Rob Parker's comment today on ESPN's "First Take" that Robert Griffin III is "not really" black logically implies that the color of an individual's skin defines certain ways that person is supposed to think and act.
Not only does this kind of perspective exacerbate gratuitous stereotypes but it reflects the same kind of racial determinism (albeit from a different direction) that the abolitionist and civil rights movements strived decades to eradicate.
If America is to be a place where each is judged by their character and not their skin color, then Mr. Parker's view that someone must behave a certain way to be authentically black is no more permissible than the belief that blacks or anyone else are inferior because -- and only because -- of the color of their skin.
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