Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr. The news this week has been saturated with issues of race, otherness, and problems of identity in a society that's most comfortable drawing boundaries and lines. On Sunday, the New York Times ran a story on Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr., the first African-American member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. On Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama gave a landmark speech on race relations that took the country by storm. We asked documentary filmmaker Lacey Schwartz to weigh in on these two stories by sharing her own parallel experiences as a Black, Jewish woman who is working to incorporate and make sense of her dual identities. Here's what she had to say:

Like any typical upper-middle class Jewish girl growing up in the Eighties, my life revolved around the Bar Mitzvah party circuit, Gap clothing stores, second base, and Madonna. Something was off, though: From a young age, I encountered people who pointed out that I looked different from my white parents because of my darker skin, tightly curled hair and thicker features. From a little boy in nursery school who made me show him my gums because he claimed they determined my race, to my classmates in high school who would verbally accost me in the halls with “What are you?”—an inquiry that they demanded more than asked—questions about my identity were abundant. “Jewish?” I would tentatively respond, afraid of how they might react to my denial of what they saw as my obvious blackness.

My family never seemed to notice or acknowledge the fact that I looked different from them. One overt example of this came at the age of sixteen, when my grandfather strongly encouraged me to break up with my bi-racial boyfriend. Without irony or malice, Grandpa expressed his fear of how people might treat me for being in an interracial relationship. Because of experiences like these, I deeply related when Barack Obama described in a speech earlier this week how he would cringe when his white grandmother uttered racial stereotypes, and yet he could not disown her.

Lacey Schwartz: black, white, jewish? yes, yes, and yes. When I applied to college I left the race/ethnicity box blank and attached a photograph instead. Based on that, I was admitted as a student who was of “Black/Not of Hispanic Origin.” It wasn't until the end of my freshman year that I learned the truth: My biological father was an African-American man who my mother had had an affair with while married to my father. It was quite a shock, but I cherish my university experience as the time and place where my identification with being African-American and my connection to the Black community first began.

Years later, in an attempt to merge my Black identity with my Jewish upbringing, I attended Yom Kippur services at a Black synagogue in Brooklyn. I was skeptical at first: “A group of Black Jews worshipping together?” I thought. On entering the small brownstone converted into a synagogue, I was amazed to find that the entire congregation was Black! I was even more surprised to find the songs, prayers, and Shofar blasts were identical to what I learned growing up. I couldn't help but wonder how someone with two Black parents could possibly be Jewish, but after years of being questioned by strangers about my own identity, I hid my ignorance and didn't ask the questions I so desperately wanted answered.

As featured in last weekend’s NY Times, Rabbi Capers Funnye Jr. embodies both the heart and soul of this community of people. He was one of the first Black rabbis who I came upon in researching other Black Jews, and he has been one of the most inspiring people I have met along the journey. His work, along with others like him, is making the Jewish community more accepting of all Jews and changing the way we all expect Jewish people to look.

For much of my adult life, I have maintained separate cultural identities. Only in the last couple of years, as part of a personal documentary, have I set out to learn what it means to be both Black and Jewish. In recognizing the uniqueness of my situation, I have come to discover that Black Jews are members of a small, but significant minority within a minority: A group of people whose roots are as diverse and dynamic as any other ethnic group or subculture, and who represent the immense complexity of America itself.

This article first appeared on March 21, 2008 and has been republished as part of the series JEWCYEST WEEK EVER.

Have you ever found yourself frustrated while swimming in the dating pools overt at Match and eHarmony? Have you ever spend days scouring JDate for your dreamgirl but turning up your nose at all the olive skin and dark hair? Well, it seems your unasked prayers have been answered - April Gaede, the mother of the adorable white pride singing act Prussian Blue, is now launching her very own Aryans-only dating service. Via the white power website Stormfront (Hey guys! It's been like a whole week since you called any of our writers ugly Jews! Are you mad at us?), Gaede announced her services:

I am willing to act as a go between, researcher, matchmaker, older sister and guide for any WNs [white nationalists] who are looking for a WN spouse. Only email me if you are serious about finding a spouse or long term partner.

Since Gaede is new to the matchmaking circuit, how do we know she's any good? She offers her own story of sweet Aryan love up as an example of inspiration:

I was 37 with two children when my husband Mark [Harrington] and I met. In any other circumstances we might have been an unlikely pair, a city boy who plays hockey and a country girl who trained horses. But because of our ideological similarities and our mutual concern about the future of our race we have much more in common than the average couple today.

Sniff. It's all so beautiful. But wait - it turns out that Gaede's life wasn't always so happy before true love redeemed her. Before Mark, she was married to an Icelandic pole vaulter. They had two kids together, the famous twins Lynx and Lamb (who comprise Prussian Blue), but it didn't work out. She has but one regret:

..the many years that I lost in which I could have produced four to six more children with that ideal eugenic quality that [the twins] possess.

You see, all you lonelyhearts, April Gaede has been to heartbreak hotel too. But she lived to see another Aryan day. And you can too! Sign up now!

Y'know, "schvartze." Or "schwartze." Or "schvatza." Or "nigg--." Whoop! I meant "shwartzer." [Because it's a completely different word, y'know.]

There's a quiz on Facebook-the "Jewish Vocabulary Quiz"-which includes this wholesome gem of a question: "Your father comments on all the "schvatzes" that have moved into the area. He is reffrring [sic] to: 1-Conservatives, 2- Mexicans, 3- Non Jews, 4-African Americans." It got me fairly boiled up until I happened across an article by Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein ["On Racism, Its Costs and Its Causes"-12/10/08] in which he discusses the "s-word." Among the insightful and informed comments on the article were the following:

*I disagree with Rabbi Adlerstein's tendentious assessments of the terms "goy" and "shvartzeh." His assertion that such terminology is pejorative is incorrect. These words are totally neutral. ("Goy" and "goyim" are biblical terms which mean either "gentile" or "gentile nations" or "nation." The noun/adjective "shvartzeh" means either black or black African-American in Yiddish. There is no other word available in Yiddish to express that idea.)

*Perhaps the clergyman is confusing these innocuous terms with the notorious "n" word in English, which should definitely not be used by civilized people. His objections to the aforementioned Hebrew and Yiddish vocabulary have, on the other hand, no validity. Such comments fall under the category of inappropriate political correctness---and I would urge that we eschew such folly.

*Surprise! I know exactly what the clergyman stated; nevertheless, he is mistaken. The erroneous contention is that the words in question have a proper etymology but their current usage is improper. Gentlemen, this is precisely the argument which I contest as an accomplished linguist. Please pay attention. Educated people use these words correctly without any pejorative connotations. My point is that their proper usage should be encouraged. It is myopic to advocate the elimination of these appropriate vocabulary words. (That is censorship which you ought to deplore.) We need more education without "politically correct" euphemisms. By the same token, I hereby argue: we must continue to use the term "goy" and we must continue to use the term "shvartzeh" correctly as these words are and should be understood in their pristine neutral sense. (It should also be emphasized that these terms are used properly by intellectual speakers of Yiddish and Hebrew. Therefore, learn from the intellectuals in this particular context.)

*Rabbi Adlerstein is wrong about the Hebrew and Yiddish words he cites. Those vocabulary words (shvartzeh and goy) are appropriate and neutral. Modern cynics have to become more tolerant and accept the fact that enlightened and educated people use those words properly.

After reading these comments, I, on behalf of all Black people everywhere [because apparently I'm the default ambassador for every Black person on the face of the planet in all other cases, anyway], would like to say: We give up. You're right.

See, we had no idea that all us Jews live in countries ruled by philosopher kings and inhabited solely by intellectuals who engage in nothing less than benign, erudite dialogue. Also, we were unaware that, apparently, words in this magical kingdom are immune to the ravages of things like "context" and "intent." And that despite the neutral original meaning of words, apparently they are also incapable of taking on insulting connotations. We now realize that when those of us [un]lucky enough to have gone to yeshiva were called "schvartze" instead of our given names, what was really meant was "Hello you person I am neutrally and non-perjoratively addressing right now. Please come forward, as I am interested in engaging you in respectful and civil dialogue."

Wow. That's egg on our face.

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 "[Cham] emerged from the ark black-skinned, and all his descendants are also black forever" -The Midrash Says, copyright 1980.

Ahh, the good ol' "Hamitic myth."  Very multi-purpose, this one, capable of building bridges between Jews and Christians even, as not only was it the logic employed by European Christians in the face of slavery as justification for barbaric acts of subjugation, it is also one of the pillars behind the subversive culture of racism and condescension that lurks within the bowels of Judaism. 

For the uninitiated, the "Hamitic myth" or "Curse of Ham" is as follows: while in the ark, G-d commands that every being within refrain from marital relations with their spouses.  All comply with this command with the exception of the dog, the raven, and Ham.  The dog and raven receive punishments, and Ham, according to the most prevalent interpretations, has his skin turned black, and so all his descendants are black-skinned forever.  And so that, the story goes, is how negroes were born.  Alternatively, when Noah and family leave the ark, Noah plants a vineyard, gets plastered, and passes out, naked.  Ham happens to pass by and see naked, passed-out Noah, and commits acts [depending on the interpretation] ranging from doing up his dad, castrating him, or doing up his own mom.  Excellent.  Anyhoo, when Noah wakes up and gets caught up to speed, he curses Canaan, Ham's son, to forever be a slave to his brothers.  And that's why it's okay to make black people slaves.

Are you guys all still with me? Great.  Now pay attention.  This is where things get complicated.

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When I was finishing my book What Else But Home: Seven Boys and an American Journey Between the Projects and the Penthouse and beginning to consider market segments that would be interested in the story I've told of race, class and family, I was excited in a "eureka!" moment to believe that the progressive Christian sanctity communities I'd been coming across of would be a perfect audience for my book, and for me for their work. I figured that our story- a White couple with two White sons in New York City meeting five disadvantaged Black and Latino teenage boys on a blacktop baseball field, welcoming the boys into our home and also becoming our sons, then the story of navigating the whole ship of boys to safe harbor - would naturally to be of interest to religion-based groups dedicated to the Biblical call to social justice. I hoped for a dialogue on repairing the world-what to me was tikkun olam. Jesus had dedicated his life to the sanctity of love and compassion. Caring for others unable to care for themselves was paramount. He'd become, therefore, one of my heroes: the G-d I most listened to spoke through Matthew 25, and thus spoke to and through our odd, extended family-Jews, Catholics and one Protestant; Dominican, Puerto Rican, African-American and White; English and Spanish speaking; born poor and born rich; adopted and not. Matthew 25 reads:

³⁵ for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; ³⁶ I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.' ³⁷ "Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? ³⁸ When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? ³⁹ Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?' ⁴⁰ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'

I'm not naturally inclined to prayers printed in books. I sit in the back of my synagogue most Shabbats an Orthodox shul on New York's Lower East Side. I wrap myself in my tallit and read Thich Nhat Han and Jeanette Winterson. I stand when others stand, I sit when they sit. I listen when the rabbi gives his sermon. I'm built for praying with my hands and feet. Which is why, already in affection for his poetry and compassion, I fell in love with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel for his practice. Asked why he marched from Selma to Montgomery arm in arm with Reverend Martin Luther King and others, Rabbi Heschel answered, "When I march in Selma, my feet are praying." Rabbi Heschel also said. "We are commanded to love our neighbor: this must mean that we can." That was a lesson I learned accidentally when our older son Ripton invited a baseball field of new teammates back to our home.

