President Obama’s candidacy, nomination and election was hailed as some sort of seismic shift in race relations in this nation and represented an epic turning point in how we view ethnicity; a post-racial America, if you will. Nevertheless, this writer contends that Barack Obama’s presidency revealed to us not only how far we have come, but how far we have to go as well — maybe even more so.
This topic may seem far too fundamental for the more enlightened among us, but it is the failure to both articulate and grasp these seemingly minor concepts and realities about race and racism that have us where we are today.
The belief that colorblindness is synonymous with equality stands as a primary reason for the failure in moving forward and actually addressing America’s racism problem. As a result, negative racial attitudes have hardened or many individuals have become indifferent to doing the hard work in uprooting bigotry and prejudice. Recent research appears to bear that out.
The content concerning attitudes about color
There has been no improvement in racial attitudes in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, according to an Associated Press (AP) poll, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.
Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.
The survey points out that 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.
Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, as well. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.
Explicit racism has been fairly easy to find. Let’s go down the shameful memory lane of the overtly racially prejudiced:
· Remember “Barack the Magic Negro,” the racist “parody” played by Rush Limbaugh during the 2008 campaign?
· Another Limbaugh gem: In “Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.”
· Glenn Beck and his infamous declaration that Obama was a racist and hostile to “white culture.”
· Romney campaign co-chair John Sununu and his endless stream of racialized verbal assaults, which included: calling the president of the United States lazy; wishing Barack Obama would learn how to be an American; and that Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama was based in some sort of racial solidarity.
· The various state laws such as: Arizona’s immigration law, the numerous voter ID laws and bill proposals and the banning of ethnic studies courses in, you guessed it, Arizona.
Although these are just a few of the comments that have been made over the years, this list, regrettably, could go on and on.
Let’s face it, in light of Barack Obama’s 2008 election many well-intentioned moderate and progressive citizens believed it signaled the end of overt and explicit racism. They began to flirt with the myth of a post-racial American society; they began to swallow the deception of colorblindness.
The fundamental problem of colorblindness
To avoid being called racist, many will claim that they don’t notice color and don’t treat people differently based on color. However, we all notice color in just about every situation we’re in. It’s not useful or honest for anyone to claim that they don’t. It is too pervasive a construct of our society to avoid. When things are said like, “I don’t see color,” it is actually an attempt (and a misguided one to be sure) to maintain a self-image of impartiality and fairness (and whiteness).
Some of the motivation behind the claim that people are color neutral is to establish that they don’t mistreat people or discriminate against them because of their race. Ultimately, this disclaimer prevents us from taking responsibility for challenging racism because we believe that people who see color are the problem.
The only way to treat people with dignity and justice is to recognize that racism has a profound negative effect upon our lives, and therefore noticing color helps to counteract that effect. Instead of being color neutral we need to notice much more acutely and insightfully exactly the difference that color makes in the way people are treated.
People say they want to live in a society that values the content of character over the color of skin — in other words, post-racialism. “I don’t see color, I see people,” the saying goes. But in post-Civil Rights America, is colorblindness the same as equality?
The notion of colorblindness came to us from the famous “I Have A Dream” speech of Dr. Martin Luther King, where he said that people should be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. And what has happened in the post civil rights era is that a vast majority of whites have assumed that we are already there, that we’re in a society where color does not matter; that seeing color is the antithesis to equity and fairness.
And that’s the problem. Why would one believe that in order to treat someone fairly, they would have to ignore the color of their skin or nation of origin? The drive for colorblindness says there is something wrong with an individual’s ethnicity and not the flawed notions and assumption about their color, ethnicity (or religion).
While on one hand, this writer understands the intended sentiment of pluralism and acceptance in the idea of colorblindness, the ignoring of ethnicity remains a casual denial of an essential part of who people of color are.
Conclusion
The office of the president casts a very large and long shadow. It can open or close the door to many issues and concerns. Although the far right has tried to paint him as a kind of smoother version of Malcolm X, the truth is (outside of the 2008 speech on race and the Professor Gates affair) there’s been a great deal of silence around issues of race on the part of this president — for reasons this writer understands.
And yet, as we can see, whether there is silence or an increase in the conversation about race, racism and prejudice continues to rear their ugly heads.
That same AP survey confirmed what has been believed by many people of color for a long time: The divide between Democrats and Republicans is not as wide as most would think.
Although Republicans were more likely than Democrats to express racial prejudice in the questions measuring explicit racism (79 percent among Republicans compared with 32 percent among Democrats), the implicit test found little difference between the two parties. That test showed a majority of both Democrats and Republicans held anti-black feelings (55 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans), as did about half of political independents (49 percent).
The notion of post-racialism has always been a myth because in times of national and personal stress and alarm, people seem to be able to return to the familiarity and comfort of their, thought to be non-existent, xenophobia, racism and bigotry without missing a beat. Until people disabuse themselves of that option, we will remain a society that talks around the issues race and racism but never challenges the heart of the racist.