"Gray is my favorite color; I felt so symbolic yesterday."

Although I have not read Obama's lastest book, The Audacity of Hope , I am highly impressed from what I have seen of him online and on television since he first appeared on the political scene 2 years ago. But, on the back cover of his book, I read that even though his mother was a white woman from Kansas, he is labeled a black American because of his African father. Now, if he and his team are purposefully playing up that aspect of his heritage, then I don't really have any problems. However, this resembles a lingering prejudice in America, a residue from Jim Crow laws and segregation. In our history, a person who had even the slightest percent of African decent was considered a second-class citizen. Blatant racism and segregation may be gone, but if you look closely, that mindset is still prevalent in main stream society. Tiger Woods is one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch. He affably refers to his ethnic make-up as Cablinasian (a portmanteau of Caucasian, Black, American-Indian, and Asian), but the rest of America simply labels him black. If America is going to label Woods with only one ethnicity, shouldn't it be Asian since that's the prodominate heritage? I am glad that he and Obama are able to act as role models from the black community, but why are we still polarizing ethnicity in America?

What else can I say except to end with a great quote from Bullworth starring Warren Beatty: All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep [sleepin' with] everybody 'til they're all the same color.