President Obama isn't black

President Obama may lose the fall election because a few percent of Democrats--and a much larger percentage of Republicans--won't vote for a black man (unless he's an Uncle Tom of course).

The irony here is that Barack Obama isn't actually black. First, he's exactly half and half--no more black than he is white. Second, he was raised entirely by white people in parts of the country and of the world that were almost devoid of black people, much less a black community. Third, he spent much of his formative years in Hawaii, arguably the most interracial, polycultural state in America--but one with very few blacks, despite having lots of everything else.

He didn't become even superficially black until after college, when he moved to Chicago and became a community organizer there and married an authentically black American woman and started attending an authentically black Christian church.

He has learned to sound a bit black in his speech patterns and how he holds himself. But it's a patina. He's really an Oreo--neither a criticism nor a praise. It's just who he is. A white man who looks like a black man, with a patina of black culture acquired as an adult.