Friday, November 07, 2008

Another Bee Letter Fails To Get Published


Well, I am now about 0 for 5 over the past few weeks. Here is my most recent submission that has yet to see the light of day.....



Dear Editor:
Perhaps one thing that the Obama presidency will do is help us confront our attitudes about what "being black" means in a post-slavery America. Your post-election headline story described Obama as the "nation's first black president." The article then went on to explain that Obama was the son of a white woman and a black man.
How do we make the decision to call Obama black, rather than white? If he had one black grandparent and three white ones would he still be black? What if only one out of eight greatgrandparents was black? Where do we draw the line on blackness?
Tiger Woods is one eighth African American, and yet we insist on referring to him as that great black golfer.
Regardless of what else the Obama presidency will accomplish, if it can help us to start seeing past skin color as a way of categorizing each other, it will be transformative beyond belief.

Jeffrey W. Eisinger

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