Man, I wouldn't walk in Barack Obama's shoes for a million dollars. Oh, he seems like a swell guy. But it must get real old real fast being America's tabula rasa, its blank slate upon which it projects unresolved racial aspirations and fears. If it has been painful watching some conservative white Americans project upon him the latter (Is he too black? Is he Muslim? What about that weird name?), it has been just as painful if not more so watching many black Americans grappling with the former.
Here's Obama's problem: By the simple fact of his existence, he changes the conversation. Last week, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson aired a segment pondering what it means when Obama is asked whether he's black enough. He and two other white pundits pontificated, without apparent irony, upon the meaning of blackness. No blacks joined them. If there's been a plainer, though less intentional, argument for greater media diversity in recent days, I haven't seen it.
--Leonard Pitts
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