We're halfway there...
It’s been a great month to be on Facebook. To be sure, Facebook’s early membership restrictions (college students only) still shape the site’s demographics, and make it a largely left-leaning community but, in the past month, partisans of both sides have been plainly on display, both for better and for worse. Among the embittered musings of defeated conservative Facebook users, one common theme stands out: I’ve seen more than a few, otherwise intelligent individuals claim that, with Obama’s election, racism is dead (conservative websites echo the argument). And not in a theoretical sense - as in, good for us, yay America - but in the practical sense, complete with suggestions that affirmative action is now unneeded, the NAACP’s job finished, and racist jokes suddenly okay. Though eventually dismissing the idea as ridiculous, NPR has mused on the same, so it bears discussing: is racism dead?
No. Treating racism as “dead” or “over with” strikes me as not only wrong, but also as dangerous. The notion that the election of the first black president implies the defeat of racism is predicated on a belief that cultural progress is directly linear, and quantized: the idea is that, like Kuhn’s conception of scientific revolutions, culture builds to a watershed moment, after which some feat is permanently accomplished, with results imputable to every member of society. Outside of Civilization IV, that’s not how culture works.
For racism to truly be dead, either Obama’s election would have to have spontaneously changed the mind of every racist in America - “oh, guess I was wrong” - or, at least, proved that the overwhelming majority of Americans is not racist. Neither is true. Most obviously, culture rarely works in a top-down fashion and when it does, it doesn’t happen overnight. President-Elect Obama may change the minds of America’s unrepentant racists over time, but the mere fact of his election will not change the mind of anyone who voted against Obama because of his race. The evidence also suggests that not all of Obama’s supporters are “post race.” Both analyses from polling sites and dispatches from reporters indicated that while many of Obama’s supporters voted for him “regardless of” his race, some were unrepentant racists who voted for him “in spite of” his race. The latter category of individual may respect our President-Elect, but may still make unfounded assumptions about the average black man on the street.
Of course, there are also those who will simply recast their racism to appear more palatable. Unfortunately, the rumors about Barack Obama being a “secret Muslim” persist in the darker corners of the internet, and I would argue that this scurrilous “otherizing” of Obama represents the same emotion, and the same harm, as racism.
All of this is to say that we’re not out of the woods yet. There are still those who will think less of an individual because of the color of their skin. One astonishing election alone is insufficient to change that, or prove otherwise. But the critical problem with jumping to the post-race conclusion is in imagining that the problem of racism is simply that people are racist. America will be post-race only when the unfortunate real-world effects of centuries of prejudice are eradicated, and that one black man was elected to the nation’s highest office does not change the fact that, for many African-Americans nationwide, the effects of slavery and prejudice endure in the form of poverty and restricted opportunity. Racism is as much one big, society-wide problem as it is thousands of big, personal problems.
While Obama’s election brings hope, it has not, yet, brought change for those who need it most, and we can’t let one victory blind us to continuing real-world problems.
Stumble It!
6 responses so far ↓
1 Gotchaye // Nov 17, 2008 at 10:06 pm
I agree with you that the election isn’t going to have a direct effect on racism (nor does it indicate particularly much about the prevalence of racist attitudes in the country), but I do think that there’s something to be said for the idea that the election is a significant step towards making America ‘post-race’.
One important thing to understand about the enduring effects of slavery and prejudice ‘in the form of poverty and restricted opportunity’ is that the relatively large number of African-Americans in these conditions isn’t in itself a bad thing - at least, it’s no worse than the same amount of poverty and restricted opportunity affecting equal percentages of the various ethnic groups. The greater prevalence of poverty among African-Americans is problematic only because it yields a qualitatively different kind of life for almost every black person, and this is mostly so because widespread black poverty means that there are very few role models for black children and very few cultural pressures for black children to do well in school, etc. It’s here that Obama’s election helps. I think it’s already clear that Obama’s election has caused many African-Americans to reevaluate some self-destructively defeatist attitudes about their prospects and their children’s prospects. While Obama hasn’t made the country less racist, a lot of people think that Obama proves that the country isn’t as racist as they thought, and that’s a good thing as far as the prospects of minorities are concerned.
2 didionsmommy // Nov 18, 2008 at 2:29 pm
i want to clarify that blacks are very disproportionately impoverished in this country.
the 2000 census indicates the following population distribution:
white: 75.1%
black: 12.3%
latino: 12.5%
asian: 3.6%
(total more than unity because respondents could assign themselves to more than one race.)
the census estimates the following distribution of individuals living below the poverty line:
white: 55.6%
black: 24.0%
latino: 23.0%
asian: 3.7%
and families living below the poverty line:
white: 53.6%
black: 26.8%
latino: 22.6%
asian: 3.4%
whites are underrepresented in both poverty groups; blacks and latinos are overrepresented. fueling much of latino poverty is the influx of relatively low-educated immigrants. much social-mobility research indicates latinos are making huge strides in one or two generations in overcoming deficits in terms of education and income.
the black population remains a conundrum to researchers. although the black and latino pieces of overall poverty are similarly sized, black representation is arguably more disproportionate than latino.
i do believe that obama’s presidency is motivating a reappraisal of cultural attitudes among blacks, but poverty among blacks is different from that of other groups in terms of both magnitude and character.
there are still a lot of structural reasons for continued underperformance by blacks … school quality … underrepresentation in private enterprise (versus public-sector work) … to name a couple …
3 jre // Nov 18, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Zeno over at Halfway There has a hilarious example of the Gasbag Right’s inability to coordinate message. Is racism in the US dead and buried with Obama’s election, so now we won’t hear anything more from those liberal handwringers, or is it alive and well because Wright and Sharpton are still around, and we all know that they are the real racists?
The fact of racism is like a maddening sore on the right flank. Conservative punditry just can’t seem to reach that mangy spot, no matter how they twist and nip at it. Would it be a kindness, do you suppose, to put cones on their heads?
4 didionsmommy // Nov 19, 2008 at 8:05 am
(jre … every time you comment, i, seriously, laugh out loud … incisive and funny! thanks!)
5 jre // Nov 19, 2008 at 12:41 pm
You are too kind. Now I guess I’ll have to come back.
6 Ames // Nov 19, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Yay! Welcome back :)
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