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I watch a little show on PBS called Tony Brown's Journal which in the context of U.S. media is pretty subversive. Brown has guests who often discuss race issues (his guests are frequently academics and average about two-thirds self-identifying as black) and, like Bill Cosby, they aren't afraid to include certain aspects of what is called black culture in the U.S. as well as citing the more egregious forms of what might be called institutional racism. I have found it refreshing, if occasionally baffling.
I find Halle Berry refreshing in her beauty and baffling in her logic as well. She's promoting her new movie by decrying the racism of Hollywood, etc., etc. In other words, this woman of both white and black parents, a veritable Lena Horne of hybrid vigour, is identifying herself as "black" for what I presume are mixed political and promotional reasons. Pun intended.
And yet this particular heir of Martin Luther King had surgery 20 years ago to give herself a little retrousse nose. I sometimes think that if she wanted to be TRULY radical and groundbreaking, she could, with equal cause, identify herself as "white" (whatever that means) and thus force to the surface the societal hypocrisy that makes one "black" if there is a tiny visible phenotypical element of Negritude in one's look (Ice-T, Vanessa Williams, the aforementioned vaguely Italianate Lena Horne), but "white" if the genetic cards fall in a pasty direction.
What bollocks. I have family members ranging from fell off the potato cart Irish-looking to "blacker" than Halle Berry, and so feel qualified to comment. Race has got to be almost as stupid-making as religion.
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