Initially, Christopher Hitchens, the Vanity Fair columnist and author of the bestseller God Is Not Great, was someone whose unfiltered arrogance was strangely compelling despite its ugliness. Though the concept behind his diatribes against religion made me squirm in my pew, he was often right even when he was dead wrong (if that makes sense). I had not heard of or read any other work or op-ed piece by Mr. Hitchens, so I had no basis for his stance on other sociocultural themes.
Then I came across his recent terse commentary on Barack Obama, which makes all the other "race card" hoo-ha you've been reading for the past few days seem like much ado about nothing (which it is, actually).
Here's what Hitchens had to say in a recent entry from Slate Magazine:
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool. He sometimes claims credit on behalf of all Americans regardless of race, color, creed, blah blah blah, though his recent speeches appear also to claim a victory for blackness while his supporters -- most especially the white ones -- sob happily that at last we can have an African-American chief executive.
Isn't there something pathetic and embarrassing about this emphasis on shade? And why is a man with a white mother considered to be 'black,' anyway?
Even if I agreed with his first paragraph, I'd still draw my line in the sand with the white mother comment, which is beyond reprehensible. Any objective observer can see that Obama does not try to overtly appeal to black voters on the basis of his skin color (or theirs). But after choking back on this bile, that's now a non-issue.
I am a man of mixed race, and the son of parents who are of mixed race themselves. Having black, Irish, Scottish and Seminole blood is what gives me my medium shade of brown. Like it or not, we're still black folk to the core when it comes to how we're perceived by others. The "emphasis on shade" is more of a societal problem of prejudice than what one person might do to woo voters. I can easily affirm my ethnicity when I try to catch a cab or via the strange looks I get from others amidst predominantly white suburbia. Therefore, I don't need a definitive subtext from an outsider about what's essentially been my life for almost four decades.
This should make it clear that it takes more than just discussing the topic itself to qualify any race card plays. It's one thing to try and goad others with the touchy premise of gender, race or faith. But what I and anyone else who walks in my shoes can do without is the insidious characterization of heritage based on the ignorant musings of a pompous British dick.