We're All Black

The "I am African" ad campaign has some people (lots of people, really) fired up. Maybe I just can't get fired up about anything right now -- afterall, my only response to the racially segregated Survivor season is that our family won't participate in anything where we can't be on the same team (which in the end has more radical consequences than any complaint I could make - the networks have stopped reading my hate mail).

Maybe it's just ineffective, too close to the ONE campaign, or just downright patronizing as all uses of celebrity utimately are or seem. Maybe they are really racist, suggesting that Africa should matter because of our (whites') primal origins, and not on its own terms.

Maybe it is confounding and confusing, just as we are in our household: when ds had to mix his skin color and name it in school yesterday as part of a unit on self-awareness and family, he painted a warm shade, tested the patch on his skin (a close match, if a little darker) and named it (and himself) "chocolate chip," despite having shared at home that he thinks Miss I. is chocolate and he's cinammon ice cream.