The Non-Graying of America

A recent column by L. Brent Bozell III, on allegations of “race-baiting” in the presidential campaign, describes Barack Obama as “half-black”. Wrong! Obama is 100% black, according to the official criteria of every government agency that is concerned with race – i.e., every government agency, period – not only at the federal, but also at state and local levels. I can’t imagine that Bozell never heard of the “one drop rule” – or that, if he did, he didn’t think it applied to Obama. OK, maybe the “black community” hasn’t totally accepted Obama as one of them, but that doesn’t stop them from overwhelmingly preferring him to his opponent. In any case, the one-drop rule is alive and well when it comes to entitlements, “affirmative action”, quotas, and all the rest of it. There are people in Washington, D.C. whose skin is much lighter than mine – it’s about the same color as an Icelandic baby’s behind. But they’re considered “black”, and I don’t mean half, or one-fourth, or any smaller fraction, but for all legal and demographic purposes 100% black. The strange thing about this classification scheme is that it may well have originated in the South during the era of segregation. It also bears an eerie resemblance to racial classification schemes under the Third Reich. But hey, as long as it results in discrimination in _favor_ of a group, and not against it, no one seems to mind. Besides, this election is all about “moving beyond race”, right? Um… right? Hello?