The exhortation to "be oneself" doesn't apply to those in demographic groups whose victim status is essential to the Leftist agenda

Apparently there's a way of existing called "sufficiently black" the definition of which the self-appointed arbiters keep close to their vest.  Because Russell Wilson is discovering that it's more than just melanin levels:

Russell Wilson quarterbacked the Seattle Seahawks to a Lombardi Trophy. But he reportedly isn't black enough for unnamed teammates. 

"My feeling on this—and it's backed up by several interviews with Seahawks players—is that some of the black players think Wilson isn't black enough," reports Mike Freeman at Bleacher Report. Say what? 

"Well-spoken blacks are seen by some other blacks as not completely black," Freeman continues. "Some of this is at play." 

Wilson, the son of a lawyer and grandson of a college president, served as his senior class president in high school, graduated from NC State in three years, and regularly tweets Bible verses to his online followers. He also buys donuts for his teammates every week.

Apparently there's going to be an entire weekly ABC-TV sitcom about the question of who is sufficiently black and how that's determined:

 Black-ish is the story of Andre Johnson Sr., a successful Los Angeles advertising executive who with his mixed-race physician wife, Rainbow, is determined to give his children all of the advantages and opportunities that he himself did not enjoy growing up, but who is worried that his family’s life of affluence and security has somehow rendered them less authentic. “I’m going to need my family to be black, not black-ish,” he declares over the dinner table at his “spectacular” Southern California home. He is unhappy that his elder son is going by “Andy” rather than “Andre” and wants to play field hockey rather than basketball, that his young twins do not identify with the only other black child in their class or even consider her blackness relevant, and that his popular elder daughter does not seem to have any sense of uniquely black identity.

Now, as someone who has written a novel in which all the major characters are black, this intrigues me.  My book, High C at the Sunset Terrace, is set in 1948.  It's a love song to the black urban neighborhoods of the time in their capacity as spawning grounds for the great mid-century American music - bebop, jump blues, doo-wop and gospel - that was made pretty much exclusively by black Americans and has an unmistakable rhythmic, melodic and tonal thrust to it.

It's true that there had already been various figures and groups in American culture preoccupied with the sense that black Americans were "my people," sometimes militantly so: WEB DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammed.  There's no denying the racial basis of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.  Still, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out, most black Americans of the first half of the twentieth century set great store by building strong families, building strong neighborhoods and church congregations, getting good grades and working hard.

At what point did that set of values cease being part of what it meant to be black, to whatever degree that can be agreed upon?  Was it already in place by the time of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report on the imperiled state of the black family that landed him in so much hot water?

More broadly, why are we not yet at the point where individuals who happen to be completely or predominantly members of that particular race within our species can determine for themselves how to behave, talk, dress and conduct their affairs without being subjected to judgement about meeting a blackness standard by their fellows?

Would it have anything to do with moving traits like character and integrity further down the list of laudable attributes in a (black) person, behind, perhaps, flamboyance or muscularity or sexuality?  Would it have anything to do with legitimizing excuses for chaos in one's life?

Real freedom is scary, because you're not given a pass for choices that lead to problematic consequences.  You own those when you own yourself.
Here's the problem with seeking cover in celebrating belonging to a group even partially on the basis of the group's having had oppression as part of its collective past:  If one digs deep enough, anyone can find that reason for celebrating their ethnicity.

Welcome to the party, pal:  We've all been on both ends of that stick.