Letters to the Editor
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Judging Race
I am well aware that some African-Americans are of the opinion that Barack Obama is not 'one of them' - as if 'they' were a monolithic group that didn't have it's own myriad categories and sub categories and flavors.
This kind of 'one of us/not one of us' thinking is illuminating, and a little troubling. Whenever anyone professes to know the answer to 'who is black/white/latino/jewish', it makes me nervous. There were famous schisms, for example, in the Ku Klux Klan, when certain chapters were opposed to admitting folks of Polish or Irish extaction. The person who makes the claim (and contrary to some comments, I believe Dickerson does so with a straight face) sets themselves up as the arbiter of what is authentic or not. It's a very slippery slope that takes us to the hair tests that were done in Apartheid-era South Africa to determine whether or not a person was authentically white, or the infamous 'paper bag test', which means that light-skinned African Americans aren't really black.
I believe that Barack Obama should be judged on his merits and his actions, not his race - whatever anyone deems it to be, or not to be.