“The Five Negro Presidents” is a Litmus Test for Racial Sanity

Sanity would lead us to assume we’ve had a good deal more than just five…

A way to gauge racial sanity in yourself and the people around you is to note the reaction when you read out loud the full title of J.A Rogers’ 1965 book “The Five Negro Presidents (U.S.A): According to What White People Said They Were.”

The title will seem over-the-top, like some unorthodox, self-serving definitions are being applied, or like the book peddles ‘alternative facts.’ Even the famed Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. thinks the work merits, if there were such a thing, a “Black History Wishful Thinking Prize.”

A Ridiculous Standard of Whiteness

Here’s what’s actually over-the-top: “Negro” means having even the smallest trace of Black ancestry, a highly impractical, if not impossible standard of whiteness known as “the one-drop rule” — codified into law in 17 states during the peak of the Jim Crow era, when it appears the country was captured by mass racial hysteria.

Having clarified that the one-drop rule is in full effect, you’re still likely to hear something along these lines in reaction to the book’s title: “Who were these five presidents? Show me proof of their Black…