If there are black people who aren’t black enough – where does that leave white people?

The latest discussion about blackness began with rumors that some players with the Super Bowl champ Seattle Seahawks didn’t consider quarterback Russell Wilson “black enough.”

Wilson himself was unfazed. I’m just an “educated young male,” he said.

But former NBA champ Charles Barkley decided it was time to call some people out.

“The young black kids, you know when they do well in school, the loser kids tell them, oh you’re acting white,” he said.

It’s wrong, he said, to ridicule someone as not black enough just because they’re educated and intelligent.

Well, being white, I’m clearly not qualified to take a side in this, but there is an issue I am qualified to raise and that is: What alternate universe are these black people living in who automatically associate intelligence with whiteness?

As far as I can tell, white people – supposedly the people who run this country – have checked out. Oh, we like to take those online intelligence tests to stave off the Alzheimer’s, but most of us don’t vote and we can’t solve problems.

School shootings? Nothing we can do about that. Highways falling apart? Too expensive. Tax reform? Forget it. Creating more good jobs? Not our problem. Fixing immigration? Too difficult – immigrants scare us, plus now they might bring in Ebola.

So what I would say to Barkley’s critics in the black community is, cut him some slack.

Somebody needs to act white around here and if white people are tired of doing it, why not give black people a turn.