A play on names

The images are from DailyKos. Right wing hating on Obama and Clinton. Is anyone surprised by this?

Obama the 'Magic Negro'

The Illinois senator lends himself to white America's idealized, less-than-real black man.

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia.

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest. As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."

Authentically Black: The Real Question about Obama’s Candidacy

Interesting questions posed by Imani Perry

I don’t believe the authenticity problem lies with African Americans. The authenticity problem lies with white Americans. The real question is: Why have White pundits, journalists and newscasters been so eager to comment on Obama’s being biracial and the son of an immigrant, rather than his history of civil rights activism or his long time involvement in African American social and political communities? Does it reveal a desire, among whites, that he not be authentically black (whatever that means), but somehow “different?”

Of course Obama is 'black' enough

Is Barack Obama "authentically" black? Come on, be real. Is the pope Catholic?

"People talk as if this is, like, some kind of option for him," Cobb-Hunter said. "When Obama looks in the mirror in the morning, what do you think he sees? There is no way that he has any confusion about being a man of color. I think this issue is being manufactured by people who want to get us off focus. I don't hear the national media questioning Hillary Clinton about being a woman."

I would love for them to question Hillary Clinton's identity as a woman if for no other reason than to show the absurdity in this approach towards Obama. If Barack isn’t Black enough, then Hilary isn’t woman enough. I would love to see a debate on Hilary's womaness!!!

Decoding the debate over blackness

It's clear to even the casual observer that Obama's blackness is being challenged because he was impoverished. The bottom lines is that Obama is still treated as a Black person. The one drop rule still applies. It's like Muhammad Ali said, a Black man with a million dollars is still a Ni**r with a million dollar.

Brent Staples on decoding the debate over blackness:

The rush of upward mobility produced the inevitable identity crisis, which led in turn to endless discussions about the meaning of blackness in a world where skin color was beginning to matter less.

Black Americans who came from successful, upwardly mobile families were regularly dismissed as white or inauthentic. The authentic black experience, it was said, was limited to the hard-core, impoverished upbringing that black people often chose to brag about, even when they had actually grown up in the lap of luxury.

Black Like Me?

Marjorie Valbrun says that those asking if Barack Obama is 'Black Enough' are asking the wrong question.

What does it mean to be black, and who is the arbiter of authentic blackness? As Sen. Barack Obama's "blackness" has increasingly been discussed on black-oriented radio shows, at political conferences and on Sunday morning news shows, I've grown more dismayed by the day.

This is a narrow-minded and divisive notion. At a time when blacks living in this country, whether by birth or by choice, should be harnessing their collective political clout to empower all black people, we're wasting time debating which of us are truly black.