'Postracial' America, One Year Later

Last week, a Gallup poll revealed that while white optimism about race relations remains at November 2008 levels, black optimism has fallen to where it stood before Barack Obama's rise to prominence.

We can excuse descriptions of America as "postracial" last year. Obama's campaign themes encouraged the term, and his victory was deeply seductive to most Democrats. Across the globe, critics of George W. Bush's policies sighed in relief, while black Americans wept euphorically on CNN.

Recent praise of America as "postracial" in outlets as prominent as the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times is less forgivable. The word is flat-out harmful, and needs to be permanently retired.

In yet another surreal sideshow last month, Senator David Vitter (R-LA) declined to condemn the Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to marry an interracial couple. "I just don't believe," the justice said, "in mixing the races." Add that to a year that has included a "Beer Summit," "Birthers," the health care town halls, Representative Joe Wilson's (R-SC) "You lie!" outburst at Obama's health care address, and Jimmy Carter's knee-jerk maligning of Obama critics as racists.

The real conversation on race, like it or not, is still pending.

Barack Obama's win was a profound public testimony to American decency. Institutionally, however, in education, health care, homeownership and jobs, blacks remain severely disadvantaged. As the National Urban League (NUL) report, "The State of Black America 2009," summarized last March, "even as an African-American man holds the highest office in the country, African Americans remain twice as likely as whites to be unemployed, three times more likely to live in poverty and more than six times as likely to be incarcerated."

Maternal mortality for blacks is three times higher than for whites, minority-rich schools are twice as likely to have inexperienced teachers, and blacks' median household income remains at 65 percent of whites', according to NUL's latest statistics. Yet in public debates--on job creation, education, and health care reform--the issue of race is conspicuously absent.

Starting a civil, measured debate on race will mean accepting what is long overdue: Barack Obama overcame his race during the campaign, but he also employed it, with negative effects. White liberals resent this idea (I should know, I'm one of them), and a year ago it was practically forbidden for whites to mention it.

Black or biracial pundits were allowed to say that Obama used his race manipulatively, and a few did. Shelby Steele framed the criticism in its harshest terms, describing Obama as a "bargainer" or "a black who says to whites, 'I will never presume that you are racist if you will not hold my race against me.'" The term "postracial" was born from this appeal, the call to "prove" true a myth that Reverend William Alberts recently attacked as the "racism of equality," meaning that the presumption of equal access is racist.

Revisiting Obama's campaign themes makes his cajoling use of race difficult to ignore. Obama conflated bipartisanship with racial unity, "old politics" with racial politics, and critics with cynics of American potential.

Jon Favreau, Obama's speechwriter, has admitted that he had race in mind when he and Obama agreed upon the line "They said this day would never come" as the opener of Obama's victory speech after the Iowa caucuses. Favreau knew what leaving the antecedent of "They" unspecified would accomplish.

In Iowa, Obama built up his "They": "They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided; too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose." Never mind that this was Obama's first win against Hillary Clinton.

In New Hampshire then, Obama systematically linked his campaign phrase "Yes We Can" to some of America's greatest heroes. "Yes We Can," Obama told the crowd, was the clarion call of abolitionists, the framers at independence, woman suffragists, and Martin Luther King Jr. Opposing history's legends was another grouping left unlisted--slave owners, colonialists, sexists, racists.

Obama won because of the crippled economy, but his initial appeal consisted of this astounding "We" and "They" dynamic. It put him on the right side of history simply because he is African American.

Politicians say what they have to, and Obama knows better, as his race speech in Philadelphia showed. But by inviting voters to a symbolic conversation on race, rather than a substantive one, he elided--and invited whites to elide--how far away the "day" really is.

 

Comments

[nellpost]

Republicans: party of hate.

[glichman]

I am a police officer in suburban Cleveland. I can tell you, without hesitation, that racism is alive and well, and I don't need (although I appreciate) the studies to convince me. I see, almost daily, racism, both from members of the community in which I work and live and amongst the police officers I work with. It is especially scary that those who seem the most racist are also the most oblivious to it, and will deny it. How can we start to fix what people deny is broken?

[ringo3khan]

There will never be a "Post Racial" America; the only way to create a "Post Racial" America is to break it up, or to seize the wealth and property of the whites and deport them. But ultimately, the whole concept of the "post racial" America will become obsolete as Hispanics take over and become the new majority. The "irony" of that is that largely, they have nothing but contempt for both "white" and "black" America. That's why I strongly support the open borders policies.

