MR. CAB DRIVER (Lenny Kravitz Song) Don't U Like the Color of my Skin?

Lenny Kravitz, who had a white dad and black mom, was raised by his mother who told him "people will see you as a black man" so get used to it. Barack Obama's mother could have told her son the same.

But then you have the Eugene Robinson's, black men themselves, who are pretty myopic themselves in seeing race. Writing on Obama (Washington Post Op Ed 3 Apr 2009):

"Not even three months have passed since President Obama's historic inauguration, and already it tends to slip the nation's collective mind that the first black president of the United States is, in fact, black. There may be hope for us after all."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/02/AR2009040203286.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

* * * * *

Sir,

The fact that you (and many others) continue to think of race-based issues through black-or-white lens, e.g., Barack as the first "black president" (Tiger as a "black" pro golfer), without acknowledgment of other racial minorities or mixed-race Americans (e.g., Barack and Tiger), only proves how much further we still have to go.

You also refer, ironically, to Eric Holder's speech, in which the AG talks of how America is still de facto racially segregated. I think the AG would agree that true progress would be when we see beyond the black-or-white racial paradigm and celebrate the fact that we have elected, not the first "black" president, but a bi-racial president.

It seems far less unusual to me that there are enough Americans today willing to vote into the Presidency an intelligent charismatic guy who happens to look black (and is half-black), than it is that decades ago a white woman would, despite stereotypes or social pressure, marry a Kenyan.