People Who Are Not Black...

Introducing a delightful new parlor game! To play now, just scroll past my blabbering.

In honor of tomorrow's South Carolina primary, where black voters appear ready to embrace the Obamanomenon, let's take a little walk down memory lane.

Almost exactly a year ago, self-described pundit Debra Dickerson wrote a thoughtful piece for Salon about Obama and race. Her take on what Obama represents for both black and white Americans was carefully reasoned and insightful.

Until this:

"Since the issue was always framed as a battle between gender and race...I didn't have the heart (or the stomach) to point out the obvious: Obama isn't black. " (My emboldening.)

She went on:

"'Black,' in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent... "

Stephen Colbert had Dickerson on soon after the article and its attendant flap. "It sounds to me like you are judging blackness not on the color of someone's skin, but on the content of their character," said Colbert. "Which I think realizes Dr. King's dream in a very special way."

Now, in fairness, I understand what Dickerson was driving at: Obama's heritage makes him very different from most African Americans. (She seems to want to imply that he has no baggage; I would submit that he has different baggage, including the kind that riles Dickerson.) It should also be noted that exactly half of what makes Obama different from other African Americans is that he's also white. So, perhaps Dickerson could have said he's of mixed racial descent or his ancestors were not slaves in this country or he's a newer member of the American black community or he's a brother by another mother...

But to call him "not black"?

Taking this assertion to its many logical conclusions makes for a delightful parlor game. I call it


People Who Are Not Black
(If Barack Obama Is Not Black)

WORLD LEADER TYPES
Nelson Mandela (South Africa)
Kofi Annan (Ghana)

HIP HOP PIONEERS
Slick Rick (England)
Afrika Bambaataa (Caribbean somewhere)
Grandmaster Flash (Barbados)
DJ Kool Herc (Jamaica)


Did you know hip hop was founded not by black people, but voluntary immigrants of African descent?

HOTTIES THE BLACK COMMUNITY HAD BEST HANG ON TO
John Amaechi (England/Nigeria)
Karrine "Superhead" Steffans (St. Thomas)
Idris Elba (England/Sierra Leone/Ghana)

Is Dickerson ready to banish eye candy Stringer Bell?


TWO OF MY FAVE ENTERTAINMENT REPORTERS
Sal Masekela [+ his jazzman, pops, of course] (South Africa)
Lola Ogunnaike (Nigeria)

PEOPLE I KNOW
My Riverside extended fam Zaid, Russom, Astena, Dibora, Helen and Raquel (Eritrea)
Elementary school chums Gian (Trinidad) and Brona (Ireland/Guyana)
Garden class hero Dylan (Belize)

Which cutie planting tomatoes is black and which isn't?

CELEBRATED AUTHORS
Zadie Smith (England/Jamaica)
Claude McKay (Jamaica)
Jamaica Kincaid (no, not Jamaica: Antigua)

SERIOUSLY, THESE PEOPLE AREN'T BLACK?
Marcus Garvey (Jamaica)
Biggie Smalls (Jamaica)

Maybe his murder case will be solved now that he's not black!

MORE MISC MUSIC CELEBS
Rihanna (Barbados)

Seal (England/Nigeria)
Sean Kingston (Jamaica)
Akon (Senegal)

Marleys, all (Jamaica)
Wyclef Jean (Haiti)

CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHORS ON WHOM MY BOYFRIEND HAS CRUSH
Isha Sesay (England/Sierra Leone)

He does have a point.

All those guys hanging out at Oakland cafes (Ethiopia/Eritrea)
Population of African continent (Africa)
Non-American diaspora of African descent (all countries outside U.S. and Africa)


OH YEAH, AND...
Barack Obama (Kenya/Kansas white folks)


Who'd I forget?


Research assistance by Crimson & Associates.

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Jews Come Out of the Cultural Closet

Ah, what a time to be a Jew. No slavery, no pogroms, no shtetlech, no concentration camps. And for the first time ever, we're cool!

On Wednesday's Daily Show, Jon Stewart Jewed it up with Ted Koppel--"It's like when you're sitting there at Passover..."--as he now does whenever he has on a fellow tribe member and I'm thinking, Jesus. This is almost too much. One more "mishpocheh" or "punim" and I might get nauseous.

(And incidentally, Koppel with Stewart...How many degrees does that put me from Stephen Colbert?)
I mean, yeah, there have always been Jewish entertainers, as is the case in any population that would otherwise be depressed by all the oppression and stuff. I'm sure up in the Catskills they were making gefilte fish gags. But for a while there, even Jewish comedians purveying obviously Jewish humor weren't acknowledging that they were Jewish.

Take Seinfeld. (Please.) His show was all about New York Jews and their neurotic nothing-doing. But did Jerry and Elaine ever flake on a Bat Mitzvah invite or scalp for High Holy Day tickets? Contrast that with Seinfeld co-producer Larry David's current show Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which characters do both. Also on HBO, the most Jewish character ever played by a gentile: Entourage's deliciously dickish Ari Gold.



Sarah Silverman debuted her Comedy Central show last year by warning viewers to expect "full frontal Jewdity."

