Back in 1998, the Nobel Laureate for literature, Toni Morrison, provoked outrage when she described Bill Clinton as America’s first black president. She said that “white skin notwithstanding [he is] blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”

The Republican right resented the fact that she made the sax-playing sexy beast, who was brought up by a single mother, sound so cool. The censorious white left castigated her for enumerating his infidelities. As Hillary Clinton said, Bill was “a difficult dog to keep on the porch”. By singling out his passion for junk food and bad timekeeping as black traits, Morrison was attacked for stereotyping black men in a way that would have seen lesser mortals no-platformed on