Letters to the Editor
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Here we go again
90% of black voters choose Obama because what……he was President of the Harvard Law Review? So score one for Ferraro on the facts.
Now here’s one for the white voters. Pssst, a clue, Obama isn’t black. Clarence Thomas is black, Marion Barry is black, Al Sharpton is black. Obama is Halle Barre black. We’re not talking biological, number of pigment cells here. We’re talking acceptability and attractiveness. Many a racist would toss their hoods for a toss with Mz Barre, and I would suspect that many whites who would never vote for a black who looked like the stereotypical black find it easier to vote for Obama for the same reason; he doesn’t look the part.
Is it the only reason for his popularity? Of course not. But when Ferraro said he’s “lucky” to be black, that’s 100% true relative to black voters. She didn’t say it, I’m saying it; he’s lucky to be Halle Barre black relative to white voters.
You see, that’s the problem with so many issues today. Because we live in a black/white (sorry), one liner, snapshot era, we’ve lost the fact that things are just much more complicated than that; nuances, motives, shades of gray, context, etc. If you took a poll asking the question, “given the choice, would you rather be born black or white? I don’t think I’d get much of an argument that “white” would be the overwhelming choice. But if the question was “would you rather be born looking like (white) Squiggy or (black) Denzel Washington?” I think you’d have a lot of head scratching taking place.