I began following some Christian writers and websites speaking of social justice. I wanted to walk across that narrow bridge with them. I bought a subscription to the Sojourners magazine (the paper one, hopelessly old school of me) and to their daily email blasts. I applied to the Sojourners conference on "Ending Poverty" for a place to participate. I thought I could contribute. Our five bigger boys were born into impoverished, disadvantaged homes. All eventually became single mother families. They were from public or other subsidized housing. Two of their dads had been murdered; one mom had died of drugs and AIDS; another dad had died of drugs and jail; a number of their brothers were drug dealers because that was the way they knew to put food on the table, buy clothes and pay the utility bills; some my son's brothers had spent years in jail; before we met, some of my sons went hungry at the end of each month when their mother's assistance checks had been spent; the family of one of my sons had plummeted into the homeless shelter system; on and more. But with the support, rigor and expectations of our home, each of the five boys we'd brought in had gone on to college, unheard of in their own families.

Sojourners had no room for me. I had applied late. I'm not a celebrity. Restaurants and hotels seem to keep space for the famous; I do understand that every seat might have been full.

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I was once an anthropologist. Or trained that way.  Since, I've raised a family first through adoption and then fostering (for lack of a simpler term), spending the time to care and being cared about in return.

An article in today's New York Times gave me pause to consider its own sadness, then to consider how we treat far too many of our own children here.  According to the piece, single moms are apparently an anathema in South Korea. The article doesn't even touch other parenting types such as childrearing lesbian and gay couples, straight or gay single dads, and more.

Chang Ji-young, 27, who gave birth to a boy last month, said: "My former boy-friends's sister screamed at me over the phone demanding that I get an abortion.  His mother and sister said it was up to them to decide what to do with my baby because it was their family's seed."

"My brother said: ‘How can you do this to our parents,'" said Ms. Choi, 27, a hairdresser in Seoul. "But when the adoption agency took my baby away, I felt as if I had thrown him into the trash.  I felt as if the earth had stopped turning.  I persuaded them to let me reclaim my baby after five days."

...said Lee Mee-kyong, a 33-year-old unwed mother.  "Once you become an unwed mom, you're branded as immoral and a failure.  People treat you as if you had committed a crime.  You fall to the bottom rung of society."

Only about a quarter of South Koreans are willing to have a close relationship with an unwed mother as a coworker or neighbor, according to a recent survey by the government-financed Korean Women's Development Institute.  "I was turned down eight times in job applications," Ms. Lee said. "Each time a company learned that I was an unwed mom, it accused me of dishonesty." 

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I'm an accountant's son.  For supper on Wednesday nights, in Gloversville, New York (I say I was born in Vermont, where we moved when I was seven, the year Kennedy was assassinated) my parents fed us instant rice stirred with tomato soup and mixed with sliced dogs.  Spanish rice, they said.  My Puerto Rican and Dominican sons don't eat anything like that.  They go for arroz con gandules or moro, but don't confuse the two.   

I despised my mother's Spanish rice. My father made it clear that's what we could afford on Wednesday nights. My mom and dad worked together and grew us solidly into the middle class.  I got an education.  I married well and rich.  I made money.  I wrote a book.

I've wondered, what right do I have to live so well?  What I mean-when so many others right beside us don't.  What right do you - at their expense?  That's the point.

My son Morgan and I, we plan to have "father-son dinner" every Thursday.  He's sixteen.  I've been away too long.  He says he's lonely. Our house is empty.  I missed Yom Kippur at home, staying in Greensboro waiting for San Francisco - no one was there to insist Morgan go to shul.   I'm traveling now to bookstores, book fairs, Rotary Clubs, prisons, A Better Chance homes, any closet with at least another who'll listen to me for half an hour or so and buy my book.  Or listen to me, act rapt and leave empty handed.  They're okay, those people. They're mostly old and remind me of Thoreau strolling around Walden, inspecting others' farms.  I inscribe books: What Else But Home: Seven Boys and an American Journey Between the Projects and the Penthouse.  Come to one of my Book Readings, I won't bore you... I'm an expert (because I've written a book - a feel-good story, a strong narrative arc), I've been doing this for two months. 

At our dinner earlier tonight, a Monday make-up, Morgan said, "It's not about the past, it's about the future."  He said, "It's revolutionary."  He meant our ability to make the world better, if we try.  Improve lives.  Morgan's young.   

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Michael Rosen is the author of What Else But Home: Seven Boys and an American Journey Between the Projects and the Penthouse. He is guest-blogging this week on Jewcy, and this is his first post.

I was in prison. Fifty men behind a too long series of steel doors, unbreakable windows, concrete corridors, guard stations, the immoral glare of florescent light.

The guys were all Latino and Black, a very few Whites, rainbowed like my seven sons. My wife and I raised two Puerto Rican, two Dominican, one Black and two White boys. Our lighter brown skinned kids are Catholic, our dark brown one is Protestant and our light skinned sons are Jews, like us. Only the last two are "really" ours, sons by law to my wife and I. What does "real" mean, however, when it comes to family? The other five, the "bigger boys" as we still call them though they're now twenty-three and twenty-four years old, came to us from need. From the mystery and grace of G-d in the swing of a young boy's bat towards a baseball on a blacktop field. I don't believe in G-d, but want to in a world of sanctity.

The guards were enormous. They were mostly people of color. I'd been brought by two City Youth Now couselors, and we were with three or four English teachers, all colorless like me -"White niggas," my sons call us. I'd been invited as a "guest author" for two classes in Juvenile Hall in San Francisco, but it was basically jail. The boys had been incarcerated for an average of two, perhaps two and a half years. As adults, statistics say 40% will end up in jail again and 60% will be ongoingly "dependent on [the] system" (from City Youth Now, the people who brought me to "juvie hall"), including homeless, on assistance and etc. Nearly 50% will never finish high school and fewer than 3% will go on to a 4-year college.

Those statistics are a large part of the story of our American underclass. People of privilege don't talk much about our underclass. It's stuck behind the curtain of our optimism and the guiding myth of opportunity. We agree, us privileged (P.S.: you almost certainly fit in), not to pull back the curtain and reveal the unswept backstage. But I'm supposed to let the narrative speak for itself.

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Had Obama not lent so much currency to the notion of a kind of equality of racial bitterness, enacted on a field that everyone thinks favors the other team, the case of Geraldine Ferraro might not have played out as it did: as a spectacular example of racist action forgiven because racist ‘feeling' is not found, and an abject, to-the-political-death refusal to acknowledge the difference between structural racism and white resentment.

The former Congresswoman and vice-presidential nominee forfeited her place in the Clinton campaign when she told reporters that "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," just as she would not have been tapped for the vice presidency by Walter Mondale had she not been a woman. The difference between being appointed to a ticket and winning a record number of primary votes across the entire nation seemingly escaped Ferraro, who elaborated on her remarks a few weeks later in a stunning Boston Globe op-ed:

"Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama's historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white."

Contrary to Ferraro's recollection, the most striking aspect of the media's response to her initial comments was the consistency with which pundits and commentators across the ideological spectrum fell all over themselves to avoid accusing her of racism. Seldom, in political life, has the sinner been granted such immediate distance from her sin.

But this has become the blueprint for public figures who make inflammatory remarks about race ­­- as long as they're white. First comes the claim that their words do not reflect their hearts. This puts the ball in the commentariat‘s court. The commentariat duly concurs that the figure is not racist, despite all evidence to the contrary. Then, after a probationary period of a few months, the figure quietly resumes his or her role in public life.

"I am not a racist." So said Bill Clinton on ABC News shortly after the conclusion of his wife's presidential bid, defending himself against accusations of race-baiting.

"I'm not a racist, that's what's so insane about this." So said Seinfeld's Michael Richards in 2006, explaining himself on The David Letterman Show after a video surfaced of him dropping multiple n-bombs on a black heckler at a comedy club. Mel Gibson, who disgraced himself with an anti-Semitic rant the same year, put forth the same argument: I'm not a racist, merely a guy who said something racist. It came out of nowhere, for no reason, and it doesn't reflect who I am. Ditto Don Imus, after his 2007 "nappy-headed hoes" remark. And Senator Trent Lott, whose pro-segregation comments cost him his role as Majority Leader in 2002, though not his job.

It is a dramatic reversal of the standard criteria for judgment. Usually, we seek to be judged by our actions, not our thoughts, and we accept that the former is a manifestation of the latter. The success of this strategy, it would seem, hinges on the fact that it has become more acceptable to spout racism in the public arena than to accuse someone else of spouting racism.

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Largely because of hip-hop, American coolness is coded and commodified more than ever as American blackness. White kids all over the country believe, based on the signifiers flashing on their TV screens, that blackness equals flashy wealth, supreme masculinity, and ultra-sexualized femininity - interrupted occasionally by bursts of glamorous violence, and situated in a thrilling ghetto that is both dangerous and host to a constant party. They feel locked out of the possibility of attaining that lifestyle, because of the color of their skin. They don't know where to find a workable identity, unless they embrace the "I'm a fucking redneck" ethos of Levi Johnston, Sarah Palin's ex-future son-in-law. All this strikes them as oppressive, and their resentment is compounded by the fact that they possess no language with which to discuss it.

Were any of this utterable, one could present them with reams of evidence demonstrating that in all the important ways, white people in America are anything but marginal. Traditional markers of prosperity - the inheritance of wealth, the rates of home-ownership, the comparative levels of education and income and incarceration - reveal just how privileged whites remain relative to blacks. A recent study conducted at Princeton University revealed that a white felon stands an equal chance of being granted a job interview as a black applicant with no criminal record, and there are dozens of other studies that each speak volumes.

Nonetheless, confusion persists even among the kind of coast-dwelling, liberally-raised, relatively well-educated white kid I once was about the basic facts of racism today - to say nothing of everyone to their ideological right. They want to know if the playing field is level; they can't tell, and they've got their fingers crossed that it is because if it's not they've got to confront things no one has prepared them to face. Many of them would rather believe, and in fact suspect, that it is slanted in black people's favor.

At the very least, they're eager for a kind of moral compromise, one with an air of the fairness so appealing to young minds: racism cuts in both directions. Anyone can be its victim, just as anyone can refuse to perpetrate it.

This is what Barack Obama provided on March 20th in Philadelphia. After a succinct but powerful summary of institutional racism's history and its practical and psychic effects on black people, he added that:

"A similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race... as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything.... So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time... to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."

Obama's insights about white anger are salient, but to characterize ire at affirmative action and at the thought that others might think them prejudiced as ‘similar' to the frustration felt by the victims of entrenched structural racism is disingenuous, and even irresponsible. I don't dispute that white resentments should be addressed, if only because white people will refuse to grapple with race unless they are allowed to centralize themselves. But to begin such a discussion - the mythic National Dialogue on Race - without acknowledging that structural racism ­is a cancer metastasizing through every aspect of American life is impossible. Call it, to borrow a catchphrase from the foreign policy side of the election, a precondition.

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I watched Barack Obama's "Toward A More Perfect Union" in my living room, on a laptop computer with tinny speakers. Like millions of other Americans, I felt a surge of amazement, a sense of expanding possibility, at the sheer fact that a black man with a good chance of becoming president was speaking about race and racism on national television for half an hour. Such an eloquent and thoughtful discourse on any topic far exceeds what we have come to accept of American politics; to hold forth on an issue so pernicious and so seldom approached with honesty is remarkable.

My enthusiasm held until Obama let white people off the hook. Though I grasped the political necessity of the move, my expectations of this man were sufficiently high that it was disheartening to hear him fudge the difference between institutional racism and white bitterness. Three weeks earlier, I'd felt a similar sense of letdown when, challenged at a debate in Ohio to further denounce Minister Louis Farrakhan, Obama responded by articulating the need to mend black-Jewish relations, then proceeded to reinscribe the very paradigm that has served to rend them.

I say this as a white person, a Jew, and an enthusiastic Obama supporter. My reaction, it also bears mentioning, was colored by the fact that when the Ohio debate aired I had just published a novel entitled The End of the Jews, which chronicled three generations of a Jewish-American family and also took as its subject the evolving relations between black and Jewish artists throughout the 20th century. "Toward A More Perfect Union" marked the first time I'd sat on my couch in weeks; I had just returned from a book tour speckled with dates at Jewish Community Centers and synagogues, in addition to the standard bookstores and universities.

