Obama's Race Speech: This Zebra's Thoughts

written by Marc (Zebra)

Being a zebra, I found Mr. Obamaʼs "race speech" to be exactly what this country needed to hear. Things are rarely black and white (except me, of course.) The very definitions of who is black and who is white aren't even black and white. Consider this: black people are not actually black (theyʼre shades of brown) but the term brown is reserved for people of Hispanic heritage. Meanwhile whites are not actually white (theyʼre flesh-colored) yet the infamous flesh-eating disease attacks all skin colors equally. It's very confusing.


For these reasons I believe itʼs time Americans took a page from both Mr. Obama and the Disease playbook and ignored skin color altogether. Am I white with black stripes or am I black with white stripes? What difference does it make? As Mr. Obama so elegantly pointed out in this speech, these definitions are old- fashioned and petty. Whatever the label, Iʼm the same animal on the inside. Weʼre ALL the same. A goat and a whitefish may LOOK different but inside there IS no difference. (Except that one is a warm-blooded mammal while the other has gills but letʼs not let semantics and pigeon-holing definitions throw us off track.) 

Senator Obama's basic message is that we have to start looking beyond color. This is exactly the same sentiment that Paul McCarthy wrote in his song EBONY AND IVORY -- the black keys and the white keys need each other and there can be harmony as long as the black keys stay in their place. Iʼm paraphrasing. (By the way, kudos to Mr. McCarthy for not cow-towing to political correctness by putting black players into The Beatles simply because beatles are black insects.) The next time we hear the phrase, "Thatʼs a horse of a different color," let's follow Mr. Obamaʼs advice and say, "So what? Color is on the outside but inside, where it counts, all horses are the same." (Except sea horses, which have an external exoskeleton and donʼt poop grass clumps the size of tennis balls.) 

I could go on but I think Iʼve made my point.

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