Is Denying Obama's Blackness Racism?

I awoke this morning to the sounds of Bo Deitl proclaiming to Don Imus how Barack Obama is "not really Black."

The reasons Bo Deitl put forward were:

1. The Matrilineal test. His mother was white - so he's just as much White as Black. I think of this as the Tiger Woods Racial Process (TWRP) (remember Tiger's equivocation on the matter "Cablinasian"). Tiger's analysis at least rings true because he makes it himself. He has the right to identify himself as he likes and his view of not rejecting his Thai mother has some resonance with me. Conversely the Black American rejection of this analysis always struck me as a bit racist: claiming someone for the race because he passed the one drop rule of slavery just didn't seem like the right way to go. Black people had a fit with Tiger but then went on about their business because we knew what his father knew: when America looked at him they saw a Black man. I call that the Police Officer Test - what does the cop think you are at midnight on the highway.
2. His mother's family is an old American family.
   His mother's family tree, at least as reported byt Sunday's NY Post, goes back to the revolutionary era. Well that should seal the deal, right?!
   

It's at this point that I start shouting at the radio and Imus wisely starts interrupting him and looking for the mic switch. Having reportedly learned his lesson the hard way, courtesy of Rutger's University last year, Imus knows much too much now to get into racial identiy politics.

This idea, this apologist rationalization has been picking up wind on Craigslist as well lately. By the way, the single scariest place on the internet is the craigslist political posting area - screeds and screeds with anonymity).

I suppose it's to be expected that if he's disciplined, focused, smart, successful - there's just no way we can just let him be Black. Is that a bridge too far? For some clearly it is.