THIS & THAT #4

HAVE WE EVER HAD

A BLACK PRESIDENT?

When I was growing up, I had a golden-skinned friend who was a “mulatto.” According to the definition in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a “mulatto is the first generation offspring of a black person and a white person.” Dictionary.com has a similar definition, “the offspring of one white parent and one black parent.”

Shirley Ann Durham was born in Wichita, Kansas and was of predominantly English ancestry, with some German, Swiss, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry. She was Barak Obama’s mother and was definitely white.

Barack Obama, Sr., the President’s father, was a Kenyan and his family members are of the Luo ethnic group. Barack, Sr. is definitely Black.

If so, then perhaps our Obama is not the first Black President of the United States, but is instead, the first mulatto President. 

Ben Carson could be the first Black President, but I wouldn’t vote for him. I was born in Detroit and went to Central High School, and was wary of people who went to other Detroit Public Schools like Southwestern High School, as Carson did.

Jalen Rose, a former National Basketball Association (NBA) player and current television analyst, also went to Southwestern. I am disappointed that through the years he allegedly never spoke in person with his biological father Jimmy Walker, who was the number one pick in the 1967 NBA Draft. The Detroit Pistons selected Walker, and I found him to be easy to talk with when we played tennis together at the Palmer Park courts. However, he was not easy to score against.

I always liked Southwestern High graduate Barney McCosky, who played for the Detroit Tigers in the 1930s and 1940s, but in keeping with my bias against persons from other Detroit Public Schools, I wouldn’t have voted for Barney for President, if he had decided to run.

I might have voted for Michigan’s Senator Carl Levin, if he would have run, but only because he went to Central High a few years before I did. Imagine that, a Jew seriously running for President. Well Yosel did in 20­­­04, and Bernie’s doing it now, so maybe it isn’t such a far-fetched idea. Will they have to take a litmus test to prove that they really are Jewish? This would be before the “birthers” spread innuendos about each candidate, and demand to see an official birth certificate, written and signed in Hebrew (or Yiddish), by a certified Orthodox Rabbi.

Oy Vey!