The sight of a biracial couple will force people with “conventional views” to repress a “gag reflex,” according to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.
In Tuesday’s edition of the Post, Cohen offers his perspective on newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is married to a black woman and has two biracial children.
Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.
The column, which has been met with derision from several members of the media, marks Cohen’s latest awkward attempt to discuss race.
He wrote last week that the movie “12 Years A Slave” affirmed to him that “slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks.”
In July, Cohen wrote that George Zimmerman was justified to be suspicious of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin. Martin’s hoodie, Cohen wrote, was a “uniform we all recognize.”