This level of interaction with Jewish communities was utterly new to me. No one had ever considered me a Jewish writer before, except the white supremacists who'd protested the speaking gigs for my previous novel, Angry Black White Boy, and accused me of "masquerading as white." I was raised by secular parents raised by secular parents, and at the age of twelve I was expelled from the Sunday School And Half-Price Car Wash For The Children Of Agnostic Cultural Jews after getting into a fight with my teacher about whether Satch Sanders of the 1940s Boston Celtics was the only black person in history not to abandon his community after achieving success. It was the culmination of a lesson devoted to the great Jewish Exodus - from Roxbury, Massachusetts in the 1950s, when the blacks moved in.

I won't blame the encounter for souring me on Judaism; more accurate would be to say that as a kid growing up in a largely Jewish suburb, I simply conflated Jewish with white, and thus my frustration with the complacency and hypocrisy of white liberals (I didn't know any conservatives) extended automatically to Jews.

The pervasiveness of injustice was something I had always intuited; obsessing over fairness on a personal level is a childhood instinct that can remain personal and fade, or broaden into an analysis of the world and grow stronger. But my absorption in the still-underground culture of hip-hop was what allowed me to confirm that things were not well, very close by and yet in another world altogether.

I believe the music to which one is exposed at twelve is the most important one will ever hear; I was that age in 1988, when Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Stetsasonic, The Jungle Brothers and N.W.A. were articulating the insidious realities of police brutality, a Eurocentric school system, American collusion in South African apartheid, and ghettos ravaged by crack and guns - all over unbelievably dope beats. Thanks to METCO, a busing program that constituted Boston's uni-directional form of school integration, these tapes made their way to the suburbs and to me.

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I can't believe that as a NYC Jew, I am turning to a group called "Bikers4Freedom" to make the case against expanded Hate Crimes laws. But unfortunately, Jewish groups are not challenging these bills. Rather, Jewish groups like the ADL are the very worst offenders.

People should be treated equally under the law. So why is prioritizing dissent a right-wing position? Shouldn't all of us who reject racial Marxism be outraged?

Attorney General Eric Holder promised an "honest conversation" about race. Well, to be fair, he is being honest. Honest that victims who aren't of the protected classes are less equal than than those who are. Just watch the video.

What is the ADL defending against? Fairness. When it comes to policy, the ADL is not content to fight mistreatment of Jews...the ADL fights for selective treatment of Jews. That's not the behavior of a "defense" group. That's the behavior of a supremacist group. The ADL obsesses over haters because it takes one to know one. 

There were several unforgettable moments in the Obama campaign—Barack's impassioned speech about race, the DNC finale at Invesco, Madelyn Dunham's death just before her grandson became president-elect—but none meant more to me than a two-minute bit of tape, a simple but monumental exchange between Michelle Obama and CNN's Soledad O'Brien.

In her interview with Michelle, Soledad circled around the issues placed at the center of every discussion about female identity by second-wave feminism. O'Brien wondered how Michelle felt about following a dream that wasn't hers. She asked about leaving a "high-powered and highly compensated" career.

Michelle acknowledged the challenges. She graciously offered that she missed her colleagues and her work. But, she continued, she could always find another career. With only the slightest hint of irony, she said if she had more time, she might bemoan the loss, but she "had a lot on her plate" and what she was doing was "pretty significant."

I thought, "You go, girl!" As if working with the love of her life and the father of her children to become the first family of the United States while radically transforming the world as we know it isn't the most empowering choice a brilliant and self-determining woman could make.

But the real moment came in the next beat, 30 seconds that remain forever etched in my mind as the final blow to an ideology in which women's empowerment is narrowly defined by financial independence, emotional autonomy and professional advancement.

O'Brien went in for the kill, the coup de grâce of second-wave feminism. "But sometimes your career helps to define who you are," she said, probing.

"It doesn't for me," Michelle said immediately. "What I do in my life defines me. A career is one of the many things I do in my life. I am a mother first. Where do I get my joy and my energy first and foremost? From my kids."

As a mother, I understood the second half of what Michelle said. But as a woman, as a human being, it was the first part of her answer that I realized I—and the rest of the world—needed and still need to hear. What I do in my life defines me. Not my career, not money, not awards or accolades, but the whole thing, the sum of all of the parts. My life.

You know, life? The one that includes showing up and embracing all of it: financial pressure and anniversary dinners, security details and ballet recitals, demeaning attacks and uplifting stump speeches, grueling late-night conversations and awesome feats of self-sacrifice, tidal waves of overwhelming satisfaction and grim truths of mistakes made and opportunities lost.

The hungry kids and the empty gas tank, the deadline, the Pilates class, the Apple store, the "Shit, I have got to go get my hair handled, today!" The showing up for the people you love no matter what. The growing confidence in the decisions you made. The wonder at the way your life is unfolding.

In that life, the one that isn't defined by ideology or obligation, openness is the guiding principle. You keep your eye on cherishing your partnership and protecting your family. You keep your mind sharp and your soul deep. And, if you are Michelle Obama, you do it all in a fabulous red dress with your good-looking husband and well-educated children by your side.

Michelle Obama embodies feminist goals, and in her determination to live in sync with a vision larger than her gender and individual ego, she surpasses them. This is no time or place to be paralyzed by dogma. She cannot lie in bed and wonder if her choices are feminist enough or whether they send the correct message to women around the world. She can accept her role at the center of history and rely on her aspiration to be her best self to transcend narrow categories of feminist identity and, in doing so, inspire others to the same.

In other words, Michelle Obama doesn't need a message. She is the message.

But there is even more to this story. For the last 30 years, feminist discourse has struggled to be inclusive of the perspectives of women of color, to honor "the way we do things." At the heart of feminism's slippery promise of diversity lay its white centrism, its monopoly by women over 50, its de facto placement of the rest of us in the margins.

The rise of Michelle Obama challenges that centrism by following in the footsteps of female intellectuals and women of conscience like Anna Julia Cooper, who fought on behalf of women and all those who were oppressed. "The cause of freedom," Cooper wrote, "is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class—it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity."

Unlike the leaders for suffrage who abandoned the cause of women of color in order to get the vote, women of color have historically refused to abandon any part of themselves or their community in the name of political expediency. All must be saved or none.

My sense is that Michelle Obama's scope and influence will be equally broad. When she voices her concerns, she mentions "working folks," "a balance of work and family for women" and military families left out in the cold.

Michelle offers a possibility for change, a new kind of female leadership. And this, my friends, is a major turn of events. The wild card, of course, will be the response of those currently at the center of the women's movement, who will no doubt find themselves displaced, pushed more into the margin than ever before. How will second-wave feminism find relevance when a devoted partner, full-time mother and credentialed black powerhouse becomes first lady, and doesn't feel victimized by the job?

That will be for them to wrestle with. Not Michelle.

Cross posted at my blog at The Root.

Honestly, if I read one more article or blog about how Obama doesn't mean the end of racism, but is in fact, still, very important for black people, I think my head might split into two personalities, and my black side will wrestle my white side to the death. 

This piece in Prospect explores the varying arguments capably, but it just feels so passive-aggressive and redundant. It's like, ok, I get it, NOW WHAT?

I think the biggest ingredient missing from these stews of post-racial analysis are white people; this Post-Racial Identity crisis is not so much about Black identity as much as it is about White identity being scaled back down to size, thereby allowing everyone else to look a little more important. Perhape even more than the Obama t-shirts we see everywhere, the book/blog Stuff White People Like is the prominent post-racial avatar that signals change is underway.

After all, we're somewhat versed in Black identity politics, hence Obama putting on his du-rag for a campaign speech.  But White people have long been able to lump their particular sensibilities under the broad label of "mainstream" or "american". This was always best represnted by the position of President, leader of the free world etc, and presumably white bred, white educated, etc. etc. Now it's different. Now we know the first family doles out dap, and may quote hip hop lyrics.  Good times. 

So, not wanting to be passive and redundant, it seems the only step in further understanding what matters in the world now, is to start a Post-Racial Fight Club. So here we go:

Welcome to Post-Racial Fight Club.

The first rule of Post-Racial Fight Club is you must talk about Post-Racial Club, A LOT!

The second rule of Post-Racial Fight Club is you must talk about Post-Racial Fight club some more!

See, when you use the term "post-racial" you can't help but seem smart and aware and progressive. Go ahead, say it to someone who went to college.... doesn't it feel good?  DOn't you feel better about yourself?  I know I do. So next party, make sure you bring it up, especially if any members of the Multi-Culti are in attendance. 

The third rule of Post-Racial Fight Club is if someone says "stop, you don't understand their people's struggle" and points to an historical tragedy where you can see the legacy of it still in effect today, the fight is over. This means white people are the only people who can't stop the fight. But make sure you're not confusing a white person with a Jewish person.  Please, please, don't do that.

The 4th rule of Post-Racial Fight Club: Only two cultures/ethnicities to a fight.  You can't have Asians fighting Blacks, fighting hispanic-jews at the same time.  Way too confusing.  We're looking at Latin vs. White, Black vs. White, Native American vs. White.  etc. 

The 5th rule of Post-Racial Fight Club is one fight at a time.  Getting a Black president, that's a singular battle.  Don't conflate it with fixing education, or giving vouchers to boys that live in the projects, or trying to figure out why Sarah Silverman is popular (hint: why is Sarah Palin popular? now make it a little more edgy/offensive.).  These battles may relate to each other, but you can only fight one at a time.

The 6th rule is no shorts, no shoes.  Actually, uh, I'm aping this post based on the original cinematic version of Fight Club, and shoes and shirts are probably not a problem for our particular post-racial circumstances.  Plus, taking off your shirt and footwear smells of an ignorant and/or entitled white person sensibility, where you don't care how much of your nasty sweat you get on a person.  SO please, feel free to wear a shirt and some shoes, especially if hygiene is an issue 

The 7th rule is that fights will go as long as needed.  We need winners and losers.  Obama talks unity, but guess what, he can do that because he's also the winner and gracious winners like to keep it humble.  But make no mistake, if he would have lost, the post-racial articles would not be nearly as compelling. The old white dude got knocked the f out, and we needed to see that to know it was possible. It doesn'tm ean he's useless, but we need winners and losers to align our principles/morals/ethics properly. 

The 8th rule of Post-Racial Fight Club: If you're caucasian, and this is your first time to Post-Racial Fight Club, YOU HAVE TO FIGHT.  (that means no passive, redundant articles about what "post-racial" means.  it means you have to fight.)

Good luck. 

One of the most attractive things about the right in recent years has been its indignation toward frivolous moral equivalency. While many on the left were noting that "our terrorism" was as bad--if not worse--than "theirs," conservatives had sense to note that the violence perpetrated by racists and sexists and designed to maximize civilian casualties was not the same as violence designed to minimize of civilian casualties by one of the more successfully liberal and multicultural states in the world. There was something as well to be said for the difference between the end goals: the flourishing of liberal democracy (no matter how "problematized" it had become) or the establishment of Islamist rule. There was always a valid argument to be had about ends and means and "collateral damage" but whatever one wanted to say, those who said it was all the same were rightly discounted from discussion on the grounds that their faculties of judgment were severely impaired.

Sadly, upon surveying the arguments over the rising tide of hate infecting both sides of the 2008 presidential race, it would seem that many of those same discerning voices have joined forces with the party of equivalency. They seem to have forgotten that all-important lesson once taught so well when the subject matter was Islamism, that all hate isn't the same, and that all hate isn't bad hate. After all, those who said hating terrorists was wrong always came off as the kinds of people who didn't understand double negatives in speech; hating bad things is logically a good thing.

