By Gregory Kane
BlackAmericaWeb.com
(May 20, 2009) - A word of advice to those white people who resent President Obama being called black: Please get over it.
The latest whiner was a letter writer to the Baltimore Sun. As a White American, she wrote, she resented the constant reference to Obama as Black. He’s “biracial,” she insisted, with a White mommy and those White grandparents who lived out in Kansas.
I rolled my eyes and chuckled as I read the woman’s whimpering screed. “Now, this character knows that if Obama were an ax murderer and not president of the United States, he couldn’t be Black enough for her,” I said to myself, then added, “So, the one-drop rule has finally come back to bite White folks in the butt, has it?” And it has.
Black readers, I’m sure, remember the one-drop rule, although Ms. Letter-Writer probably doesn’t. It was the rule, created by White Americans, which decreed that any person with even ONE DROP of Black blood was Black. It didn’t matter how White the “Black” person looked. Homer Plessy – of Plessy v. Ferguson fame – had enough White blood in him to look more White than Black. But we all know the results of the famous Supreme Court decision that includes his name.
Obama isn’t the only famous “biracial” person who’s chosen to identify himself as Black. Ann Coulter, the bilious White conservative writer, has a bug up her narrow butt because Mariah Carey and Halle Berry have chosen to identify themselves as Black too. Coulter claims Obama, Carey and Berry identify themselves as Black to cash in on the victim benefits that come with it. I say Obama, Carey and Berry have elected to ride the one-drop horse until it drops dead.
Benefits of being a Black victim aside – and there aren’t many of them – I’ve come up with my own criteria for determining if a “biracial” person is indeed Black. Below is a partial list; I may add to it as I see fit.
1. Has the “biracial” person ever been stopped by the “po-po” for no other reason than that he or she is Black?
Even I, as a Black conservative, can’t deny that police still do this. Especially, since they’ve done it to me—more than once. Twice the Baltimore Police Department did it. The most egregious stop happened when I was in my early 20s. A member of the Lancaster, Pa. police department, looking for a suspect about 14 years old, stopped me while I was jogging in the direction of the place where the crime happened.
2. Has the “biracial” person ever been subjected to the “click test?"
The “click test” goes like this: A Black man – his age doesn’t matter – is standing on a bus stop, obviously waiting on a bus. A car with a White driver and passenger(s) is stopped at the light. Suddenly, the driver or passenger glances to the right or left, looks as the Black man (or men) on the bus stop, and suddenly the Dangerous Black Man alert is triggered. They realize the car door isn’t locked; they reach out, not very subtly either, and, with a look of sheer panic on their faces, suddenly click the lock down.
Before I started driving and took the bus on a regular basis, I was subjected to the “click test” routinely. So were other young Black men, some of whom were light enough to clearly indicate some White ancestry. Not one of the Whites in the car ever got out and walked up to the light-skinned Black guy and said, “I’m only afraid of your Black part; your White part is A-OK.”
And no White cop has ever said to a “biracial” person, “I’m only stopping your Black half; your White half is free to go.”
3. This is the piece de resistance of my criteria: Can the “biracial” person hail a cab?
If he or she can’t, then the person is Black. I don’t care what color the person’s mommy or daddy is or was. Black folks still get routinely dissed by cab drivers in, I suspect, every major city in the country. The practice has been defended by some conservatives as “rational discrimination”: Cab drivers are afraid of getting robbed by Black criminals, the “logic” goes, so they don’t pick up Blacks. I guess they’re OK with getting robbed by WHITE criminals.
I’ve talked to cab drivers who insist that’s not the reason at all; they say they don’t like to pick up Black folks because we don’t tip. Whatever the reason, the inability to hail a cab will remain my No. 1 criterion for determining who’s Black and who’s “biracial.”
Gregory Kane is a columnist for BlackAmericaWeb.com and this article has been reprinted with the site’s permission.