Kerry Won't Be A Black President

Last week, Kerry gave an interview to American Urban Radio in which he said:

President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second.

A civil rights group wants Kerry to apologize for that remark.

Today, Paula Diane Harris, founder of the Andrew Young National Center for Social Change, had this to say about Kerry's comment:

It is sad that candidates will say anything for a vote. “I consider John Kerry’s statement regarding his earning the right to be known as the second black president an insult,” stated Paula Diane Harris, Founder, President and & CEO of the Andrew Young National Center for Social Change Inc. John Kerry is not a black man-- he is a privileged white man who has no idea what it is to be a poor white in this country, let alone a black man.

Kathleen Parker, in this op-ed piece, explains why Kerry isn't going to be a black president:

Speaking strictly as a honkie, I find few pastimes more amusing than watching white people try to be black. With John Kerry's announcement that he would like to be the second black president, the next eight months promise an embarrassment of riches.

Kerry, whose soul quotient makes George Bush look like James Brown, made the remark Tuesday following his anointing as the Democratic presidential nominee: "President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second."

How does one earn the right to be a black president? That may depend on what your definition of "black" is.

The definition that got Clinton thus dubbed was provided by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, who wrote in a 1998 New Yorker essay that Clinton was our nation's first black president because he "displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

If that's the definition of "black," then there are legions of blacks out here posing as white boys, but John Kerry - born and married rich, Boston Brahmin, guitar-playing, goat-cheese-loving Beacon Hill boy - ain't one of them.

John Kass, writing in the Chicago Tribune, isn't impressed with Kerry's black aspirations either:

Great. That's just what Urban Radio Network listeners need: a rich white guy married to an even richer white woman to form the second black family to occupy the White House.

I just got used to the idea that Kerry wasn't Irish, and now he's gone and confused me even more by becoming black.

What's next? Will Kerry pass out old copies of the book "Black Like Me" at his first presidential news conference?

We all have wishes and dreams. Well, I wouldn't be upset if my wife surprised me by inheriting hundreds of millions of dollars in ketchup cash.

[. . .]

And after spending my wife's new ketchup fortune on boats and fine cars, Cape Cod vacation homes, gigantic plasma TVs, and so on, I'd happily condemn those evil, rich special interests.

How long before Kerry flip flops on this issue?

Comments

[Andy]

Why the uproar when Kerry said he wouldn't mind being known as the second black president?Where was the uproar when Clinton was called the first black president.Maybe Kerry would fare better if he had an office in Harlem.