Barack Obama announced Possible Presidential Run in 2008 (AP Photo)
Obama's "Blackness" Story aired: Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Our recent conversation with Salon columnist Debra J. Dickerson on Senator Barack Obama's "blackness" sparked a wide-range of responses and reactions from Here & Now listeners.
Dickerson's premise was that many African American don't call Barak Obama black, because as the son of a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas, he does not embody the black American history of slavery or their fight for civil rights. And Dickerson also said that white Americans embrace Obama precisely because he doesn't remind them of those painful issues.
We air some of the responses to our interview with Dickerson and then talk with Melissa Harris Lacewell, associate professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton, about the controversy.