Off the top, however, it's notable that some on the left still haven't failed to make the standard Nazi comparison in reference to their Republican foes. The predictable answer here might be to group these people in with those shouting lynch mob obscenities at McCain rallies and then chalk it all up to the "fringe" of either party, thus vindicating the mainstream of each. McCain told the 'Obama's an Arab' lady to sit down and Obama scolded MoveOn.org, so aren't they each in the clear, even if they'll each rack up a great deal of votes from their respective fringes? This is one case where even-handedness is not the answer it might seem to be. In fact, the hate directed at the McCain-Palin campaign from the left is mainstream, not confined to the lunatic fringe, and yet very justifiable. Healthy, even.

The reason, sorry to say, has to do with race. True, presidential campaigning is hard. Everybody plays rough, and everybody toys with the truth, plays with words and associative logic to attack one's opponent. But there is a reason the Ayers issue put the McCain campaign over the edge--a reason that the rallies got uglier when the former Weatherman came up and a reason the anti-Palin crowds became filled with righteous hate. Ayers was designed to change focus from cool-headed vs. hot-headed to whether Obama is who you think he is. The way this was framed? He hangs out with terrorists. "Terrorist" being the singlemost iconic, psychologically freighted word of our era used to evoke our worst of enemies.

By now we've heard the arguments trotted out over what Obama's relationship to Ayers meant. But what was never examined thoroughly enough was, why did the McCain campaign think they could get this label to stick? Whether they knew it or not, they thought it had legs because Obama is not white. The glue that would saddle Obama with the slur of "terrorist" was his skin color. It could even be argued that historical specifics and the real acts of Ayers were secondary to the McCain campaign's prime objective: just as the name Osama registers in the mind with "Terrorist," get the name Obama to do the same. It should be no wonder that early GOP robocalls worried little with Obama's tax or health care plan. They only sought to repeat the two words together and hope that, for enough voters, they'd cling to one another.

Talking about white privilege in America can turn off even the most unprejudiced of people. Plenty of whites are understandably tired of hearing about their "crimes" and the crimes of their forefathers when they themselves haven't ever had a mean or unsavory thought about a person of any color. But to paraphrase the work of H.E. Baber, white privilege, if it means anything today, has to do with the fact that being white is transparent. It is not socially salient. In other words, if you are white--especially if you are a white male--the culture at large will more likely see you as you want to be seen. You are permitted to invent yourself without your race or gender complicating the picture. You can make mistakes without being blamed for the disposition of all white people. You can make choices without feeling chained to a script of your ethnic identity.

Being non-white on the other hand, is socially salient. Your identity is already bound up in being an outsider, in a notion of how you should be or act because of your ethnicity. Self-invention is far more difficult, because your skin color renders expectations and associations, the deviation from which usually carry a heavy price. Because Barack Obama is not a white person, his ability to invent himself beyond the foreignness of his name, beyond the color of his skin, is no different--no easier--than it has been for so many non-white Americans who have attempted the same kind of self-invention on a less presidential scale. But why is this?

Why in the 21st century is being an outsider still a hurdle for non-white Americans? Isn't the narrative of the underdog, the immigrant and the outsider one of America's most cherished? And why, in a presidential campaign like this, is otherness available to the McCain campaign to use as the glue that will stick Obama with the label "Terrorist" in a way that similar tactics could never work with a white man? While electoral demographics, Atwater campaigning, and the technique of Willie Horton-ing your opponent all mater, these factors don't account for as much as some would like. Campaigns may use the weapon, but it's handed to them by liberals. These days, it's called multiculturalism.

It has not been the right that has insisted on the social salience of race in the last 2 or 3 decades, it has decidedly been the left. Emerging from the New Left, the doctrine of multiculturalism, well-intentioned as it might have been, effectively established a regime of political philosophy that chided anyone for wanting to have anything to do with the West. As they saw it, differing ethnicities and cultures were the spice of the life, and their unique ways of seeing were alternatives to the patriarchal imperialism of the West. Nobody who wanted a taste of that liberal dream of identity transparency and self-invention could be anything but duped by the Man. The big, white, imperialist Man.

And so the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement were replaced with a new kind of tyranny--the hard-line directive to always be black, Asian, Muslim--anything so long as it wasn't white. Be proud, don't be ashamed of your culture. In fact, you had better love it or risk being an Uncle Tom in-cahoots with the oppressors. Rather than helping render ethnicity and race more transparent and meaningless, thus allowing people to create their identity and future free of the dictates of genetics, these folks pushed it up front. Now, they'd like to pretend the issues bubbling up in the presidential race are just leftover bigotry from the South, or just some core aspect of being on the right. In reality, this is what the politics of multiculturalism have sown.

Beating McCain should have been easier than it has been for Barack Obama. But Obama has always had a higher hurdle to jump, an otherness to eliminate. As the left seethes with hate toward the campaign that has sought to keep that hurdle high and exploit Obama's outsider quality, this hate can be seen as nothing less than a good hate--the hate of something bad. It is a credit to Joe Six Pack Dems everywhere who don't give a flip about the theory of white privilege and the social salience of ethnicity that they perceive the fulcrum on which McCain hoped (and still seems to hope, by the way) to saddle Obama with the label of "Terrorist." No stock response of "well the left does it too, just see the recent episode of the Family Guy" will do. Not only has the Obama campaign never tried to make a disparaging label stick to McCain using an immutable genetic trait--even if they had wanted to, they never could have. Again, the immutable genetic trait of being white has no glue because it doesn't connote being foreign or an outsider.

To hell with every leftist and Obama supporter that wants to wrangle up Nazi imagery like the lazy analogy it always ends up being. But enough too with pretending like the left wing haters are just the analogue of the off-with-his-treasonous-head fringe at McCain rallies. John McCain and Sarah Palin--or their campaign managers, whomever you prefer to blame--opted to make a central campaign strategy out of capitalizing on the notion of Barack Obama, The Outsider. This trait was made available to them by the left which has obsessed itself with the politics of outsiderism--with writing the scripts of the noble (read: non white) outsider. But when those on the left send the message of rebuke as loudly, angrily, and, yes, hatefully as they have of late, they are doing a good thing.

Multiculturalism, as an ideology that prioritizes ethnicity, culture and identity as a basis for politics, proves at every turn to be a cancer in the body politic--especially for most worthwhile liberal aspirations. But the McCain campaign saw the tumor and decided to pump it full of carcinogens. It's been suggested that this election would be a referendum on Barack Obama. What it looks like more and more is a referendum on what it means to live in a multicultural society. No matter the shortcomings of the Illinois senator, the surge in support for him speaks highly of the American people and where they stand on the matter: against the party that seeks to continue emphasizing difference and separation and in favor of the one trying to explode those ways of seeing and thinking for good.

Here's to hoping that the polls indicating a decisive Obama victory on Nov. 4th reflect the necessary hate for a campaign that elevated poisonous exclusionary thinking to a virtue. But here's to hoping that such a victory, should it come to pass, will also be the final nail in the coffin of multiculturalism as it's been understood until now.

I caught early chunks of Obama’s acceptance speech at the gym of my local JCC. Not surprisingly, the crowd that night was heavily Republican, and there were mutterings of concern: Is Obama truly committed to Israel? Is Obama too soft on terror? Is he simply another pie-in-the-sky liberal, full of fancy talk, elaborate plans and much hot air?

No one was concerned about Obama’s skin color.

We’re less than 145 years removed from slavery and only 40 removed from legal segregation, and we may very well elect a black man as president. No matter your political affiliation, chances are you understand it was an historic moment for America.

I left part way through Obama’s speech and drove to a Jewish community nursing home to make a late visit. While the nursing home is affiliated with the Jewish community, most of its residents are not Jewish. In order to accept federal, state and local funds, nursing homes cannot discriminate based on religious affiliation, color, country of origin, sexual preference, or gender. Years ago, the Jewish community opted to take government funds, a decision that eventually turned the facility’s resident base into a pretty fair representation of the local population, rather than a spot on representation of the Jewish community.

With this change came good and bad. The good is diversity. The bad is Christmas trees, Christian prayer services, nuns in the hallways, and an atmosphere that at one point, before some modicum of balance was struck, had Jewish residents feeling like an oppressed minority in their own home. During the peak of this, even the facility’s rabbis felt beleaguered.

I asked one if she had anyone who could help a resident light electric Shabbat candles. With tears in her eyes told me, “There isn’t anyone. There’s nothing Jewish here.” Another had his facility-wide Purim decorations ripped down by staff and replaced with St. Patrick’s Day ornamentation when the two holidays coincided on the calendar.

Not too long ago, a new resident – an elderly black woman whom I’ll call Jennie – was admitted. Suffering from a form of dementia, she’s often overcome with fear. She hears noises in the hall and thinks neighborhood thugs are breaking in to try to kill her. She thinks everyone is conspiring against her and that her food is poisoned. She can be loud and disruptive, breaking into tears and sobbing or putting on her best street bravado to ward off enemies that are not there.

As much as I try not to let myself judge an elderly, demented person by her actions – and especially by their skin color or religion – there are times when I catch myself thinking about how disruptive, non-Jewish residents should go to non-Jewish facilities.

A few months ago, I had a moment like that with Jennie. She sat in a lounge area, alternately threatening to “pop” imaginary intruders and breaking into tears. I told myself what I always do in encounters like these: Reverse the situation. How would I judge it if the disruptive demented person were Jewish and the nursing facility was not? Would I think it’s okay for that facility to remove the sick, elderly, disruptive Jew because he’s Jewish? Of course not. So why should the reverse be any different?

I sat beside Jennie and calmed her down by asking about her youth.  She told me that as a child, she had known freed slaves. She'd been born dirt poor and had faced intense discrimination. But she raised children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And she had built a successful business.

After a while she asked, “Where are we now? What’s the name of this place?”

I told her. She looked at me, startled, and then looked around her. “I used to work here,” she said, “in the kitchen, along time ago. But it looks different.”

I told her this was a different building in a different neighborhood than before. Then she told me about her friend the kosher butcher, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, whose shop once stood nearby the old building. “I used to buy all my meat from him when I first got married,” she explained.

I said that I had owned that store years later, and the same butcher had been my landlord and friend.

A few nights later, I found Jennie wandering in a hallway without her wheelchair or her wandering alarm. I had her hold onto a railing so she wouldn’t fall and I called for help. Then I asked Jennie why she was up so late, wandering around alone. “I’m a poor black woman,” she said. “If I don’t get up and get out of this house and find me some money, I’ll never go to college.” I asked her what she wanted to major in. “I want to be an engineer,” she replied.

When I arrived at the nursing home on the night of Obama’s speech, all the residents were asleep except Jennie. It was the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, providentially coinciding with Obama’s. Obama’s speech had ended and a T.V. station was showing a documentary on the two. Jennie sat silent in her wheelchair in front of the TV, watching King and Obama. Gone were the disruptive behaviors, the paranoia, and the pain.

I stopped to say hello. King was on the screen.

“They shot him, didn't they?” she said.

“They did,” I told her.

She turned and looked at me. “And now a black man could be president?”

I said he very well could.

She turned back to the screen. “And now a black man could be president,” she said watching King. This time it wasn’t a question.

Barack Obama is not the Democratic nominee because of his skin color or despite it. He isn’t a token or a novelty. Barack Obama is the nominee because his was the strongest message and the best run campaign. This is the first time America has been truly colorblind.

I don't know if Barack Obama will win. He wasn’t my first choice among Democratic candidates – I’m not even sure who I’ll vote for come November. But there is one thing I am sure of: America is a better place because Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

As Michelle Obama continues her "make-over" tour, jumping from an appearance on The View's coffee klatch to the cover of glossy Us Weekly (story title: "Why Barack Loves Her"), it's clear that we haven't really progressed much in the past two decades. Educated, outspoken, potential first-ladies frighten Americans today as much as they did when "scary feminist" Hillary Rodham Clinton first blazed the path from the corner office to the campaign trail.

