Washington - The Negro-est Name In America...Is It Really That Great???

Washington.

How ironic that it is, according to the U.S. Census, the blackest last name in America.

According to an Associated Press story, written by Jesse Washington, Census figures find that 90 percent of the roughly 163,000 people in the U.S. with the surname Washington are black.

Who knew?

You think of D.C. (which many of us have long said stands for "Dark Country"), a city that was laid out by a black man. But at the same time, it is the center of the world's best effort to twart the development and advancement of black men, no matter where they hail from.

You may also think of the nation's first president, George Washington. He of the cherry tree and the "not telling a lie" story. But then women, especially black women, paint a vivid picture of the lying, cheating, down-low, down-on-his-luck, up-in-jail black man.

Booker T. Washington said ensuring the success of black folks requires a fervent focus on hard work. Sounds good, except that the unemployment rate for black males in 2010 was the worst among most of this nation's demographics at 17 percent. That compares to the 8.6 rate for white males.

I even point to the world of sports, which has long erroneously been called the great equal playing field. George Preston Marshall became an NFL owner in 1932 and refused to allow any blacks on his team and pushed the rest of the league to follow suit. Of course the league did, so no blacks appeared in NFL uniforms until the late 1940s because of Marshall, who owned the Washington Redskins. In fact, the Redskins stubbornly refused to sign black players well into the 60s, until the Kennedy administration threatened civil rights legal action.

So on this week of George Washington's birthday, I wonder, what's so great about this uber-black name Washington?

I dunno. Because it's ours??? Hmmmm...maybe not.