hey chris matthews

So I had to read your book Hardball for Gov/Econ in high school, and I don't remember much because it was a summer reading assignment and I did it like the day it was due, like everyone else, and I don't watch your show or any newstalk or news shows because I am an ignorant git and don't have a TV.

But I'm gonna stand by you. I don't agree with your statement for a number of reasons--

• I think "post-racial" is bullshit and will never happen and shouldn't happen. There is a double standard where whites are expected to get over race while racial and ethnic groups continue to consider "whites" as something completely different and in opposition to their enclave when instead whites are likewise a racial and cultural group(s) with all the same type of problems and difficulties. If people continue to believe that racism is only a white problem, nobody is gonna get anywhere.
  

• Obama isn't black. He's a half-ie/y. If people continue to try to shove biracial people into one or the other category of the parents without acknowledging that it is possible to exist away from those lines or in between, we're still stuck in a racist-- not racial-- era.

But you are taking flack for what was not an insult. It was a faux-pas for people who like to think they are beyond race but twitch everytime somebody says something that isn't sterile and PC-- hey, psst- Oriental. I think it was sincerely meant while I don't agree with it, and really, it is essentially what everyone was saying when Obama got elected-- oh look, we elected a black guy. How historic. How racist?

The only time I "remember" that Obama is "black," ie-- when I am reminded that I am supposed to take this into consideration-- is when someone says stuff like "our first black president." (And really, that's a lie in itself. He is suddenly "black" when it suits people, when they need something to celebrate since the term has just started and it's easy to talk about simple shit like that when we are dealing with an increasingly complex national role occupied by a single person responsible for an overwhelming amount of decisions.) Normally, he's the President. That guy. Oh haha, you can buy Obama hats at Herald Square from the Nigerians. But I guess that is racist. Because they might be from Ghana. And I still think they cursed our last apartment.

I think this commenter says it well, so it's worth checking out since I went off about other things. The threads are also worth browsing, and there are some disturbing things about ideas of "blackness"-- especially how it is okay to consider that a viable model for something-- whether it's something a black person or white person or other believes in, or something one person is accusing another of harboring as a notion. This guys says some of that & more much more coherently.

Eh, Blackness, whiteness. How about a "don't fuck with me I won't fuck with you"-ness. Or "fuck with me and I will fuck with you (or run away)"-ness-- based on social interaction rather than race. Sure, it's hard to separate the two, but I'm sure somewhere out there can.