Harvard Professor: “A Black Guy Told Me It Was Okay”

Historian Niall Ferguson, under fire for comparing President Obama to Felix the Cat (“not only black… also very, very lucky”), sought the counsel of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (remember him?) for a ruling on ethnography. Gates’ response?

None of us thought of Felix as black, unlike some of the racially-questionable caricatures Disney used. Felix’s blackness, like Mickey’s and Minnie’s, was like a suit of clothes, not a skin color. … You are safe on this one.

Paul Krugman and James Fallows make short work of the misdirection.