[alex61]

You support open borders because you have contempt for both black and white people? Shrewd.
Democrats support open borders because they think enforcing our generous immigration laws is a "right wing thing." They believe that they are superior to the mean-spirited ones. Of course this is silly, but it's also very destructive. Blacks are now officially behind Hispanics as the biggest minority. Thank Democrats and all the blacks who support them no matter what. Dems have seen the future and it is brown. Blacks don't count for much anymore.

We need border control and we need to deport those who don't belong here -regardless of race. There is no "American" race, so race is not important-or at least it shouldn't be.

[alex61]

By the way-you seem to hate entire groups because of theri color-doesn't that make you racist?

[opines]

Until white males accept in their hearts that black males should be treated the same way as they are in the competition for jobs and white women, 'keeping blacks in their place' will remain the driver in Red State politics.

Unless addressed, progress can only be marginal.

[alex61]

Unfortunately, all too often blacks are simply not competitive in the market place. I used to teach high school in Los Angeles and most of my students were "minorities." Some minorities respected education while others, including blacks, did not. They thought education was a "white thing." No conservative ever told them that. That destructive nonsense come from liberals, both black and white. It camr out of their own communities.

One of my female students told me that whenever she tried to do well in school, her black friends accused her of trying to "be white." How stupid id that? And if you make 75% of your children out of wedlock, you can expect poverty, and the unsupervised chaos and crime that come with it. That's why blacks are having such a hard time. Don't blame the country that just elected its first black president for all the troubles blacks have.

[Nommo]

One can definitely blame this country for a number of things. All the legislation passed denying Black people access to life, liberty, and all the rest. If you are not capable or insightful enough to respond to what the author wrote, then you should have thought for a while before responding. Of course, it is easier to just go with the broad stroke, that requires no thought at all.

[robbep]

Nope you cant blame a country that stole and chained people to come here to work like livestock. Cant blame a country that made it illegal for that livestock to get an education. Cant blame a country for selling off the family members of that livestock and broke up their family structures. Cant blame a country that deliberately kept the livestock impoverished and illiterate and just recently (50 years ago) signed into law making it illegal to discriminate against the livestock. Cant blame a country who refuses to make ammends to those people by providing reparations for the harm it inflicted, even though it made similiar ammends to the japanese and native americans. This country actions against African Americans is the MAIN REASON African Americans are living in the conditions that they are in so pls point the finger where it belongs. African Americans are responsible for overcoming these conditions but we refuse to accept the blame on why are conditions in this country is so bad.

[Eric Daniels]

Unfortunately, all too often blacks are simply not competitive in the market place. I used to teach high school in Los Angeles and most of my students were "minorities." Some minorities respected education while others, including blacks, did not.

And how many of these blacks you said didn't value education were in your class? I am always amused at whites like yourself who only see about a few minorites a day in your classroom and that makes you an expert on 38 million people of African descent?

"One of my female students told me that whenever she tried to do well in school, her black friends accused her of trying to "be white"

And why didn't as a teacher sit down those students who were harassing her for studies or are you are making most of it up from newspaper articles or black commentators?

"And if you make 75% of your children out of wedlock, you can expect poverty, and the unsupervised chaos and crime that come with that "

And how do you know that 75 % of 38 million people are having children out of wedlock, that's about 20 million African- Americans and most African- Americans don't live in the hood NUMNUT !!!

Don't blame the country that just elected its first black president for all the troubles blacks have.

Electing one "BIRACIAL" President does not excuse 390 years of racial terrorism, economic and social expolatation, Apartheid polices and racial genocide and destruction of Black Families.

[Intelligentia]

Come down from your high horses with your meritocracy myth! If education is the only reason Blacks are not getting jobs, then explain why Black African Immigrants can be the most educated in the United States yet they are the least employed. I'm sure your Eurocentric education did not teach you that. See here: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1077-3711%28199924%2F200024%290%3A26%3C60%3AAIITUS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A

If you are as educated as you claim to be, you should be able to access this article. Racism is the reason Blacks are not as successful. Whites do not need the qualifications to get jobs that are way over their head. The drop-out rate for White is equally high as minorities. What percent of Whites hold a college degree in places like Ohio, Idaho, Indiana and Pennsylvania? The time for White propaganda is over, the internet is a window into the White meritocracy myth.