John Veit

Like President-elect Obama I am the son of a white mom and black dad. We were both adopted, raised in the seventies and eighties and our parents divorced. Our histories don't bear much in common beyond that but our reactions to a more racially polarized world are eerily similar.

I was raised by white, divorced adoptive parents in the upper middle class suburbs of Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. with my white brother. Growing up we moved a dozen or so times. My mostly white friends were usually marginalized by adoption, divorce, molestation, drugs or any combination thereof. Punkers, hippies, skateboarders and lacrosse players in the eighties and nineties didn't seem to care what color I was or who my parents were. I had few girlfriends back then as it seemed like black girls thought I was too white and few white girls were open-minded enough to date a black boy, let alone a proverbial "tragic mulatto." The fact that I was often bitter, drunk and stoned didn't help.

My adoptive parents weathered ignorant remarks. My brother defended me from Beantown bigots. Wherever our family landed there was explaining to do and a general resignation that we would not fit in. Time and time again I was reassured from well-intentioned white people that, even though I was black, I wasn't "rude like most niggers." I preferred this sort of honesty to hairy eyeballs or condescending, liberal gobbledygook.

In 1986 I was an high school exchange student in West Berlin. I was asked to sit in on an honors English class with a dozen or so students. The teacher, Frau Schulmann, did her graduate work at Columbia studying the black civil rights struggle in the early seventies. We read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," "Manchild in the Promised Land," "Lady Sings the Blues" and other Black American classics all year long. I was grateful for the opportunity as such tomes were largely ignored by my school in Pennsylvania but felt awkward being put on display and mined for "authentic black American experiences." I had never thought of my experiences growing up as being anything but unique.

My host grandfather from West Germany, a Third Reich soldier blinded by an American bomb, came by for Christmas. In order to explain my heritage and appearance my host father instructed him to grab hold of one of my grimy dreadlocks. He did so and found my hair "fascinating." We all shared a healthy laugh. I realized then that the confusion of racism might someday fade into history.

There was a tiny Black Student Union at my upper-middle-class WASP high school. At college (I went to five) BSU's morphed into Minority Student Associations. Unable to speak Ebonics or leave my non-minority parts at the door, I never joined either. The fact that I had white parents and, even worse, a white girlfriend, didn't ingratiate me with either group.

Like the president-elect I had turned to W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Wright's Outsider, James Baldwin's Rufus, Malcolm X, marijuana and booze. While the President-elect eventually gave up his late-night lifestyle I am still what young Barack Obama called in "Dreams From My Father" a "pothead," perhaps headed to "the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man." Even though I like pot I am inspired by Malcom X's "repeated acts of self-creation," as Obama called them, and still skateboard, surf, play bass in a punk rock band, make bizarre independent movies, and take photos. It's a fun life and I still cling to the "hope" I'll sell a book, movie or song and my financial situation will "change" for the better.

My pretty white girlfriend volunteered for the Obama campaign in Harlem. I visited her there on election night. The place was abuzz with hundreds of hopeful multi-cultural volunteers. Everyone was sweet, welcoming and nervous. We settled in and watched MSNBC's drab coverage on a sheet hung across a wall. As the states rolled in for Senator Obama cheers turned to a dull, happy throb.

At eleven o'clock nearly everyone erupted in raucous glee. The returns were in. The Republicans had been thoroughly trounced. Their era of hostility was, for now, over. Tears poured. People danced on Fredrick Douglas Boulevard. Delighted screams punctuated happy chants. Car horns blared as people screamed "Obama!" from apartment windows.

It started to sink in why people were so happy. It wasn't just that a black guy was elected President of the United States, it was what he had promised to do. The Iraq war might end soon. Sustainable development may become a priority. Perhaps the Supreme Court won't be filled with right-wing reactionaries for the next four years. It seems abortion rights will not be threatened. Americans abroad will no longer be seen as global pariahs as people everywhere love Obama. He even promised to take a more compassionate approach to a criminal justice system that keeps more black American men in jail than in college.

The rally in front of the Adam Clayton Powell Federal building on 125th St. and Malcolm X Boulevard was mobbed. People stood on trucks and street posts craning to see New York's first blind, black Governor on a twenty foot-high stage. Thousands more stared at a giant monitor tuned to CNN. We watched but could not hear Senator John McCain's concession speech. As Governor Sarah Palin rushed awkwardly off the stage to a hail of Harlem boos it started to sink in that a profound ideological shift was afoot.

I started looking around at the sea of mostly black faces. They were exultant, screaming and chanting their candidate's name. They couldn't have cared less that a black guy and a white girl were out on a date. If President-elect Obama's parents hadn't ignored the racists of their day none of the revelers would be there in the first place.

the facts are completely against you. Sarah Baartman came from people who have been almost wiped out as a result of Dutch land-grabbing and, yes, also the depradations of the Bantu tribes from further north who moved into southern Africa. Sarah Baartman was small in stature, as is characteristic of her people, with yellowish-brown skin and with eyelids that lack a perceptible fold, more evident in the Chinese and Japanese than in Europeans and Africans. Her large buttocks were exceptional by any standards but that was nature's way of conserving protein in women of child-bearing age in regions of drought. There is absolutely no connection between Sarah Baartman and Michelle Obama unless you're one of those people who believes that a huge continent such as Africa is a "country", as Sarah Palin is alleged to have thought. I could be wrong but I've always understood that the slaves shipped to America were from West Africa whose languages, traditions and appearances differ considerably from those living thousands of miles further south, while, north of the Sahara, the population is Arab.

Sara Baartman's story is sad but history teems with millions of sad, heart-breaking stories. If you really can bear the idea of present-day sadness and horror, you should consider the fate of albino children born to indigenous African people. As The Times of London reported yesterday (courtesy of AFP) a six-year-old albino girl was murdered in Burundi by a gang who took her severed head and limbs to make lucky charms. There's no point in bewailing what happened Sarah Baartman centuries ago when this sort of thing, associated with witchcraft, is going on today.

Erin (doh!) Aubry Kaplan's article is still stupid, no matter how you try to defend it, but if it's any consolation to her she should see that her own ancestors were the healthiest, strongest and most resourceful to have been selected for that dreadful voyage to the New World and that they had the resilience to survive lives of dire hardship, big butt or not.

I noticed that whole villages of Scandinavian Laplanders were also put on show during those cruel times for the enjoyment of the gaping voyeurs. That hasn't changed much anyway as Sarah Palin from the Frozen North was mocked and excoriated on the pages of Salon as if she had been one of those frightening "exotic" creatures put on show in those freak-shows of the past when a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon was to visit London's Bedlam )Bethlemen Hospital) and have a good laugh at those suffering from mental illness, exulting in the cries and groans of those tormented human beings.