For various psychological reasons- a sense of suburban hypocrisy, a desire to “make it on my own” and experience adventure (whatever that meant), to become an independently capable person who didn’t have to depend on hiring people to fix things (while perceiving myself as better than them)- I largely rejected the whole suburban thing and instead bought into the back to earth, rambling man movement that was a fad of the 1970s (recall the music hits at the time: Country Roads, Rambling Man, Rocky Mountain High). I didn’t become some spoiled beatnik caricature who reveled in privilege while pretending to eschew it, rather two weeks after high school I voluntarily made the acquaintance of Drill Sergeant McAvoy at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO for Army basic training. After completing Active Duty for Training I went to Laramie to attend the University of Wyoming, the first of five colleges.

In the decades following I experienced typical vicissitudes of life, but for the most part remained true to the Thank God I’m a Country Boy theme, did become a self-sufficient and eclectically capable person, and continued a level if disdain for the sterile, predictable, and at times pretentious and superficial suburban life of privilege. Nevertheless, it would be disingenuous were I to claim I am anything other than a white guy raised in suburban middle-class affluence, and there’s no shame in that.

Over the decades and centuries identifying with, or trying to avoid association with, a given ethnic, socioeconomic, racial, etc group has led to both success and lack of success, the latter often unfairly so. In the early 20^th century, for example, it was okay to be a successful, accomplished, and wealthy Jew, but you sure as heck weren’t going to be welcomed into the clubs of the Anglo-Saxon elite. Indeed, flaunting Anglo-Saxon heritage and having lots of money was what one did, whether earned by toil and effort or simply inherited. I posit that as a result of the massive economic expansion following WW2, less ostentatious and restrained middle-class wealth replaced the flaunting of excessive wealth as a societal ideal. The post-war middle-class generation- the Baby Boomers- went a step further and pretended to reject their affluence while cherishing it, something that has become solidified in our politics and society overall: I know a fair number of people who possess lots of upscale material crap, have really nice houses, take exotic vacations, and earn impressive salaries, but I know few who will admit they are rich.

Perhaps the epitome of this can be found in Joe Biden, who proudly and loudly proclaims he is from Scranton, PA (the idea being Scranton is a blue collar city), though he lived there only between the ages of six to ten. He repeatedly downgraded his economic status growing up from fairly typical middle-class to working class, and when he found himself with serious money- multiple millions- he was “middle-class Joe” (which perhaps is true if renting a house for almost $20,000 a month, as he did in 2019, is representative of being middle-class). Love or hate Donald Trump he, like the Kennedys’, never played the “I was poor” card.

While downplaying our personal financial circumstances has become embedded in our society, we’ve more recently come to something similar in terms of race and skin color, especially when people with weak credentials of being other-than white claim to be so, and exploit it for advantage. While not rejecting or minimizing being a black person, for example, is refreshing and long overdue, there have been a number of notorious cases of white people finding fame, fortune, power, and celebrity by pretending to NOT be white:

Curiously, 5 of these 6 these racial frauds found succor in academia and, while these are blatant examples of racial and ethnic deceit for personal gain (and perhaps trying to assuage a disturbed self-image), there is a more nuanced form of this misdirection: having a hint of ethnic or racial legitimacy based solely on skin shade, then exploiting it for the usual, i.e. wealth, power, and celebrity. Presently, there are two highly prominent people in US politics doing just this (see below).

As a product of white middle-class suburbia, it would be presumptuous (along with arrogant and pretentious) of me to define black American culture, not just because of who I am but because there is no such thing as a monolithic black American culture (though white progressive elites certainly prefer to view their blacks as being of one thought and belief system; it fits their narrative of black people being dependent and compliant, and gives them a basis for manipulation). Rather than use the word “culture” it’s more accurate (and less racist) to use the term experience: a middle-class upbringing is different from a poor or rich one; being raised in the suburbs is different from being raised on a farm or in a city. These varying experiences are not innately determined by race or ethnicity, but by life’s circumstances.

So, let’s look at our two highly prominent politicians whose status has been awarded to them based largely, if not exclusively, on the pretense of being of black American culture. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, the product of a Kenyan father who came to the US to attend university (including Harvard) and a white American mother (who eventually held a well-earned PhD); Obama, Sr had essentially nothing to do with his son. Obama, Jr lived in Hawaii until around the age of 6, then he and his mother moved to Indonesia to live with his step-father, Lolo Soetoto. At the age of nine, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his (white) grandparents, where he attended the exclusive private prep-school, Punahou. From there he attended the private colleges of Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard.

Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, CA in 1964 to an (Asian) Indian mother who held a PhD in nutrition and endocrinology and was a serious biomedical scientist, and a Jamaican father with a PhD in economics and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. In 1966 the family moved to the Midwest where her parents assumed positions at the Univ. of IL. The family, now with a younger child but minus the father, moved to Berkeley, CA in 1970, then to Montreal, Canada in around 1976 ,where her mother held a position at McGill University. Harris graduated from high school in 1981, then went on to attend Vanier College in Montreal, Howard University in Washington, DC, the the Univ. of CA College of Law, San Francisco. While growing up, Harris and her younger sister spent summers with their (divorced) father in Palo Alto, CA (location of Stanford Univ.), and traveled to India, Jamaica, and also took a trip to Zambia to visit her maternal grandfather, a career Indian civil servant stationed in Africa.

There is absolutely nothing wrong that both Obama and Harris lived privileged lives almost entirely apart from any typical black American experience. What is absolutely wrong is that they both are racial chameleons, who opportunistically, disingenuously, and cynically accept the status of someone who has lived the black American experience in order to advance their wealth, celebrity, and power. It’s as if I, raised in the white middle-class suburbs, tried to pass myself off as someone raised in Appalachian poverty in a decrepit trailer with a father who had a short life working in a coal mine and a mother a waitress at the local dinner. VOTE for me, because I’m one of you!

The left has an ever expanding list of unpardonable sins, and one that showed up several years ago was the sin of cultural appropriation. The first time I recall learning of this was when a college food service was condemned by the precious and privileged for hosting Mexican Night, i.e. serving tacos and burritos. Curiously, the same crowd that is offended by salsa and tortilla chips are not troubled by blatant cultural theft, as long as the people doing the stealing are kindred political spirits. Go figure. Then again, to paraphrase our lily white President Biden when addressing a primarily black audience, If you don’t vote for me, YOU AIN’T BLACK!

(In considering the concept of white to black/black to white, there is an excellent 2003 movie staring Anthony Hopkins called the Human Stain. Also, well worth reading is a seminal novel from the early 20^th century written by a black American, James Weldon Johnson, entitled the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, in which the protagonist ultimately decided to be white. Johnson wrote the lyrics to Lift Every Voice, now sometimes called the “black national anthem”).