Voters are suspicious of influential spouses—period (think Eleanor Roosevelt or Bill Clinton during the primaries). Still, every election is different and this one has the special spice of race. Though Barack Obama is the first black candidate on a major party ticket, he has one advantage that his wife does not—he's the bi-racial son of an African immigrant, while she is the daughter of African-American parents descended from slaves. And research demonstrates that white people tend to favor black immigrants over African Americans whose ancestors have been here for hundreds of years.

Prominent researchers like Nancy Foner, George Fredrickson, and Mary Waters, who study the integration patterns of black immigrants, have observed that white people seem more at ease with black immigrants than they do with other African Americans. Their research notes that black immigrants are usually described as "more polite, less hostile, more solicitous, and easier to get along with." Some of this is likely due to real cultural or socioeconomic differences (for example, Africans who immigrate to the U.S. tend to be highly educated, on average). However, there's no getting around the fact that we live in a country with a profound history of racial turmoil and that prejudice against African Americans persists in contemporary society.

The "preference" for black immigrants over other African Americans is perhaps most pronounced on our nation's prestigious college campuses, where a controversial debate has erupted about the overrepresentation of black students from immigrant backgrounds (as opposed to those whose ancestors have been here for hundreds of years). In the February 2007 issue of the American Journal of Education, researchers at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania published findings from surveys given to 1,051 black freshmen at 28 selective colleges. They found that 27 percent of African-American students were first or second generation immigrants, which is more than double the national average for all blacks ages 18-19. The percentage of immigrants was even more pronounced at the four Ivy League schools included in this study (Princeton, Yale, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania), where 41 percent of students were first or second generation immigrants. These numbers do not include international students who identify as black.

Why are black immigrants so overrepresented on selective campuses? While it's true that black immigrants are more likely to have higher grades and test scores (as I noted, their parents tend to be more educated), the authors of the study also conclude that admissions officers may be subconsciously selecting applicants with the "sociable qualities" that they more readily perceive in immigrants over other African-American students. We can't be certain of the degree to which this bias may play a role in college admissions decisions, but it's also hard to ignore previous research that demonstrates that white people find black immigrants more "likeable."

In researching my book, Fat Envelope Frenzy, I followed five different students navigating the selective college admissions process. One of the students was Ethiopian-American, grappling with the implications of his heritage on affirmative action policies. He often talked about how he couldn't relate to the other African-American students at his Memphis high school, but he also emphasized that he didn't think that race was such a big deal. "When was the last time someone was awarded a Nobel Prize because of their race?" he once asked me, rhetorically.

If only it were that simple. It would be nice if science was objective, but the ugly truth is that scientists have contributed to racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and every other possible prejudice throughout history. Sure, no one is given a Nobel Prize simply because they are white, black or brown. But that didn't stop James Watson, who won the Nobel for his work on DNA, from claiming that black people are "less intelligent" than white people just last year.

Though Barack Obama has suffered his fair share of background-based biased attacks (He's a Muslim! He hates Jews! He'll let Iran nuke Israel!), until the Jeremiah Wright hullabaloo, he was thought of as "not black" or "not black enough." Even with her two Ivy League degrees and Jackie O hair-do, there was never that kind of debate over Michelle's racial identity. The barely restrained racism directed at her in the press is practically old news, from the covert conspiracy theories of "respectable" writers like Christopher Hitchens—who basically blamed Michelle for the Wright controversy because she wrote her 1985 Princeton undergraduate thesis about "Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community"—to the total tackiness of Fox News referring to her as Barack's "baby mama."

With her South Side upbringing and dark complexion, Michelle is "black enough"—unlike her husband—and maybe that's part of the reason that she isn't as popular.

How can you tell that the objections of some of Hillary Clinton's most ardentHow Many Ways Are There To Hate Michelle Obama? supporters to  sexism and misogyny in campaign coverage didn't quite cover all women? From their near total silence on the viciously misogynistic and sexist (as well as racist) attacks on Michelle Obama that are sure to multiply over the coming months. Indeed, it was Larry Johnson, the lead blogger of the deranged pro-Clinton site No Quarter (I'm not going to link), who recently began spreading rumors of a "secret" video tape of Michelle Obama "hating on whitey." The sourcing of those rumors was a closed loop between Johnson and Nixonite ratfucker Roger Stone, and as David Weigel reported for Reason, the entire story appears to be a fabrication by Johnson, who has now changed his tune multiple times. Moreover, the bullshititude of the Michelle Obama whitey tape was evident from the moment Johnson first started prevaricating. Robert A. George explains:

You know why I know no tape exists? Because all copies of it were wrapped up in an American flag and burned on a woodpile ignited by Hillary Clinton and Kitty Dukakis...This is the '08 version of a really weird conservative urban legend that pops up every four years. The names change, but the basics remain the same: 1) It always involves the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate; 2) It always portrays the wife --- not the candidate --- committing some anti-American, unpatriotic act.

So Johnson was lying (or at best, wishfully thinking) through his teeth. But you can't prove a negative, so the meme will continue to occupy space on the fringes of politics and fester. Which is the whole point of the rumor-mongering exercise.

At the same time, the respectable mainstream version of the whitey-tape smear has already begun to take shape: Barack Obama might be alright on his own, but that awful wife of his is a disturbing anti-American, anti-white influence. Ta-Nehisi Coates spelled it out in this brilliant takedown of an alternately silly and horrifying Christopher Hitchens column attacking Michelle Obama several weeks ago. Like Ta-Nehisi, I grew up in awe of Hitchens' writing, which makes giving his piece the respect it deserves somewhat unnerving. Here's the gist: Hitchens accuses Michelle Obama of being a black racial separatist who inclines her husband towards black racial separatism like an extremely well-tanned Lady Macbeth. His evidence consists entirely in one sentence of the then Michelle Robinson's senior thesis at Princeton, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and Black Education."

Hitchens describes the essay as harder than hard to read; apparently it was impossible for him to read, since his accusation that Mrs. Obama was a disciple of Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton's Black Power movement is the result of careless misreading at best, straightforward lying at worst. What she wrote in her thesis is that she used Carmichael and Hamilton's definition of 'Black Power'; that is equivalent, as Ta-Nehisi observes, to accusing to someone who uses Mein Kampf to define 'Nazism' in an academic paper, of being a Nazi. Which, of course, no one would ever do; Hitchens' guilt by association logic is self-evidently racist. (It's particularly inauspicious of a collegiate "Luxembergist-Trotskyist" to go around anathematizing people for being campus radicals; maybe if Michelle O. had dedicated her thesis to the soixante-huitardes, all would have been forgiven.)

Ta-Nehisi points out the obligatory to-be-sures: Hitchens understands the wrongness of racism on a deeper level than most, and has written perspicuously about it, etc. ad nauseam. But Ta-Nehisi himself has noted elsewhere that that's ultimately irrelevant:

Dog, we don't care whether you have any "racial animus" or whether you "understand the essential evil of racism." If you're willing to feed the fears of those who have "racial animus," how are you any better? Indeed, Intentionally playing into racist stereotypes--which you know not to be true--is arguably WORSE than actually believing them. At least the believer is being honest, and perhaps, can be talked off the ledge.

Over the coming weeks and months, we'll undoubtedly discover that there are a multitude of Americans whose best friends are black. (So many, in fact, that one has to tip one's hat to the superhuman stamina of black people: There are about 240 million white Americans and 40 million black Americans; each black person must be a best friend of six white people on average, and just the cross-country travel that entails would take a lot of energy. No wonder there are so many of them in professional sports.) Being BFF with a black person doesn't excuse lying down in a gutter with racists, let alone doing your part to lend mainstream legitimacy to racist paranoia.

Precisely because the demonization of Michelle Obama trades so bluntly and crudely on racist stereotypes, its (marginally) subtler sexist and misogynistic elements are likely to receive secondary attention. But all the classic tropes are there on ample display: The conniving, domineering woman; the henpecked man whose virtue is corroded by a temptress; female transgression against natural authority, whether her husband's or her nation's. Underlying it all is a reflexive assignment of blame to women --- which is the translation, out of innuendo, of Hitchens' insistence that "there is an inexcusable unwillingness among reporters to be the one to ask [whether Michelle Obama corrupts Barack]," an unwillingness more commonly described as "minimal propriety."

In other words, one of the smaller historic opportunities this election will provide is for the feminists who accused feminist Obama supporters of treachery to show the greenhorns how it's done. Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Robin Morgan --- the floor is yours.

UPDATE: Details of the "hate whitey" tape were lifted from a novel. Thanks, National Review, for fact-checking Larry Johnson and Hillbuzz.

Last November, William Saletan wrote a series for Slate on "Liberal Creationism," purporting to show that, according to the best evidence we have, there is good reason to think that observable racial disparities in scores on intelligence tests are irreducible to non-genetic explanations. Or, de-jargoned, that it's time to confront the uncomfortable truth that black people aren't as smart as white people (on average, of course).

Racial Harmony: The path to Saletanian paradise isn't paved with Saletanian contrarianism Saletan was widely panned, at Jewcy among many other venues, for drawing conclusions based on statistical innumeracy, flagrant misunderstanding of the literature on race, genes, and intelligence, and the "research" of J. Philippe Rushton, a discredited racist crank who years ago took to sending out unsolicited mass-mailings of his pamphlets to every member of the American Sociological Association.

Having brushed his shoulders off, Saletan is back on the race-and-intelligence beat today, and this time he's more circumspect. Much more circumspect. He's having an extended, self-serving dialogue with himself, in an effort to ensure his intended audience (William Saletan) that what motivated the original series wasn't racism, but the admirable conviction that the truth isn't any worse off for our discomfort with it; rather, we're worse off for not facing up to uncomfortable truths.

But of course, no persuasive critic of the "Liberal Creationism" pieces thought that Saletan was motivated by racism. The criticism was that knee-jerk contrarianism led him to present as "the truth" a case based on wafer-thin evidence and shoddy reasoning. Rather than confront the methodological lacunae that prevented him from giving a cogent public presentation of the state of the literature on race and intelligence --- some uncomfortable truths, you might say --- Saletan instead digs in, offering a general justification of his project of exploring "how to be an egalitarian in an age of genetic differences," by means of some unintentionally hilarious epistemological musings on truth and semantic musings on 'truth':

In retrospect, I was consumed by the wrong word. The flaw in my approach wasn't truth. It was the. Even if hereditary inequality among racial averages is a truth, it's less true, more unjust, and more pernicious than framing the same difference in nonracial terms. "The truth," as I accepted and framed it, was itself half-formed. It was, in that sense, a half-truth. And it flunked the practical test I had assigned it: To the extent that a social problem is genetic, you can't ultimately solve it by understanding it in racial terms.

Can you feel Saletan's pain yet? All he wanted to do was set right racial injustice, a noble goal if there ever was one, and might have succeeded if a pesky definite article hadn't tripped him up. But here's the thing. (And also, a thing.) As the Saletan of November might have put it, truths aren't any less true for being unjust or pernicious, nor does truth come in degrees. A proposition is true, in which case it's a truth, or it isn't, in which case it's a falsehood. Nor is it very difficult to distinguish the truth from a truth. The former is a complete, actual state of affairs, the latter is a proper part of an actual state of affairs. And the truth won't ever contradict a truth or vice versa, because any statement of the truth states all the truths. If you think you've found an intractable conflict between the two, check your work: something's gone wrong somewhere.

