Bill Clinton isn't black!
By Jabari Asim
... Let me make this perfectly clear: Clinton is not black. He does not "talk" black, whatever on Earth that means. He does not "walk" black either. I'm sure I'm not the only black man in America who finds such woefully distorted logic insulting and distasteful. Surely others can't help but see the painful irony of Clinton being celebrated as a hero in a legendary community where giants once walked the streets. Harlem helped nurture the talents of men like W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson, and when we carelessly tolerate the connection of Bill Clinton to their storied legacy we sully the names of immortals.
Are black men so hungry for modern heroes that we eagerly exchange brotherhood for Clinton's occasional teary-eyed assurance that he feels our pain? And are such gestures, regardless of their sincerity, sufficient to overcome Clinton's many, repeated moral failings? What have black men to gain by attaching our loyalty so firmly to a man whose place in history grows shakier by the minute?
I've never understood many blacks' irrational exuberance where Clinton was concerned. I didn't trust him from the get-go, smelled something rotten during his first successful presidential campaign, when he attempted to reassure moderate-leaning whites by making a symbolic punching bag out of Sister Souljah, a marginal hip-hop performer with minimal influence. My suspicion deepened when he turned his back on Haitian refugees moments after moving into the White House. These and other slick maneuverings linger in my memory whenever anyone, even jokingly, associates the content of the former president's character with the color of my skin. ...
[Full text: http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/02/26/black/index.html]
Carl
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