Post-race debate...Are we there yet?

Ndigo asks us this question...what do you think?

http://www.ndigo.com/coverstory.asp
Post-Race USA—Are we There Yet? By Lenox Magee

With Barack Obama ensconced as the nation’s first black president, plenty of voices in the national conversation are trumpeting America as a post-race society—that race matters much less than it used to, that the boundaries of race have been overcome, that racism is no longer a big problem. Whether you describe it as the drawing of a post-race age or just the browning of white America, we're approaching a profound demographic tipping point.

Post-White America
Culturally, America is already post-white.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton, in a now-famous address to students at Portland State University, remarked:
"Today, largely because of immigration, there is no majority race in Hawaii or Houston or New York City. Within five years, there will be no majority race in our largest state, California. In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States. No other nation in history has gone through demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time ... [These immigrants] are energizing our culture and broadening our vision of the world. They are renewing our most basic values and reminding us all of what it truly means to be American.”
Demographically, we're headed there, too. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities—blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians—will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042.

“The shift in demographics is not going to take away the engagement with the question of race in America,” says Jennifer Baszile, author of The Black Girl Next Door. “I don’t think that’s true. It may shift it, but I don’t think it’s going to change it. Just because Whites are diminishing in number doesn’t mean those questions about race are going to go away.”

Jennifer Baszile
Baszile’s memoir tells the story of a post-racial Obama era: the tale of an upper-middle-class African American family striving to get ahead while sensing that they are somehow too black and not nearly black enough. It’s a story about class as much as about race and about the elusive, sometimes almost spectral limits of segregation. In the late 1970s, Baszile, 39, and her family were one of the few black families in the neighborhood, a scenario that's become familiar in American social history. A young Jennifer had to fight for herself when she was called “nigger” and challenged to fisticuffs by three white boys.

“I think that people are being overly optimistic. And I think that a lot of America have answered the question on whether we live in a post-race society,” says the Yale history professor. “They’re saying: ‘Obama is our first black elected president,’ and in the next breath they say, ‘this must mean we live in a post-racial world.’ No! As much the symbolic and substantive significance as Obama is, I don’t think that’s the only measure of success of race relations and racial progress in this country. I think when you look at schools, when you look at colleges, and when you look at the higher echelon of Corporate America, this is not a post-racial society.”

Color & Corporate America
Steven Rogers, Gordon and Llura Gund Family Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship and the director of the Larry and Carol Levy Institute for Entrepreneurial Practice, agrees that it’s completely naïve to think racism is far from over, especially in the business world.

“I don’t believe that it’s remotely true that we live in a post-racial society,” Roger says. “I think it’s a naïve world that people are conjuring up that won’t have any real relevance to the real world. Such a statement, in my opinion, implies that there will be this utopian world, and my question is: as a result of Obama’s election, does that mean that this is the best it is ever going to be for Black people? This is the best we’re going to get? I believe it’s a very dangerous notion that everything is colorblind, in the sense we, African Americans, stand to lose the most.”
Rogers believes celebrities continue to promote this “new day,” but he doesn’t think that’s realistic.

“I live in the business world where I serve on the board for several Fortune 500 companies, and I’m constantly complaining and encouraging the CEOs of these predominantly white companies to employ the opportunity with African Americans. The business world I live in is comprised of 48 percent of people that didn’t vote for Obama. When I went to the business meetings the day after Obama won, there wasn’t jubilation or anything; it was dead silence and no discussion.”

Arts & Entertainment
Over the past 30 years, few changes in American culture have been as significant as the rise of hip-hop. Jay-Z, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Russell Simmons have changed life as we know it—and on their own terms. Sean Combs, a hip-hop mogul and arguably one of the most famous African Americans on the planet, grew up during hip-hop’s late-1970s rise, and he belongs to the first generation that could make a stable living working in the industry. In the late 1990s, Combs made a fascinating gesture toward New York’s high society. He announced his arrival into the circles of the rich and powerful not by crashing their parties, but by inviting them into his own spectacularly, over-the-top world. Combs began to stage elaborate annual parties in the Hamptons. These “white parties”—where attendees are required to wear white—quickly became legendary for their opulence as well as for the cultures-colliding quality of Hamptons elites paying their respects to someone so comfortably nouveau riche. Prospective business partners angled to get close to him and praised him as a guru of the lucrative “urban” market. And Russell Simmons, a music, fashion and television mogul, or the rapper 50 Cent, who has parlayed his rags-to-riches story line into extracurricular successes that include a clothing line, book, video game, and film deals; and a startlingly lucrative partnership with the makers of Vitamin Water, are no different.

During popular music’s rise in the 20th century, white artists and producers consistently “mainstreamed” African American innovations. Hip-hop’s ascension has been different. Eminem notwithstanding, hip-hop never suffered through anything like an Elvis Presley moment, in which a white artist made a musical form safe for white America. But hip-hop—the sound of the post- civil-rights, post-soul generation—found a global audience on its own terms.

