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In reply to the discussion: Any thoughts why Cornel West always finds it necessary to refer to the color of the Presidents skin [View all]Cha
(297,128 posts)Star Member frazzled (11,959 posts)
6. He was doing it before Obama was president
I really can't quite forget one Sunday driving in the car with Mr. Frazzled; we're not in the car much, so it must have been on one of our trips to visit his mom in the nursing home. Since she died in early 2009, this was either in 2007 or 2008, well before Obama was president. I believe it was well before he became the nominee. It was at some point during the primaries, and I think fairly early on.
At any rate, we'd tuned into the Tavis Smiley radio show on NPR, and he had his friend West on. And they start talking about Obama and West says, "He's not really a brother, you know. His mother was white." And my husband and I looked at each other and pretty much gasped. The conversation continued about how this fellow Obama (then our senator from Illinois) was not black enough, and in that sense, was some sort of fraud.
It was the moment I wrote those two jokers off as neither very deep nor very honorable. I'm not naive, and I know that colorism exists in the black community as a sort of internal racism ... but this went beyond colorism. It was pretty much just hate. The whole conversation was dripping with vitriol ... and Obama at this point had done nothing as president to be criticized for.
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