole Broyard, this was the 40's, 50's and 60's. Not a great times for social advantages if you are a POC. I'm not sure what you refer to when you say he is demonized. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote in his Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man a study of a man ill at ease with his own persona, clearly very troubled or at the least conflicted with how others perceived him and his own perception of self and of family. I wouldn't find this reaction shocking in the least given the time period. He was criticized perhaps for not having been more of a voice in the civil rights movement, but the idea that an individual would not adhere to polarizing ideals at risk of personal sacrifice and instead choose to look out for their own interests is hardly shocking.

As for light skinned individuals who identify as black, or Hispanic and Arab (one might easily add Asian and Native American) the answer is in the question.

This relates more to the stratification of racism than to it's specific failures of logic. Anthropologists have called this the Hypo-Descent Rule - a mixed race individual's classification is predominantly the subordinate in these systems. Call it the lowest common denominator of social value. Native Americans were killed or forced into slavery at the birth of the nation, but social attitudes towards them were more fluid because at least they weren't black. My guess is that has something to do with our social history, such as who trafficked who, who was here first, etc.

This goes back to the assignment of blame or credit in race identity. A white (looking) man who identifies as black is most often credited as being noble or progressive, where a black (looking) man who identifies as white is trying to lay claim to a nebulous prize that threatens a racist's sense of tribalism.

Click on my name and see what you can do about this clown next week.

Obama is "black" mainly because he took great pains to recreate himself as "black." Why is Obama glorified for rejecting a white family in favor of a "black" identity when the late New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard is regularly demonized by black and liberal elites for supposedly rejecting a "black" (actually light-skinned Creole) family in favor of a white identity? Broyard and other "tarbrushed" whites who identify with their European ancestry are not breaking any laws and few other whites are interested in forcing others to call themselves "black" when they don't want to do so. Blacks are the ones who are the backbone of the "one drop" myth and use the mainstream media to promote the MYTH that there is a law requiring those "tainted" with "black blood" to call themselves "black."

Ask the idiots who claim to believe in the "one drop rule" why Hispanics and Arabs seem to be exempt from it. Nearly all of them are at least partially "black." Is the dreaded "black blood" somehow rendered harmless by the Spanish or Arabic language?

No one here can or should singularly shoulder the responsibility for the shortcomings in our educational system, but I think we can all plainly see the toll they take on our society.

Re: Africa;

Forget the pants. African society is not American society. African norms of Social and Sexual partner relationships do not follow Calvinist Fundamentalism. Bummer.

I take your point about the continent as a whole though - it's exactly like when I find the biggest house in the neighborhood, rape the mother, shoot the father, sell the daughter to human traffickers, steal all of their electronics and set the house ablaze. Afterwards I often find myself relaxing by the twilight fire wondering how they could let things get so fucked up for themselves in clear conscience.

Re: everything else;

My parents were married when I was born, so I know I'm unqualified to respond as a "bastard," but I'm a southerner if it helps.

I know you're not racist, because racial concerns don't even exist for you. Your assertion that Obama is using the "race card" by virtue of other people calling him black is well taken, however. It brings up a disturbing thread of logic though, in that for this to be true it has to upset a normative "white race card" default mode. As we all know the very existence of racism is a bald lie, because when you're the right color it doesn't (negatively) affect you. Yet we have these people, these... what's the term? These White Media Folk, saying the thing more important than actually governing the country, or legislative experience (Obama and Clinton being generally equal on that) is the relative darkieness of the persons campaigning, ("wouldn't be a serious candidate if he were white") and what's the net result but to bring up belief in racism? Seems like we need to do a better job combating the Lefty Spin Machine by simply downplaying race as any major campaign issue... like Obama had been - then we'd be beating them at their own game (instead of I guess with firehoses).

Don't get me started on Wright - The way he quoted that white man who said that thing about chickens on the news? Makes my blood run cold. And you know Obama and Wright share the same joint brain network as the rest of the minorities - that's how they all know each other. Notice it was a "race issue" all of a sudden? Remember when Pat Buchanan pointed out that 9/11 was God's Judgement for our not having killed all the gays yet? Did he get into any race-based scandals? No - as a matter of fact everybody ignored it. Proof positive racism doesn't exist.

I just can't trust Obama in spite of his reported "accomplishments" and "half-whiteness" because ... well I don't know if he's scratching his cheek when he's talking to me or flipping me off. If he's uppity enough to campaign, imagine if he won? He'd enslave the entire white ra, er... Group of White People so fast it would scratch my Ted Nugent albums.

If Obama won, he'd invent racism. Simple as that. The only way to protect America from racism is to only allow light skinned candidates. For our children's sake.

PS - I have to disagree with you on the relevance of his middle name I'm afraid. To put it in perspective, I've read that your own middle name is "reasoned" but clearly it has never affected your process.