Shoot, had he come up these days, Jon might not even have felt the need to change his name to Stewart.

And it's not just the comedy world. Did the Beastie Boys ever rap about the girlies with the big ole tukheses? Hell no. But hip hop producer Scott Storch--who I'm so not endorsing, btw--calls his production company Tuff Jew. And 50 Cent's team of lawyers? They're called Jew Unit.



I could go on. I already mentioned Stephen Colbert's 1-800-OOPS-JEW Atonement Line. And one channel up, on E!, Sal Masekela (who is, by the way, the son of South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela, in case you, like me, were wondering like crazy) was wishing the Daily 10 viewership a "Shanah Tovah."

For a little Jewess who grew up in a desert exurb in which "Jew" was not even, for better or worse, a category (the categories: white, black, Mexican), it's all very heartening. When Adam Sandler came out with the Hanukkah Song, I thought that was as good as it was gonna get.

UPDATE: Check out Jews Come Out Part Tsvey.

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Days of "\ ä \"

A Pronunciation Guide for Gentiles

Stephen Colbert's genetic lineage testing gave him a 75% shot of being Jewish. But the 25% must have won, because as he plugs his 1-888-OOPS-JEW Days of Awe atonement line, he says:

R\ä\SH H\ä\SH\ä\N\ä\
(RAH-SHAH-SHAH-NAH)

and

Y\ä\M K\i\P\u\R
(YAHM KIH-POOR)

As do many gentiles, even those with Jew friends like me or Jon Stewart. I understand. It's weird.

We American Jews make this more confusing by our own ambivalence. We vascillate between old-timey Ashkenaziphilic Yiddish and the ancient/modern Sephardiphilic Hebrew.

It is sometimes said (by Brian), that all rappers are either enunciaters or slurrers. If the two great Jewish languages were rappers, let's just say Hebrew would be the enunciater. Thus the more formal, upright Hebrew pronunciations:

R\o\SH H\ [a'] \SH\ [a'] \N\ [a'] \
[ROSH (rhymes with "roach," not "posh") HAH-SHAH NAH]

and

Y\o\M K\E\P\u\R
[YOME (rhymes with "tome," not "Tom") KEY-POOR]


But when I was a kid, everybody I knew used Americanized Yiddish names for the High Holy Days:

R\ə\SH\ə\ SH\ə\N\ə\
[RUSHA SHUNNA]

and

Y\u\M K\i\PR
[YUM KIPPER]

Got it? Is my poor use of diacritical marks helping?

Seems nowadays nobody but old American Jews use the Yiddishized "Yum Kipper," so I've adapted to the Hebraicized "Yome Key-poor." But the Hebrew sounds too formal for me for New Year's. I still say "Rusha Shunna."

Here's one everyone says right:

SHANAH TOVAH!

WOOHOO! 5768!

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*!POP!* Culture Report

David Montero said he feared pop culture was on the decline. I scoffed. I told him there was lots of great new hip hop--although Brian, responsible for bringing said hip hop into our home, Eeyored it and agreed with Montero and Nas that hip hop is dead.

What about Game's "Olde English," the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful song ever? (No, ever. It's not up for debate.) And that Timbaland beat for "The Way I Are" is so awesome that yesterday I played it on my pretend iPod in my head for 35 minutes on the elliptical. (I ain't got no Visa/I ain't got no Red American Express. I burned like a whole muffin's worth of calories!) Even the unbearable ego of Kanye West has managed to turn out two hot new tracks, I told Montero with irrepressible optimism. He's been in Pakistan, so he wasn't up on all this.

He moped on, But what about rock and tv and...Well, said I, what about that Killers song that goes, I don't shine if you don't shine and Sarah Silverman and Stephen Colbert with their own shows? Maybe it's just the first time I've descended from my mountain lair of intellectual superiority to pay attention, but this moment in pop culture seems just great to me. Fandamntastic. Seriously, do you watch Best Week Ever?

Of course I was positioning myself rather dangerously.

The very next day there was this adorable call-and-response on Wild 94.9:

Baby where'd you get your body from
Tell me where'd you get your body from
Baby where'd you get your body from
Tell me where'd you get your body fromI got it from my mama
I got it from my mama
I got it from my mama

At first I couldn't imagine who was responsible for this schlock. I should have put it together immediately that only will.i.am.shameless could make such a horrible, horrible song with a super catchy beat and only Fergie could lower herself enough to sing, All of this stuff right here/I got all this from my mama. As if family shit isn't crazy enough, now we have to bring in this creepy sexiness inheritance idea.

It didn't get better when I heard the new Justin Timberlake/50 Cent song, which sounded like a good idea at first. This track had "matchmaker" written all over it. By which I mean not that it sounded like it should have been on the "Fiddler on the Roof" soundtrack, but that it sounded like a pairing strategically designed by a focus group for audience maximization rather than an organic creative collaboration. I can just imagine some Yenta at the studio thinking, Fitty needs to reach more middle American white kids and Justin needs better hip hop cred...
Oh well.

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