Black? White? From the Mouth of the Sunday Funnies . . .

by David Safier

Why is it that I find more insight in the newspaper comics, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report than I find on cable news or the op eds in the paper?

Today’s insight comes from Berkeley Brethed’s Opus,where the characters decide to have a meeting, “our first national conversation on race.” Here is the salient panel.

From a cultural-linguistic standpoint, this is an extremely interesting and important question. Why is Obama considered black because one of his parents is black? For that matter, why are people with a discernible trace of African DNA considered black in this country, even if they have more European than African genetic material floating around in their cells?

The first answer that might come to mind is, “Well, you can see that their skin is darker, so it’s natural you would say that person is black.” But that answer is most probably wrong.

I used to teach a novel, Weep Not, Child, by a Kenyan writer, Ngugui wa Thiong’o. It was told from the standpoint of a young boy growing up during the late 1950s and early 1960s, before Kenya’s independence from England. At the beginning of the book, the narrative has the disjointed, half-understood feeling of a child’s perspective. At one point, he is talking about World War II:

“The Italian prisoners who built the long tarmac road had left a name for themselves because some went about with black women and the black women had white children.”

If I were to see a photo of those “white children,” I’m sure I would say they were black. Undoubtedly, many of them had darker skin than a good portion of our African American population. But to the child, and, I’m sure, to his fellow Kenyans, they were white children.

The concept of “black people” and “white people” is a social construct. Change the nature of the society, and the labels change.

We’re beginning to talk about this becoming a “blended country,” where the racial distinctions become increasingly blurred, and increasingly irrelevant. The growing number of children born to parents who we would say are from “different races” are part of the reason. But the very serious candidacy of Barack Obama, not to mention the prominence of people like Condi Rice and Colin Powell, are helping to change our cultural perspective on the importance of race as a distinguishing characteristic.

Now, why did I have to go to the Sunday Funnnies to find this insight? Why isn’t this issue part of the roundtable discussions conducted by the Very Serious Men and Women on news shows?

In the comic, after the panel above, the others are stunned into silence. The lad at the podium slams down his gavel, screams, “Question tabled! Adjourned!” And they all go swimming. I think Breathed has answered my question.