It's good to get a reminder of the context for Morrison's hyperbolic remark. Certainly the Clintons are coasting on the pats on the back they have gotten for doing what any sane person should do: acting like black people are people. At least, until that slimy rhetorical backhand about Jesse Jackson this weekend.

I agree the Clintons (Billary?) have done some good, in part because of their generation's experience of desegregation. Though I fear that it's not simply generational: witness Mitt Romney's bizarre campaign photo op with a group of young black voters (clip on Talking Points Memo Friday Video Clip Extravaganza #2 entitled "Who Let the Dogs Out?"). He's just TOO white to be believed. Yet how many news outlets ran that and criticized him for bringing up hiphop and basketball in a awkward single encounter? As Joan Walsh writes today, Bill DID make a big mistake with that Jesse remark, but the media DOES have it in for him--they are just lying in wait.

Anyway I hope Romney wins and continues to split the party, so never mind!

It's been a long time coming. I've done my part to disengage the misuse of the reference in discussions and debates, but that's less than a drop in the bucket. This article, concise, trenchant and direct, will hopefully resolve once and for all, at least among Salon's readership, what should have been obvious all along. Bill Clinton was cited as an example of what a black man might experience on a more mundane level, on a routine basis. It was never intended to bestow upon him some sort of racial honorarium.

There is a black candidate for President now, and he deserves the distinction if he reaches the goal. Anything else is a sarcasm wrapped in cynicism.

Again, thanks to Elisabeth Alexander for articulating this so well.

He is half black. His mother is white. Why does everyone say he's black? He's just as white as he is black.

He is half black. His mother is white. Why does everyone say he's black? He's just as white as he is black.

Probably because if he were driving through Brentwood in a nice car going a mile over the speed limit at night, he'd be pulled over by the LAPD. Which, I think, was what Toni Morrison was writing about.

It's good to have the context of this remark clarified. And the Clintons, of all people, are not racists. The accusations of the past several days are a slander co-produced by the Obama campaign and a fawning media. Welcome back to the Clinton-hating 1990s, and to the very brawls that Barack Obama thinks he can simply rise above with his Transcendent Being, since he naively thinks that they actually were all about the Clintons.

to realize what complete horseshit that phrase is when applied to a white guy, in any context! Bravo.

“We should also ask real questions about the Clinton legacy vis a vis African-Americans, instead of accepting uncritically that they have always worked to advance the interests of black people. We shouldn't forget the fates of Lani Guinier and Jocelyn Elder, for instance, as we evaluate President Clinton’s record in advancing African-American appointees. “

Bill Clinton's domestic agenda did not bring us universal health care as promised, and his focus on eliminating the budget deficit meant he did little for the poor and working people in America.

The Clinton administration actually attacked the disproportionately non-white poor in numerous interrelated ways. Clinton signed a punitive welfare reform bill that ended the federal government's guarantee of financial help to impoverished families with dependent children. He also scored points with conservatives by taking welfare benefits away from legal as well as illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, Clinton increased economic insecurity in poor and working-class American communities by signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA destroyed tens of thousands of American industrial jobs by tearing down long-established regulatory barriers to the movement of corporate capital and commodities across the US-Mexican border.

All the poor girl did was write a few law review articles advocating proportional representation and he cut her loose as if she had been found guilty of child molestation. Then he had the nerve to say that her views are anti-democratic! How can such a bright man not realize that 90% of democracies use some form of PR?

I am distracted from reading this article because every apostrophe comes out as ’--an A with a circumflex, a euro sign, and a trademark. Please don't just paste from Word and submit; do a sanity check on the output.

I understand that Barack Obama is considered black because his hair and skin color aren't typically associated with white people, but on the other hand, the man was born of a black father and a white mother, so he is as much a white person as he is a black person.

If Mr. Obama becomes our President -- our first "black" President -- then maybe our nation can revisit the issue of race and reexamine how and why we categorize people into "black" and "white." It's time to get beyond the old way of thinking.

And don't forget Sister Souljah (sp. When Bill Clinton wanted to prove a point in the 1992 election, the first person he threw overboard was a female back rapper in a "in you face" presentation."

I don't mean to defend offensive Rap lyrics. I think Rap has become a new link in the chain of African-Americans, an escape from the reality of what it takes to succeed. I happen to live in an NYC Coop that has among his cooperators, two former black college Presidents one of whom was a Tuskegee airman who arguably was the first pilot to shoot down a jet fighter in air to air combat. ("There were other guys who shot down jets while they were taking-off, but this was air to air combat" R. Brown. Black or white, pilots are pilots.)

There was a point to be made but B. Clinton chose to make it in an in your face moment to a Black audience. It was a shrewd, but totally cynical ploy. I was shocked, but not so much by the gist of what he was saying, but by the cynical use of the Blacks to make his racial bones.

In 1968, Normal Mailer caused a firestorm when in an piece on the Republican convention, he made the comment, that listening there, absorbing the GOP mood, he was suddenly "tired" of the Negro. I think my problem is analogous. I am tired of the Clintons. The biggest problem for the Democrats if Hillary is nominated, is that a majority of Americans may be tired too, although unlike them, I will vote for Hillary - if it comes to that.