Roundtable: Is Blackness Now A Commodity? : NPR
And we may or may not be joined ... of Black Politics on the Web. If she comes on we will let her join the conversation. Now, welcome to both of you. Ms. CARMEN DIXON (Media Consultant): Hello. Mr. LENNY MCALLISTER (Political Analyst): Hello. Hello my wonderful, friend. How are you doing, Carmen? COX: Well, he was saying welcome to - I guess you're his wonderful friend, Carmen. Ms. DIXON: Yes. I am but I can't ... And we may or may not be joined later on by Felicia Harvey, editor of Black Politics on the Web. If she comes on we will let her join the conversation. Now, welcome to both of you. Ms. CARMEN DIXON (Media Consultant): Hello. Mr. LENNY MCALLISTER (Political Analyst): Hello. Hello my wonderful, friend. How are you doing, Carmen? COX: Well, he was saying welcome to - I guess you're his wonderful friend, Carmen. Ms. DIXON: Yes. I am but I can't hear him.Last month, the firestorm erupted over an offensive cartoon in the New York Post that many say equated a chimpanzee with the president of the United States, that's the bad. Here's some of the good. CNN aired a two-part special called "Black in America." CNBC has a special report on the new black over class.I don't know if we are a new flavor, but I think that race and blackness, and alternatively whiteness is getting more attention because of who Barack Obama is, a self-identified black man who's now our president. It's interesting that someone like me who talks about race all the time, and until this Barack Obama's ascendancy sometimes felt like she was spinning in the wind, race and racism and the complexity of race in America - it never goes away.Mr. MCALLISTER: Well, I would agree, I mean, a part of it is this, the dichotomy within black America is so great now. You have the president of the United States and you still have much of black America, in particular, young black male youths at a crisis situation.