You Might Not Be In A Post-Racial Society If…
Posted on | February 27, 2009 |
The whole impetus for this set of posts wasn’t just Black History Month. It was a conversation I heard on “Tell Me More” about a month ago that questioned whether we truly were in a “post-racial society”. I don’t know about you, but when I envisioned a post-racial society, the situation we are presented with is not the one that popped into my head. What a post-racial society would look like is so utopic and beautiful, that I wonder if it can ever truly exist.
Yet day after day, we are being faced with media pieces talking about a post racial society. It seems that if you elect one man who has a tint to his skin and an African father as president, then all of the racism has gone away. Suddenly MLK Day isn’t needed because there’s no dream left to achieve. Black History Month is useless because we should be talking about American history or world history in general. Affirmative action is no longer necessary because, hell, look at the presidency.
Frankly, we have not even come close to realizing a post-racial society because we haven’t even come close to realizing our race problems. And do you know the person to alert me to this? A white guy. On the eve of the election, my father told me that on the CB radios near Cincinnati, where he was driving his truck that night, were ablaze with commentary about how the election of a Black man was the end of civilization as we know it in shouted words that even my father wouldn’t repeat to me.
But those are just a few isolated fragments of society, you say? Well, consider this.
You know you’re not in a post-racial society when people do not understand the economics of race and crime.
You know you’re not in a post-racial society when minorities are overrepresented in prison and underrepresented in higher education.
You know you’re not in a post-racial society when people changed their Facebook statuses after the election to something either slightly or not-so-slightly racist.
You know you’re not in a post-racial society when people don’t understand that cartoons like this are offensive and why they are offensive.
You know you’re not in a post-racial society when the entire continent of Africa is at risk of, exposed to, or dying from HIV/AIDS.
You know you’re not in a post-racial society when the United States Congress does not proportionally reflect the representation of minorities in society.
But most importantly, you know you’re not in a post-racial society because people have not come to grips with the fact that racism exists and permeates every day life. We will never be in a post-racial society because race isn’t something with a timetable, a pull out date or an expiration. Race is something that we have used to segregate wealth, consolidate power and generally eliminate those not fitting the preferred cultural norm. And electing one Black man as president, while a big step in the right direction, is nowhere near big enough to fix the problems we have created for ourselves.
As this Black History Month closes, remember its importance. Remember why we need to recognize the achievements of a race that was not only persecuted but literally enslaved for hundreds of years. And then recognize that we need to do the same for all facets of our society. The only way we’ll move any closer to healing wounds is to recognize them in the first place. Denying you’re having a heart attack doesn’t prevent the damage it does to your system. It only makes it worse. And denying the racism still prevalent, not just present, in America today is only going to bring us down.
A post-racial society is a great idea, and moving towards one is a great goal, but expecting one to come about overnight out of the achievements of one individual is not the way to start a conversation. Remember, there were plenty of people who didn’t want to see him elected just because of his race. A post-racial society wouldn’t exist in that realm.
So let’s stop pretending that we’re over it when clearly we’re not. The only thing that talking about a post-racial society does is prevents us from talking about real issues. Like a racist society.
Related posts:
- Justice of the Crazy A justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Comments
2 Responses to “You Might Not Be In A Post-Racial Society If…”
Leave a Reply
Social Links
March 1st, 2009 @ 8:33 pm
I totally agree. I often hear talk about how we're in a "post-racial" society but a) I don't even think we have reached consensus on what "post-racial" means and b) whatever it means, we definitely haven't gotten past the race issue in society at all. I hope that someday we can, but it seems a long way off still.
March 5th, 2009 @ 1:11 am
I'm glad to see someone else talked about this, too. Though, it's somewhat of a shame that the conversation quieted so quickly. http://francobeans.com/2009/02/18/when_the_scream...