For example, the proposition that the best available evidence points strongly towards a genetic explanation of racial disparities in intelligence tests isn't true, hence is neither a truth nor a part of the truth. In other words, it's false. It's false despite being so counterintuitive in these politically correct days (which goes to show that counterintuition isn't foolproof --- aspiring contrarian journalists, take note!). Moreover, it's so clearly false that a brief conversation with credible expert in the field ought to suffice to convince you that it's false. And the cause of ameliorating racial inequalities, in which everyone should in principle be willing to join with Saletan, isn't served by promoting falsehoods, since a false theory of racial inequality is no more useful in reforming education and social policy, than a false physical theory is useful in building bridges and tunnels.

What's more, taking the time to do adequate background research in the first place relieves you of the effort involved in months of back-pedaling and TMI-laden internal dialogues about the nobility of your intentions --- effort that could be put to better use bringing whites and blacks together at the table of brotherhood.

Reductio creep in action: Last week, Barack Obama shrugged off the freak showNas, A Scary Black Man: Just look at him, all uppity and whatnot, planning God knows what debate in Philadelphia with a panache unprecedented in modern electoral history, proving that yes we can elect a president who isn't hopelessly out of touch with contemporary culture. Little did I know, when I wondered how long it would take some half-wit to suggest that Obama's reference to Jay-Z was a gang sign, that a half-wit with a reasonably large platform had already uncovered the disturbing truth about Obama's scandalous connection to the Roc-A-Fella Dynasty.

In a piece aptly entitled "Obama's Other Jeremiah Wrights," Evan Gahr of Human Events rides Paul Revere-like into small town America to warn that Obama's fifth column includes not only Jeremiah Wright, but equally troublingly, Jay-Z, will.i.am, Ludacris, Q-tip, Russell Simmons, Nas, and "9/11 conspiracy theorist" Mos Def. Obama's "complicity with rappers" --- another impressively insightful word choice --- goes all the way "back to at least 2006." Only egregious liberal media bias can explain why these shocking facts haven't come to light until now. The piece does not report, though doubtless a future installment of Human Events will, about the meetings Obama has held with these "thugs" to discuss their secret plans to seduce your daughter. But Gahr does helpfully put the matter in its appropriate context when he closes with the observation that David Dinkins had the courage to denounce Louis Farrakhan, and Obama should therefore denounce the Farrakhans in his midst as well.

I'd like to quibble with Gahr, but his major point is absolutely right: The questions Mos Def and Nas raise about Obama's character are every bit as significant and informative as the questions Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan raise about his character. And in general, there is something almost admirable about the volume of surplus work the guilt-by-black-association crowd is willing to do composing interminable ponderings about how they were quite ready to vote for a nice, clean, articulate black man until all his scary black friends turned up --- thousands upon thousands of words written, and who knows how many man-hours of labor wasted, all to avoid saying, more starkly but also more accurately: "People! Are you crazy? Don't vote for a nigger!"

Geoff "Don't Call Me 'Jeff'" Davis (R - KY) Part of the story of Barack Obama's meteoric rise from the Illinois state senate four years ago to the precipice of the White House today is that there has been perhaps no one in recent American political history as fortunate in his draw of opponents. (Bill Clinton was nearly, but not quite as lucky.)

When the campaign for the Democratic nomination for the 2004 senate election began, Obama trailed Blair Hull, a deep-pocketed financier, by a wide margin. Then the Chicago Tribune opened up Hull's divorce files and it turned out that Hull's ex-wife had accused him of assault. Hull was finished. As the campaign tilted toward the general election, Obama faced off against the seemingly formidable Republican Jack Ryan, a partner at Goldman Sachs who made several hundred million dollars on his firm's IPO and was prepared to invest it in his run for the senate. Then the Chicago Tribune opened up Ryan's divorce files and discovered that Ryan's ex-wife, Seven of Nine, had accused him of taking her to sex clubs and trying to impress her into swinging and exhibitionism. So much for Ryan. Desperate, the Illinois GOP recruited Alan Keyes. Obama won the largest victory in Illinois senatorial election history.

Seven of Nine aka Jeri Ryan A similar pattern has played out this year, as Hillary Clinton, who should have won the Democratic nomination in a walkover, ran the worst primary campaign since primaries began to count, and in particular heeded Mark Penn's brilliant "insult 40 states" strategy. So much for Clinton.

At every crucial juncture in his career when Obama appears to be on the brink of disaster, one of his opponents manages to overplay a winning hand recklessly, or else disaster befalls Obama's opponent instead. Case in point: After Obama's clumsy effort to connect with rural Pennsylvanians blew up in his face, Republican Kentucky Congressman Geoffrey Davis decided to make it clear that "that boy's finger does not need to be on the button."

Now there is, to be sure, a relatively innocent interpretation of Davis's remark, to the effect that Davis was merely talking in a jocular slang. But on any of the non-innocent interpretations, Davis was making use of a genteel way of calling Obama a nigger. Would anyone care to bet on what dominates political headlines for the next few news cycles? After all, a man who voluntarily goes by "Geoff Davis" isn't really begging for interpretive charity on racial issues.

First they told us that not all Muslims were evil. We didn't resist.

Then they told us that not all Muslims were Islamo-fascists. We stayed silent.

Then they told us that not all Muslims were Islamists. We conceded the point.

Now there are no labels with which to stereotype and generalize all Muslims.

I have seen this state of affairs come to pass and I feel bad for my fellow man, who is deprived of access to a word that might allow him to reduce 1.2 billion people to one essential characteristic.

Given that I am already considered by Muslims to be part of the Crusader-Neo-Con-Zionist alliance to undermine, subvert, and sabotage Islam – not to mention seduce-all-Muslim-women-without-marrying-them-four-at-a-time – I thought I would go ahead and offer non-Muslims a little bit of information that will assist them in stereotyping my people.

Here it goes: my friends, most Muslims are Muslamists. It is a fact of which I am only now becoming aware.

Napoleon Bonaparte: Muslim Due to my delay in identifying this malaise, I, humble House Muslim, avid fantasizer about white girls, rabid luster after Jewish approval, secret puppet of the American Enterprise Institute, perennial supporter of Paleo-cons, Neo-cons, Deceptacons, and A-Kon, ask for an apology from all my real and imagined masters: I should have told you about this sooner. If you would be so kind as to re-stamp my "moderate Muslim" card, I will promise to never let myself be so lax in my service.

Having said that, let me blare the alarm loud and forthright. Let us become vigilant. Let us pay attention. Only the fate of a Western civilization (that has been intact for three thousand years) is at stake!

I have found, looking back at my life, that Muslamists are everywhere. They are always slithering around with their slithery little tongues, slithering with slither. Muslims have been Muslamist at parties; Muslamist in thoughts; Muslamist in class-room arguments; and yes, Muslamist during sex.

The Muslamist phenomenon is a difficult one to define but perhaps it can be illustrated through my first open experience with it.

I was a wee child at a desi auntie's party – in Muslamist code you call all marriedGöthe: Muslim women "aunties" and all married men "uncles" – eating a helping of biryani and gosht. A college aged Muslim brother, a dapper pseudo-intellectual (defined as a Muslim who quotes leftist theory in order to support Islamic revolution but hates actual lefties such as feminists, queers and transgendered), was discussing European history with the uncles.

All the uncles were doctors – due to the MD next to their name they were considered by all the fawning riff-raff as the apex of Muslim success – and presumed to have an IQ six to seven hundred points higher than us mortals.

"I believe it was after Napoleon's imperialist and colonialist entry into Egypt in 1798," said the Pseudo-Intellectual, "that the meta-narrative of Western Hegemony truly brought itself to bear against the Placid Palaces of the Islamic Empires of Yesterday!"

With the characteristic nonchalance – as well as characteristic ability to miss the point – of the Muslim doctor-god, one of the uncles with a heavy Arab accent leaned forward and grasped the Pseudo-Intellectual by the collar.

"You aaaaare, ze, tokking abou ze Napoleon?"

The Pseudo-Intellectual replied: "Yes, Napoleon…"

"Bona Party?" yelled out another of the doctor-gods, this one a Bangladeshi Ob-GYNShakespeare: Muslim woman (though I repeat myself). "You arrrre the thaaking about that the Napoleon?" The glee in his eyes far exceeded the glee that shone in them on his wedding night, when he lost his virginity at forty seven years of age after seven fellowships and three residencies.

"Yes uncle!" said the flustered Pseudo-Intellectual. "Napoleon's incursion into Dar-al-Islam! The natural hegemonic culmination of the Enlightenment dialectic! That Napoleon!"

The doctor-gods looked at one another. Silence filled the room. In the living room, the aunties stopped doing their dance of seven veils (which is what all Muslim women do when alone). I stopped chewing and shifted my eyes side to side.

All at once, the doctor-gods of the community leaned forward and like the Athenian chorus, sang out together:

"Did you know Napoleon was a Muslim?!"

That, my friends, is Muslamism in a nutshell. It is the belief, dogmatic and secure, unimpeachable and ideological, that all famous people are all covertly Muslim, that all inventions ever made are due to Muslim ingenuity and that all events in the world somehow connect back to Islam – though most of the time we just don't know how. Like all ideologies, there are moderates and extremists. Moderates tend to only believe in the possibility of a connection to Islam if there is some minuscule amount of evidence offered by the historical figure.

Extremists need no evidence. Their mere assertion – "He was Muslim!" followed by a pronounced nod of the head (up and down for Arabs, side to side for Pakistanis) – is sufficient.

According to Muslamist theory, the great German poet Goethe, despite being a devout Christian, was a Muslim because he appreciated Sufi poets such as Hafiz and Omar Khayyam.

Shakespeare, despite promoting all sorts of vices, was a Muslim – a Sufi woman at that (and no, not a Jewish woman).

Henry VIII, despite being the first Anglican, was Muslim because he had multiple wives.

Dante, despite his hatred of Muhammad, stole his story from Muslim sources.Nietzsche: Muslim atheist

Thomas Aquinas, a Christian saint, was secretly a Muslim because he relied on Averroes' books.

Columbus probably wasn't a Muslim, concede the Muslamists, but he relied on Muslim navigators and captains to find the new world. In Muslamist parlance reliance is a form of constructive belief.

Nietzsche, despite his atheism and hatred of organized religion, was more or less a Muslim too, because he said that Spain's Islamic baths were beautiful and that there was something commendable in the Wahhabi antipathy to alcohol. Muslamism towards Nietzsche is particularly strong, with Allama Muhammad Iqbal, India's foremost Muslim philosopher once declaring that had he been alive before Nietzsche suffered dementia he would have been able to convert Nietzsche to Islam.

Obviously, as already discussed, Napoleon was a Muslim – based on the mere fact that he owned a Quran and that later it was discovered that he had read it.

The Muslamist list of other individuals in history, who no sane person could conclude were Muslim, is long – and sometimes even extends to individuals who preceded Islam.

However, historical Muslamism pales in comparison to its contemporary version, of which Michael Jackson has been the pre-eminent ambassador. Living in Pakistan in the 1980's, I met Extremist Muslamists who were thoroughly convinced that Jackson was a Muslim. Their reasoning was simple:

"All popular American blacks are Muslim! Elijah Muhammad, and Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X! Michael Jackson is black and he is popular, therefore…!"

When recently, Jackson purchased a palace in Bahrain, these same Muslamists cameMichael Jackson: Muslim until he bleached his skin rushing forward with a knowing smile on their face. "The King of Men!" they sang, referring to the Prophet Muhammad. "And now The King of Pop! Islam is truly a perfect religion!" When I pressed these uncles about The King, Elvis, I was summarily dismissed. "He would have been too but he just didn't get a chance to encounter Islam. Our evangelism was weak in the 50's." As of yet, there are no Muslamist theories about King James (but wait till he gets traded to the Brooklyn Nets).

