In Obama's case, his "blackness" as perceived by black Chicagoans, was only skin deep.
In an interview with the New York Times, he suggested in 2012 that Obama is "boxed in by his blackness" and often treated black people callously.
There were always New Yorkers more than willing to remind even this most successful of black men of his blackness and what that meant in a city rived by race.
Watching his performances there is a palpable passion and joy in the craft while expressing a particular expression of his blackness and connections to a black religious framework.
If there are two things everyone should know about Prince, it's that he loved his blackness and he truly appreciated black women. .
I played it like somebody who "thought he was black" and felt persecuted for his "blackness".
And how we come to understand the black male American experience.The conversation about Brown's death should be centered around his blackness, and how blackness scares some in this country to kill black men.
His rootedness would be inseparable from his blackness, an identity that has to recede far into the background for a black candidate to have a chance.
Another black man who is in some way reminded every single day of his blackness and the lack of comfort that some people have with it.
He wears his blackness easily.
Sometimes he paints himself with charcoal until the rain comes to wash away his blackness.
