Did you know Obama was Black?

So a friend told me over dinner this week that the talking heads were saying Barack Obama's appeal in the African American community isn't strong because his blackness is questionable. I was like, girl, that's just crazy. Everyone who cares knows he's a black guy. If you know enough black folks, you know we come in like every single shade and that even having one black parent is enough for us.

Then this morning I'm watching my favorite morning program "Good Morning America." I know that some people prefer the younger, hipper NBC morning show, but I just feel off-centered when I watch them. I feel like I may forget to make the coffee or feed the cat if I don't have my familiar friends there. But that has nothing to do with this. This morning they had George Stephanopoulos on, another reason why I like ABC news, and he was covering the comments by Senator and President hopeful Joe Biden. You've probably heard that he said:

You got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.

So, George makes some great points like "articulate and bright" are seen as backhanded compliments to black Americans and that Biden's implied that every other black presidential candidate wasn't clean, articulate or bright. Surely he didn't mean that. Poor baby. Barack's camp put out this written response today:

"I didn't take Senator Biden's comments personally, but obviously they were historically inaccurate. African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate."

So George sums up his "articulate" report, by saying, "This may actually work in Barack's favor because many black voters don't know he's black." (Well, I shouldn't quote George because I wasn't taking notes, but that's basically what he said.) I paused from my lotioning process (Who do I have to sleep with to get some quality lotion in the winter? Jeeze!) to make sure I heard what George was saying. But then I shook it off like, how silly. Until, another homey hit me up on myspace, like, did you hear what I heard??

At last, it seems to be the case that for some strange reason the media thinks that black folks can't identify their own. lol. In the U.S. where race is, sadly, of the utmost importance, they seem to think that this dude isn't black enough for us to recognize. Could it be that he's so "articulate" that he's damn near camoflaged? It's sure as hell not his skin tone, I know TONS of black people lighter than that. It couldn't be his black wife, or their picture on the cover of Ebony magazine. A white mother? Most people could care less if one of your parents aren't black. Man, the only assholes who don't know Obama is black probably don't know who the hell he is.

Unless, the real discussion here is that African Americans don't know that he's African American. Maybe that's a concern for some. That's the only thing I can think of that makes sense. But I was just joking around a few weeks ago when I was saying that he's not gonna be black enough or American enough for the presidency. Damn, that's crazy. He can't get a break.

Here's another slip of the lip by Biden.