Muslamists aren't completely irrational though. Sometimes they will confer Islam upon an unwitting person only to later strip the individual. Oscar winning actor Denzel Washington falls in this category. When he starred in Spike Lee's film "X", Denzel became a household name among Muslims. To this day, graying Muslim aunties overcome their latent fear of their children's black friends by saying, "well that Denzel is good black man so your friend might be safe to play with too." When as a youth my Sunday school teacher played Spike Lee's film for us in class, one of the Muslamist children next to me leaned in and told me "that the actor converted to Islam after playing a Muslim!"

However, Denzel's adoption by the Muslamists was short-lived. In the late 90's, Denzel starred in the film "The Siege" which most Muslims thought was akin to a cinematic hate-crime.

"He cannot be Muslim!" said Muslamists at the Islamic Center I attended. "No one involved in that film can be Muslim, even that Arab, Shalhoub, cannot be Muslim!" Another Muslamist chimed in. "Did you know that Allah punished the director of that film? He was driving and he hit a stop sign and the pole speared his brain?"

Most recently, Princess Diana and Britney Spears have been the favored Muslims among Muslamists given the former's relationship with Dodi al-Fayed and the latter's tryst with a British-Pakistani paparazzo.

Still, perhaps nothing better reveals the potency of Muslamism than the fact that it has infiltrated the sex life of average Muslim couples. Even Islamo-fascism couldn't pull that off.

I was once at a banquet sitting with some young Muslim males. We were discussingWill Smith: Muslim Scientologist how one distinguishes a Muslim female who just appears engaged – many single Muslim girls tend to wear a ring on their ring finger – from one who is truly engaged. Conversation shifted to "post-marital action." Intoxicated on leechi flavored lassi, the brothers revealed their inner most yearnings. "Is it Islamically permissible to drink your wife's breast milk during the sexual act?" asked one, in preparation for his wife's pregnancy. "No!" came the reply. "If you drink her milk then under Islamic law you are equivalent to her child. Then you will not be able to have sex with your wife because she will be your mother."

"What is the Islamic view on role-playing?" asked another. Immediately the attention shifted to him. However, because role-playing somehow seemed to most of us more taboo than drinking your wife's breast-milk, no one followed up on his inquiry. Later when we were alone, the brother revealed his quandary. He and his wife liked to role-play as various celebrities.

"Don't worry," he assured. "Before we get it on, we role-play my wedding to the celebrity. You know I keep it Islamic! Anyway, all was good when my wife pretending to be other women and I was just myself."

"So what's the problem?" I asked.

"Well, now she wants me to pretend to be other men! In theory I'm cool with that, but you know Muslim women can't be married to non-Muslim men! How can I give this to my wife? Its not allowed under Islam!"

The answer, of course, lay with Muslamism.

"Why don't you role-play her marrying some celebrity who everyone thinks is a Muslim?"

"Who?"

"You could try Will Smith!" I said. "He played Muhammad Ali in the film Ali. He probably converted at some point. I heard rumors…I mean, his kid is freaking named Jabari…"

The beleaguered husband shook his head for a while. "No, me and Will are not the same body type, you know? My wife likes my body type."

"Tall, dark and skinny?"

"That's it!" he said with a yelp. "I know a celebrity that everyone thinks is a Muslim, which must mean he is a Muslim!"

"Who?" I asked.

"Barack Obama!" said the Muslamist. "You know that brother is a Muslim! I don't know why he fronts with this 'I am a Christian' business!"

It should be apparent to everyone that Muslamism threatens the future of WesternBarack Hussein Obama: Well, duh civilization. If Muslamists can think that real people are Muslim, then what will happen once they start thinking cartoons are Muslim? Unless in an act of collective fiat we become Enlightenment Fundamentalists and declare war on Muslamism we will never be able to rid ourselves of this scourge.

After diagnosing the problem, it bears asking how Muslamism can be defeated. Obviously, the first step is for some illiberal Guardian of the West – with a menacing beard reminiscent of Leonidas to give him gravitas – must launch a website.

MuslamistWatch.org, should be set up immediately; on it, the latent traces of Muslamism in society must be identified and collected. Once it establishes a regular readership of five to six thousand people we will be ready for the next step.

Then the intellectual attack will commence. The most feasible counter-Muslamism strategy is to reveal it to emanate from non-Muslim sources. That would attack the Islamocentrism that lies at the heart of Muslamism.

Thankfully, there are many examples of religious self-obsession that precede Islam, the most potent of which is Hinduism. Indian uncles are notorious for claiming that Islam's Ka'ba is really a Hindu shrine, that Muhammad is a character from the Gita, that the West got sexual positions from the Kama Sutra, that Hegel stole his philosophy from the Vedas and that Hindus invented math because they were the first to come up with numbers.
If Muslims can be shown that Muslamism is just a re-creation of Hindu egoism, then over time Muslamism may lose its draw.

Then, happy, shining, liberated Muslim youth can usher in the Islamic Reformation cum Enlightenment cum Counter Reformation cum Sexual Revolution cum Chevy Revolution that will save the world.

Somewhat based on partly true events.

As a straight white guy with a propensity for boozing, I feel qualified to observe that not only is everyone (at least) a little bit gay; everyone is (more than) a little bit racist. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, brown or tangerine; if you are a human being, you hold a few conscious or subconscious prejudices. And you’re a little bit gay.

Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on racial tension seems to have rescued his campaign from the liability of his radical pastor. He criticized whites for ignoring racial injustices such as our prison population and unequal public schools, but also hammered black leaders for their simmering resentments against Caucasians who have rejected bigotry for generations. It was a major break from conventional identity politics, and has received widespread praise as the most forthright commentary in decades, but a complete abandonment of America’s racial tensions might exceed our limited human capacity.

The speech came at an especially meaningful time for me. Over the last ten monthsYes We Can Stop Gentrification? I’ve lived in a mostly black neighborhood in Brooklyn, which has prompted a large degree of soul-searching. Although I lived in Washington, D.C. for six years, I spent most of the time in the “affluent” northwest quadrant. (Oh, there are so many fun words amongst real estate professionals that substitute for illegal ones: “young professionals,” “trendy,” “middle-class,” “lots of families,” “safe.”)

When I moved to New York, I only had two days to find an apartment. Rents in “affluent” neighborhoods with numerous “young professionals” are considerably higher than in “up-and-coming” neighborhoods. Whereas I lived in a luxury building in D.C. with a gym, pool, doorman, deck, chandeliered lobby and (most lavish of all) dishwasher, I was suddenly—thanks to my desperate rush and journalist’s budget—in a neighborhood where the only appetizing-looking restaurant is a McDonald’s, save for a Mexican eatery that gave me a gastrointestinal holocaust.

The real estate agent assured me that the neighborhood is “safe” and “middle-class,” but since I moved a few people have been murdered around the block and numerous delis have been robbed at gunpoint. Police sirens and car alarms blare throughout the night. Even the graffiti is graffitied. Drug dealers sometimes hang out at the self-service laundry, which might be okay if A) I hadn’t stopped smoking marijuana after college, and B) the drug they’re selling were marijuana.

Although I have not been threatened or mugged, I have notified my landlord that I am not renewing my lease. I will soon move to either a “nice” part of Brooklyn or “Manhattan below Harlem,” despite the exorbitant rents. Except here’s the thing: “nice” and “below Harlem” are fancy ways of saying “white,” or at least “whiter.” I don’t like to admit this; it makes me feel dirty, which is saying something.

Of course, I’m leaving because of the crime, and there’s nothing discriminatory about wanting to stay bullet-free. If the gangsters were white, I wouldn’t want to live around them either—and Little Italy is too touristy anyway.

But I can’t deny that part of my motivation for leaving is that I feel like an outsider. It’s not that I feel endangered walking down the street, or at least not most of the time, but I can feel eyes staring at me in the grocery store and subway station. I frequently remind myself that it’s a matter of class instead of race: poor whites are just as likely to commit crime as poor blacks, and it’s not like anybody wants to be poor. And it’s really not that bad here—a little “shady” (yet another word) but hardly an urban war zone, as Hollywood would have us believe. I play Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes inside my brain, trying to reassure myself that it’s important—for the good of my character and my country—to challenge my comfort zone. This is exactly what Obama urged last week.

When I first moved here I hoped that I would make a ton of friends, understand another culture and transcend the social barriers that have segregated our country long after the demise of Jim Crow. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten to know anyone, and have felt increasingly isolated. I could have tried harder, I suppose, but there’s an awkward cultural gulf between us. The neighbors are very nice people—they always offer to help if I’m carrying too many groceries or packages, which I would never expect of “affluent” snobs on the Upper West Side—but I can sense the tension in the air.

The tension stems from this, as some of the longtime residents have explained to me with a tone that is (usually) kind and patient, but frustrated: just as “young professionals” tend to prefer neighborhoods with other “young professionals,” the people who live in ethnic neighborhoods—and mine is largely Caribbean—are very proud of their cultures, and don’t always view Starbucks and luxury condos as signs of progress.

Often they view such things as harbingers of skyrocketing rents and dissolution of their tight-knit communities. I’m not the only “young professional” who has moved here recently, and many longtime residents fear the cultural onslaught of gentrification. Some believe there are positives, for example an influx of cash into local businesses and (supposedly) more police protection.

However, they don’t necessarily want their jerk chicken stands replaced with organic vegan restaurants and sushi fusion; they don’t necessarily want their churches replaced with $1,000 per month fitness clubs; they don’t necessarily want their way of life replaced with yoga-practicing, smoothie-sipping, insufferable bourgeois bohemian freakiness, which has happened over and over in this city. Just as “young professionals” don’t want to live in a “certain kind” of neighborhood, we aren’t always welcome in the first place. (Yesterday I heard one resident say to another as I walked by: “more white people—not a good sign.”)

Segregation was one of the most horrendous evils of our history, and Obama’s words are beautiful as usual. It might be harder for us to embrace one another’s culture, however, than to simply ignore one another’s skin color. We are all afraid of something and weak in some way—everyone gravitates toward the familiar—but human nature isn’t always the problem; sometimes it’s the limits of our nature.

Michael Weiss takes me to task for insufficiently gnashing my teeth over Jeremiah Wright and his preachments. I say he's missing the point of my writing on the matter entirely.

I don't regard Wright as much more than a left-wing Falwell, whose ass politiciansJeremiah Wright: Yes, let's put him in context on the left periodically feel themselves required to kiss, like Bill Clinton did in 1998. Jesse Jackson is a morally ambivalent figure. That didn't prevent him from being Clinton's go-to confessor. Remember Joe Lieberman lauding Louis Farrakhan in 2000? Democratic candidates still feel compelled to ritually smooch Al Sharpton's rings, and Sharpton's antics --- e.g., doing his damnedest to get an innocent man, whom he knew was innocent, convicted of rape --- are a match for anything Wright has done.

Michael's position --- and mine --- that associations with these awful priests constitute a mark against every candidate (though not a disqualifier), and that that standard applies across the board, is not a popular position. In particular, it's not the position of those who think Obama's tie to Wright is an exceptional disqualifier. I most certainly said, but maybe should have been more explicit to avoid misinterpretation, that context clearly justifies King and Douglass and clearly inculpates Wright. Because of the contextual discrepancies, there is no comparison between King's or Douglass's indictment of America and Wright's. (Though Wright's lack of eloquence relative to King and Douglass is hardly the problem with his preachments. Would Michael have less of a problem with Wright if he were more eloquent? I wouldn't.) And that's just the point.

Continue reading...

Two more appalling statements from Jeremiah Wright. Here is how he describes the Fourth of July:

[Y]our celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Got that? A nation of savages. Small wonder Obama won't wear an American flag lapel pin. And here is Wright's disgraceful theological pretense for his Chomskyite anti-Americanism:

God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war...And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place...[God will say], "If you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

So the "hateful" rhetoric was hardly out of the ordinary for Wright. Obama must have heard it, or something like it, and continued going to church at Trinity. He should probably quit the race now, right? Except that the first remark is from a Frederick Douglass speech in 1852, and the second from a Martin Luther King, Jr. sermon in 1968.

