Tom Vilsack is not really white.

You know, as I look at the man's background, I can't help but notice that Tom Vilsack, the ex-governor of Iowa running for the Democratic nomination is not really everything he appears to be. The core of the white experience in America is to grow up with parents, embraced by the adoring love of an adoring, apron-bound mother, with a front yard and a li'l beagle pup named "cottonball." To be white, as white has come to really mean in our society, is to be socially mobile, to visit your grandparents each summer, to have cousins in a small town who you think are dumber than you, to lose your virginity to your high school sweetheart, but marry another girl whom you meet in college. The essense of whiteness is to get loans from the bank pretty easily, to hate your first job straight out of college, to watch porno on the internet when your wife is out of town, to be proud of yourself when you realize you've got at least three black friends.

Folks, Tom Vilsack has had most of these experiences, or experiences similar to them. But it turns out that he's not really qualified to present himself as a white candidate for president--no matter how articulate he seems. For you see, Tom Vilsack is adopted. And white people just don't get adopted. Well, not real white people. Oh, white people like Vilsack's adoptive parents do adopt, of course, but real white people adopt babies from Korea. Being the biological son of a woman who gave him up, the son of a man who never stayed around to take care of his own offspring--well, that's just not what I, in all fairness and subjectively, imagine in my head when I think about white people and the white experience. I know what I'm talking about: not only have I watched nearly every episode of the Brady Bunch (tho I never seem to be able to catch the second half of their Hawaiian vacation special), but I am also uniquely qualified to speak on this subject because I myself am white.

So Tom Vilsack: he's a nice guy. I wish him good luck. He might even become someday an inspirational leader for us. But don't say that Tom Vilsack represents us. He's simply never had and can never hope to understand the real white experience in America.

Also, about that John Edwards... he's not really a lawyer.

The Colbert Report last night. :rofl:

But I've been mulling this essay over in my head for quite a while now.

Almost all intelligent people capable of utterly dissociating their words from their actions are lawyers.

Which, in my experience, means you're not a real DUer.

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

and although he was indeed white in appearance, he belonged to an ethnic group not particularly thought of as "white bread" white. Anyway, you get the point. And although by most standards I am considered white, thank heavens, by yours I am not. B-)

Edited to add that I just read the next several post and get the point of your post. Senior moment, I guess. I misunderstood your first post, is not the first time, and thought you were putting a priority on being white. (did not read the post all the way through) I am of mixed heritage but am regarded white. People laugh at me if I claim my American Indian heritage, my mother's family "passed" for many years and although my mother looked like her Indian ancestors, I do not.

I too find the claim about Obama as absurd. My mother's experience growing up with dark skin was much different from mine with my fair skin, and the fact that she was almost as much "white" as I am, did not make much difference. My children have a Latino father and the coloring of their father/my mother. Their experience has been much different from mine. And people who want to say that having a white mother has made them to be seen as less Latino/dark are crazy. They faced the same discrimination as any other person with that heritage. In fact they may have faced more because they have a very mixed "racial" heritage, and because they were not accepted by all Latinos as one of theirs either.

But as a white mother who surrendered a white child to adoption, I didn't find it funny. At all.

One of the targets of my satire was the absurdity of the claim that if someone doesn't fit into extremely narrow and mostly inaccurate racial stereotypes somehow invalidates their authenticity. Obama is being sullied for not being black because his father was African. I found that ludicrous. Vilsack has a very compelling (and inspiring) personal biography, but it does not fit into the broad strokes of a bland "Ozzie and Harriet" reality that society tends to assume for white people.

It's absurd to think that his background in anyway detracts from Vilsack's legitimacy as a candidate. Only an idiot would seriously suggest such a thing. And yet many people are making the parallel claims about Obama, as if racial identity is some big uniform thing that prints out leaders from a cookie cutter. So my target was the blindness of that cookie cutter mentality, not the wonderful and miraculous institution of adoption.

I could tell you how some of my best friends are adoptees, but I don't want you to think I'm trying to make everything about race tonight. Instead I'll only offer you my apologies and an olive branch.

And... I also appreciated the smart humor.

Like the poster who is an adoptee said, the humor gets lost when you live it. But I understand what you were trying to say.

I'm a white adoptee, and although I wasn't offended by the post, I didn't think
it was funny either. I think when you live the joke, the personal reality trumps
the joke--and the humor is lost. I just wanted you to know that I understand. As an
adoptee, I also wanted you to know that I think you were brave and incredibly unselfish
to give your child up for adoption.

:)

I wouldn't say I wass brave and unselfish. I really didn't have a choice. But my son has great adoptive parents and he's grown into a wonderful young man.

You can read my adoption story at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2991/marybb.html

I watched that woman on Colbert with my mouth hanging open.

He blamed the Iraqis for Bush's mess in Messopotamia.