Controversy Over Whether Tom Vilsak is Really White

There's a lot of buzz going on about whether Barack Obama is really black. Or, as critic Debra Dickerson who probably didn't intend to be racist suggested, he isn't "'black, in our political and social reality." On the Colbert Report she refined it as him being an "African African-American." While I took my silly-o-meter off to the repair shop, I got to thinking about this and came to a startling realization about one of Obama's opponents. In all this brouhaha I think the Democrats are overlooking a more pressing controversy that pertains to an even broader segment of the American population.

Tom Vilsack is not 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 essence 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.