Dear Internet,

Hey! It’s me, Cord.

Sorry to leave you hanging, but I’ve been quite busy lately. Tax season! or whatever, right? Then I had to go to Trader Joe’s, and everyone in NYC knows the lines there are ridiculous! Oh, and then I had to go to Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to donate a kidney to my ill father. Yes, seriously.

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On my first day at Stereohyped, I was asked by some readers what qualified me to work here (ie "What's your race?"). I was taken aback by the query and upset by its inherent assumptions. My boss thinks I'm qualified, I wanted to scream at the firing line, do you sign my checks? That said, I'm willing to admit that part of my anger stemmed from this fact: I didn't know that I was qualified. Full disclosure: I'm not even half black. My mother is of German descent and my father is part black and part American Indian, an ethnic pairing appearing in my lineage thanks to a ribald ancestor who had a stint as a Buffalo Soldier. I am an amalgam, an alloy part, and at the time I didn't feel comfortable saying that to people who seemed to be hungry for a, yes, black or white answer. My skin tone and indecision were one taupe mass.

To better pick my way through this existential dilemma, I started jotting down the incidents in my life that have made me feel truly, unshakably African American. Soon, I had composed what I hope you will indulge me enough to read, a very general glimpse into what I believe to be my "blackness," the credentials that explain my employment at a site devoted to black culture.

I hate lessons, but if I learned anything from this particular creative process, it's that though I am not by birth an archetypal African American, I have been presumed to be and treated as such, for better or worse, many, many times over the course of my history. I learned that my black experience can't be spoken of in terms of black and white. It's red like anger, green like envy, an energetic yellow and, far too often, a deep, dark blue.

I hope that no matter what color you are you'll be able to relate to at least some of the following, especially the bad parts. As I've come to know, the worst of times are almost always the most enlightening.

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• Call Bill O'Reilly! In Michelle Obama's 1985 senior thesis, she said the Princeton community at large didn't make her feel like she belonged. More proof she's unpatriotic! [CBS]

• Michael Jackson stands to lose Neverland Ranch if he doesn't fork over $24 million. Someone just take the property away from him, already. Does he even want it? [People]

• A federal judge says that Britney Spears' civil rights have not been violated. Guess one former pop star was not a part of Dr. King's dream. [Reuters]

• Maybe Gary can smear a little bit of that I Can't Believe It's Not Butter he's shilling on his hands? [RL]

• Tyra Banks and Ashton Kutcher have teamed together to produce a brand new reality show that is sure to be like nothing you've ever seen before. "Variety reports that the show is understood to revolve around beautiful people living in a house together." [EW]

P.S. Welcome Cord to the Stereohyped fam!

Hello, all. My name is Cord Jefferson, and as of this very moment I'll be joining the venerable Lauren Williams here at Stereohyped.

Perhaps you've previously enjoyed my work on Mollygood, Stereohyped's rumormongering sister site. Perhaps, as some have, you've disliked it. Perhaps you had never even heard of Mollygood until I just name-checked it (twice). Any opinion you might hold is welcome, and, probably at one point or another, deserved.

But let's try to start anew here and make believers out of everyone. I'll try to convince you, dear readers, that I am worthy of a position next to – although slightly beneath – Ms Williams, while simultaneously trying to convince myself that the Internet offers a forum in which a writer can discuss something other than Paris Lohan and still manage to maintain peoples' attention.

I come to you from Brooklyn by way of Arizona, Saudi Arabia and Greece. After spending a sixth of my life at a small college in Virginia, I fled to Los Angeles for three inelegant years. I love hip-hop but can't stand bling, and most of the time I'd like to see MTV fall into the sea. The picture above was taken two weeks ago when I was at the Guinness factory in Dublin.

I can't guarantee you I'll be the same as Lauren, but rest assured I'll do my best to maintain the quality you've come to expect from the best black-interest blog on the Internet.

• Damn, the Canadian judge couldn't cut Danny Glover a break? [SP]

• Don't expect the horse race to be finished on February 6th. [MW]

• Off topic, maybe, but this reminded me of my mom. [BWE]

• Stereohyped's getting a new contributer! Be nice. [MG]

• Flavor Flav is back. Ummm…hooray. [C&D]

• These are the kinds of things we do at Jossip after hours. Thankfully for me (and too bad for Cord from Mollygood), seeing a woman dressed up as a man is far less exciting. [QT]

• No matter how famous you get, somebody will always mistake you for a drug dealer. [SP]

• Trina, a role model for all the kids out there who aspire to be strippers-turned-hyper sexual rappers. [C&D]

• Barnes & Noble bestseller, maybe, but you won't see If I Did It with an Oprah's Book Club seal. [SP]

• Mindy McCready, country music's Foxy Brown. [PH]