Now that Douglass and King have been anointed saints in our civil religion, it'sFrederick Douglass: One-dimensional bigot (just look at the text) uncouth, to put it mildly, to speak ill of either of them. But if statements such as these --- and needless to say, there are plenty more where they came from --- were actually Jeremiah Wright's and preserved on celluloid, can anyone sincerely doubt they'd have made it into the media carnival this past weekend? That Fox News hosts would have worked themselves up to sexual satisfaction that much more quickly with the added material for their feedback loop? That Roger L. Simon would have squeezed out a couple more stanzas about how he wouldn't have personally given black people the right to vote if he knew Obama would attend church with such a psychopath? That Charles Krauthammer would have gleefully made use of the extra grist with which to excoriate Obama for "expos[ing] [his] children to...vitriolic divisiveness"? That enterprising radio talk show hosts and McCain staffers would have spliced such damaging goods into their two-minute hate already featuring cameos by Malcolm X and protesting black Olympic athletes?

How much conceptual space is there, really, between thundering "God damn America for killing innocent people" and ventriloquizing a promise from God to "break the backbone of your power," between declaring America guilty of "practices more shocking and bloody" than any other country on earth and framing the 9/11 attacks as "chickens coming home to roost"? And which remark from each pair would count as more "incendiary" under the standards Wright --- but never, under any circumstances, his counterparts in the white evangelical community --- is being judged?

By the same token, we need not suspend judgment about how the Krauthammers ofMartin Luther King, Jr.: Hated America (it's there in black and white) King's and Douglass's generations would have responded to justified angry black rhetoric even in the contexts of slavery and segregation, since we know how they did respond. In the wake of the church bombings in Birmingham, National Review warned darkly that "it now appears that Birmingham's Negroes will never be content so long as the white population is free to be free." As late as 1964, the flagship rag of the conservative movement bitterly inveighed against "the ludicrously named 'civil rights movement' --- that is, the Negro revolt." (This is just scratching the surface.)

The vast majority of those who presently decry "chickens coming home to roost" rhetoric as instrinsically a form of hate speech have concluded on those grounds alone that Wright is a hatemonger with whom no decent person could ever be associated. Would the same crowd have watched King or Douglass denouncing the US in even stronger terms, and then taken a nuanced, holistic view of their lives and deeds? Please.

Barack Obama diagnosed Jeremiah Wright's errors with surgical precision:

[H]e spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow. 

Of course, the contexts in which Douglass and King spoke and wrote were very different from Wright's: slavery and pervasive legalized persecution, respectively. That discrepancy is what's objectionable about Wright's remarks. On the other hand, Wright lived through the latter experience, and was raised in living memory of the former. Moreover, King's comments were about Vietnam and had nothing to do with racial justice; so the context for them is not relevantly different from the context of Wright's denunciations of American foreign policy.

There is no form of reverse political correctness that requires us to feign ignorance about the reason --- not the justification or excuse, but the reason --- for Wright's antipathies. Or to pretend that the cartoon of Wright, devoid of any context or biography, accurately represents reality.

In an otherwise masterful performance on Tuesday --- if not the greatest speech on race in American history, then one of the greatest by a presidential candidate --- Barack Obama made one decidedly ugly remark:

This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

That is, the problem isn't strange-looking Americans taking your job, it's strange-looking foreigners, against whom Americans of all races, regions, creeds, and colors can unite. Will Wilkinson and Megan McArdle pounced on this immediately. What's so depressing about it is the way it mars Obama's genuinely inspiring vision of America as something more than a crude, zero-sum balancing of mutually antagonistic interest groups. Whether it's Republicans riding into office on fears of unqualified blacks leapfrogging whites for promotion and resentment of latte-sipping elites looking to gay-marry their children, or Democrats campaigning against a far-flung corporate conspiracy to keep the working man down while divvying up seats to their convention to fulfill racial and sexual quotas, both major parties have embraced and internalized the idea that individuals and groups can only thrive at the expense of everyone else. On multiple occasions in his speech, and indeed, throughout the campaign and his career, Obama has directly repudiated that notion. (It's one of the reasons he takes grief from certain segments of the lefty blogosphere.)

Or at least, he repudiates the politics of group antagonism up to the water's edge.Audacious and hopeful enough? Apparently, it's fair game to scapegoat people in other countries trying (just like Americans!) to build a prosperous future for themselves and their families for the economic travails of American workers. Fair game too, to use the system of international trade that on balance makes everyone better off as bogeyman, when he clearly knows better.

The best that can be said is that, unlike trade restrictionists on the left and immigration restrictionists on the right (and trade and immigration are really just two sides of the same coin) Obama almost certainly doesn't believe that non-Americans are deserving objects of fear or spite. And in pandering to such fears, he's lowering himself no further than the standard of either of his competitors. As Megan puts it:

I understand the political logic that forces Barack Obama to spend a fair amount of time hating on trade. But I sort of feel--call me a starry-eyed idealist though you will--that a speech urging Americans not to hate and fear people who are different from them, should perhaps itself forgo urging Americans to hate and fear people who are different from them. You know, to set a good example for the children.

Admittedly, a lecture on the structural causes of the decline of the manufacturing sector and the flight to skill probably wouldn't go over too well with the target audience for the speech. But one of Obama's rhetorical gifts, and perhaps his most impressive, is his ability to dissolve demographic barriers and present a vision of life as cooperative rather than competitive, in language accessible to ordinary listeners. As long as Obama is after a more perfect union, he ought to have the audacity to hope for a more perfect world.

Matthew Yglesias: "I'd say things are back on track. The Wright business had opened up a vague sliver of hope for Hillary Clinton's campaign -- if they could produce a result in Pennsylvania that looked like a Wright-induced collapse in Obama's white support, maybe they could convince superdelegates that he's unelectable. After this speech, I don't see it happening."

Andrew Sullivan: "[T]his searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Audacious and hopeful enough?Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history."

Sally Quinn: "This was the most important speech on race in America since the 'I have a dream' speech. [On MSNBC, from my notes--ed.]"

John Derbyshire: "Pah! It's just the old leftist shtick...Blame whitey, and raise high the red flag of socialism. This is a serious candidate for the Presidency? Toast, toast."

Stephen Schwartz: "My first and last thoughts about Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright are the same now as they were months ago: it is absurd, disturbing, and somewhat repellent to realize how long this went unexamined by media, how arrogantly Obama thought it could be avoided, how despicable Wright is, etc. etc. Does this insanity really require analysis? Obama should withdraw from the presidential race and should consider resigning from office. Nobody associated with a pseudo-religious race-baiting, Jew-baiting, America-hating nut like Jeremiah Wright has any business representing anybody in the U.S. but himself. A friend in Kosova recently pointed something out about Obama: he appropriates the legacy of Dr. King, but Dr. King never ran for any political office and would have nothing to do with the likes of Jeremiah Wright."

James Fallows: "This was as good a job as anyone could have done in these circumstances, and as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney's speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy's famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was."

John McWhorter: "Those who have found Obama's statements of dissociation from his pastor Jeremiah Wright's statements a tad studious must now be satisfied...For a light-skinned half-white Ivy League-educated black man to repudiate, in clear language and repeatedly, the take on race of people like Julian Bond and Nikki Giovanni is not only honest but truly bold...As of this morning's speech, any notions of the Obamas as having sat in their living room on 9/11 cheering as the Twin Towers fell is indefensible, and should be dismissed as recreational blather of no more weight than Jeremiah Wright's."

Charles Murray: "I read the various posts here on "The Corner," mostly pretty ho-hum or critical about Obama's speech. Then I figured I'd better read the text (I tried to find a video of it, but couldn't). I've just finished. Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols.... But you know me. Starry-eyed Obama groupie."

Jesse Walker on Charles Murray: "I suppose it's only a matter of time before some Clinton surrogate pulls out The Bell Curve and demands that Obama distance himself from Murray."

There were moments of eloquence in Obama's speech, but I can't decide if solipsism or condescension accounts for his thinking that the very limited scandal surrounding his toxic pastor Jeremiah Wright is related to America's greater and permanent stain of slavery. It is an insult to blacks, not to mention the civil rights movement, to claim that vitriol, hysteria and demagogy are endemic to a community that has, quite without the help of raving religious charlatans, already given us two Secretaries of State and two Supreme Court Justices.

By this reading, we're expected to accept that a little bit of Jeremiah -- who thinks the government invented the AIDS virus, that 9/11 was a homegrown catastrophe -- resides in anyone made to ride in the back of a bus. Is this really the kind of message he wishes to broadcast? Obama also errs in comparing his preacher to members of his own family. He can't have controlled who his grandmother was, but no one forced him to join the Trinity Church twenty years ago, much less to remain a congregant when he discovered the kind of spirituality being hawked from its pulpit. (It was in 1984 that Wright traveled with Louis Farrakhan to meet Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator responsible for bankrolling "Black September," the hostage-takers at the Munich Olympics, and just two years shy of facilitating the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in which many U.S. servicemen were killed.)

My own suspicion is that Obama only ever discovered this shambolic God that failed because, as a bright young atheist from Hawaii, he felt that a pew-pounding minority church was a convenient entree into local Chicago politics. The word for this is cynicism, or to put it in the mushy-headed language his supporters prefer, 'You are the idiots I've been waiting for.'

P.S. I had been thinking about the point Zbird makes below before I saw him make it. Consider this an addendum to the above:

It's not news that everyone contains contradictions and multitudes and has base moments.

"I am a racist," wrote Martin Amis once, accounting for the complicated psyche of his favorite poet and family friend Philip Larkin, then under mass literary indictment for what Larkin's biography and collected letters disclosed. "I am less racist than my father was, and my children will be less racist than I am." Good sense, in other words, is historical, rooted to what Peter Singer has called the ever-widening "moral circle" by which we grow more enlightened and humane as the centuries go by. Something like that.

Amis's point was refreshingly free of cant or homiletics, and it encompassed the kind of human frailty many believe Obama artfully addressed today. It also helped that Larkin had confined all of his racist, anti-Semitic filth to the realm of private correspondence -- the poems, the stuff that mattered, were blessedly free of it, which shows that even bigots and reactionaries can exercise good judgment or aspire to be better than they are, or, if you like, than their generation has allowed them to be.

My problem with Obama's speech is that he is lowering the bar to the floor, apologizing not for a celebrated postwar poet of great depth and feeling, but for a vulgar merchant of populist sleaze. Jeremiah Wright was not caught committing his many betises in casual conversation or in the semi-exclusive confines of the neighborhood barbershop, or around the kitchen table. He was preaching them from a pulpit, before a large audience, loudly and repeatedly, for decades. Shall we say this is reflective of the broader black experience in America even at its most uninhibited or flippant? (One thinks here of Chris Rock's stand-up about the friendly-seeming old codger at work who calls his white colleagues "crackers" behind their backs but is the picture of servile minstrelsy to their faces.)

Let me phrase my grievance another way: If a Jewish candidate for high office attempted to convince me that a little bit of Meir Kahane resided in all of us, I'd condemn him roundly. Not in my name, big boy. And how dare you?

The high-minded response to this kind of discourse is to say that one is trafficking in "sweeping generalizations." The liberal-left pundits, all stricken with the vapors today by Obama's long and admittedly brilliant speech, have raced to credit him with loosing a deep, dark secret about some supposed racial collective conscious. Isn't this intrinsically presumptuous and offensive to those who would argue there is no such thing to begin with?

I know I'm expected to say here that I've no right to speak for insulted African-Americans because I'm not one myself. However, I don't think it is naive or callow to say that Obama's success thus far indicates that the country has indeed reached a point where it no longer has to think in such prefab, codified categories. If he becomes president, then he will not answer to a demographic, he will answer to all of us. And by that measure alone, he has failed me.