Monday, December 10, 2007

America's first black president?

Huh? I don't know which is more off-base here folks, Will Smith claiming that one day he will become president of the United States or the fact that he still believes Barack Obama to be the first "black president" upon victory? Why, you ask? Because I thought that acomplishment had already been done. You know what I'm talking about, when New Yorker columnist Toni Morrison, an African American female, deemed big, bad Bubba "the first Black President":
Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the president's body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and body-searched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke?
Anyway, to make a good situation out of a bad one here, and since Barack has Oprah in his corner, why not deem Mr. Obama "the first women president"? Although, come to think of it, that would put an African American female in a very difficult predicament [down the road] if she were to ascend to the highest office in the land. just sayin'.

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