JOHN KERRY IS NOT BLACK, and black people have noticed:

WASHINGTON – The head of a civil rights and legal services advocacy group wants Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to apologize for saying he wouldn’t be upset if he could be known as the second black president.

“John Kerry is not a black man — he is a privileged white man who has no idea what it is in this country to be a poor white in this country, let alone a black man,” said Paula Diane Harris, founder of the Andrew Young National Center for Social Change.

He sure doesn’t look very black in this photo! Let’s be honest: Kerry has no idea what it is to be even a middle-class white in this country.

UPDATE: A reader points out that George W. Bush is rich, too. True enough. But he’s not quoting André Gide and posing as black!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lonewacko notes the Toni Morrison quote from which the Clinton-as-black-President trope emerged:

…white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.

(Emphasis in original). Doesn’t sound much like either Bush or Kerry, does it?