> Following the lead of your Trotsky example, it's not whether Magic Johnson
> (and why did you pick him?) is black or white. It's whether he's an
> American. He is, you know. In some senses, black Americans are more American
> than I am - my mother's siblings were born in Italy and Italian was their
> first language. His ancestors have been here for four centuries.
Trotsky's actually a pretty bad example for Chris's point, given his earlier definition of a Jew "being a Yiddish-speaking person of the Pale or the remaining descendents thereof that the Nazis did not kill off." Trotsky's family spoke Russian and Ukrainian and not Yiddish.
Mike