There's a really interesting discussion going on over on my post on Dr. Cornel West's attacks on Barack Obama, but I thought this in particular from commenter Jack Smith about the larger conversation surrounding black authenticity was worth reposting:
For mixed people, blackness is not accepted as a fact of existence but something negotiable, a question of membership to which those whom are Truly Black may grant you access. This gives the game away of course, the reality of race as an invention, if one we have no choice but to live with.
This is not only true for mixed people. It is also true for any black people who are not considered Truly Black for a constellation of reasons. Not muscular enough? Skinny "like a white girl"? Hair too straight? Listen to the wrong music? Have too many friends from foreign countries? Taught yourself a valuable skill? Libertarian? Republican? Voted for Nader? Play the violin? An atheist? Shinto? Vegan? Test scores too high? Dress too preppy? Haven't been to prison? Attended the wrong college? Use proper grammar? Think some black intellectuals are buffoonish? Eat too much sushi? Is your favorite film director someone other than Spike Lee? Or any of a million other possible perceived flaws, faults, or imprecations. The Black Thought Police will get you!
One of the things that was silly and pernicious--particularly from a professor with West's scholarly background--is the idea that "rootlessness" is somehow unique to our biracial president, or evidence of "deracination." "Rootlessness" and the destruction of the original inherited culture of former slaves is central to the black experience in the diaspora, one black intellectuals in the West--from W.E.B. DuBois to Franz Fanon--have been grappling with since there were black intellectuals in the West. It emerges to the forefront in conversations about the children of interracial couples, but African-Americans in particular have always been a "hybrid people." That's part of why Obama's personal narrative resonated so widely among black Americans in the first place--it was, for obvious reasons, deeply familiar.
