Is that black enough for you?

In March I posted a video of a woman saying Barak Obama isn't black. It's funny, and got picked up here and there.

Today, a comment has been left on that post. It's impassioned, and because the original post is now a way down the blog I'm bringing it out into a post of its own. It's a voice that deserves to be heard:

Obama Ain't Black Enough

I am writing this because I am sick and tired of ignorant statements like Obama's mother is white and therefore he cannot know or represent me as a black or Afro-American man or woman.

First of all, let me say I have not made up my mind who I will vote for in the presential election so this is not an endorsement, but I do want to speak to those small minded-ignorant folk who keep saying he is not black enough. As a perosn whose mother was white and father was black I make the following statement:

Stop hating white people who love black or brown people enough to marry them and deal with all the ignorant people both white and black because they love the person they are with. My mother and father met in the 50's and she was slapped by policemen, called all kinds of names and rejected by her family because she chose to marry a black or Afro-American man.

Before she died she was a mother to many of our friends (all black or latina) that lived in our neighborhoods and by the way we lived and were raised in LA, Compton and Watts is that black enough for you? I was a member of a nortious gang and a hustler on the streets of LA and Compton and was good at it plus I am still alive does that make me black enough for you?

I have gotten on elevators and watched white women tuck their purses in as if... is that black enough for you? on two of my jobs I have been denied a promotion because I did not fit the corporate profile is that good enough to be called black or Afro-American. According to Jim Crow laws I was black the day I was born even if my skin happed to be lighter. So please get over yourselves and judge people by the content of their character not how black, brown light or white they may be isnt that all we ever ask for in the first place.

Many of us have experienced the hardships and reality of life as black people even if lighter thatn some of our other brothers and sisters. Just because our mother or father are of another race does not make us any less black or Afro-American.