In theater, writer and director McKinley Johnson, whose play, “Eye of the Storm" is based on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s mentor, Bayard Rustin, says the journey to Post-Race USA may come at a substantial price for performers.

“To do so means everyone must deny their existence . . .and their humanity . . . and their uniqueness and that's what's disturbing about this question,” McKinley says. “As we go into this new millennium, black theatre-performers should not seek to blend but rather to continue developing the voice we have. Thespians of any color have a hard time excelling. Competition is fierce. The best we can hope for and experience is personal gratification and growth.”
Just as Tiger Woods forever changed the country club culture of golf and Will Smith changed stereotypes about the ideal Hollywood leading man, the youth market is following the same pattern. Take, for example, the Cheetah Girls, a multicultural, multi-platinum, multiplatform trio of teenyboppers who recently starred in their third movie, or Dora the Explorer, a bilingual 7-year-old Latina adventurer who is arguably the most successful animated character on children’s television today. There’s no doubt that mainstream America is being redefined.

What about Racial Purists?
Recently, former Klansman Elwin Wilson apologized to the "whole world" for beating black Congressman John Lewis during the Civil Rights era. Some might call it a start to the post-racial movement.

But Charles Wilson, 46, is a part of the National Socialist Movement, one of America’s largest Nazi Organizations, a kind of Ku Klux Klan for the next generation. Their ultimate goal is to create a place where only whites will live together in peace—a place where they can be proud of their European heritage.

“A clean, white place, where you wouldn’t see a lot of cops because you wouldn’t need them,” he says. “Where there wouldn’t be any lip-flappin’, chicken-wing slappin’ rap music … where you’d have meaningful art by white artists … and children would be raised from an early age to respect their culture and society.

“That’s our motivation. That’s our goal,” Wilson tells N’Digo. “We’re trying to make a difference.”

If the Post Race USA is a cultural and demographic inevitability, what will the new mainstream look like and how will urbane Americans fit into it? Stay tuned.

Hot Blog!Black, White and Political All Over by Tiana Reid
Yoga, snowboarding, Apple products, the Sunday New York Times, Mos Def, sushi, vintage clothing, and coffee. All stuff that I, daughter of a white mother and a black Jamaican father, like. Incidentally, it’s all stuff that white people like, according to Christian Lander, McGill grad, in his flippant blog “Stuff White People Like.”

My first glance at the blog made me feel uneasy, as it does for many, because we tend to get huffy when stereotypes are kicked around, even in a comedic manner. Lander is addressing the meaning that society attaches to the things on the list. They are deemed white. My uneasiness quickly turned to queasiness; do my love for raw fish and my MacBook make me white? Or less black? The blog hit home because, being biracial, I have struggled with internal conflicts of race, culture, and self-identity since I was old enough to be aware. When I was 12, I started to snowboard and for a couple of years, I never mentioned to my black (and white) friends where I was each and every Saturday, thinking that they would disapprove, discredit me and label me whitewashed.

After a few deep yoga breaths, I calmed down and realized that the list is not hateful and was meant to be, and is, humorous. The bright satirical critique includes “knowing what’s best for poor people,” “being the only white person around,” “having gay friends,” “unpaid internships” and “Asian girls.” After hundreds of years of minorities being turned into a punch line, Lander is flipping the script and playing on stereotypes of the upper-middle class––white or not––with their consumerist narcissism coupled with a search for authenticity.

While some people, like Lander, are openly discussing issues concerning race and identity, others—particularly, upper-middle class liberals—have begun to sweep race issues under the rug. The term post-racial emerged in the mainstream media as a reaction to the enthusiasm surrounding Barack Obama’s campaign in the Democratic Party presidential primaries in 2008. The idea that we are living in a post-race society, where race has little or no significance, is a fallacy as many whites still claim to have moral, economic, political and social ascendancy. The tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina proves that race and class seem to matter not only in terms of social race relations but also in governmental reaction (or non-reaction). Other issues, such as the Jena Six assault and the controversy surrounding affirmative action, substantiate that our society is not beyond race.

As the United States inaugurated its 44th president, a mood of change continues to swoop over the entire world, somewhat owing to the color of Obama’s skin and the barriers that have been crossed as a result. The Atlantic magazine’s cover story for its January/February 2009 issue was entitled: “The End of White America” featuring a heroic close-up of half of Obama’s face. The author, Hua Hsu, postulates the end of “white America” and a demographic shift that will bring those who are today racial minorities, to be a majority of the population by 2042. More interestingly, Hsu affirms that “whiteness is no longer a precondition for entry into the highest levels of public office.” This bold statement is misleading.

Case in point is Jesse Jackson, who was twice a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s, and was deemed “too black” by American society and thus has had limited mainstream political success. With Obama as president, the public is looking beyond skin color and toward personal character, which is a positive step. Yet it can be argued that Obama’s skin color was easier to look past than Jackson’s in-your-face “black and proud” character.
In terms of Obama’s campaign, whether constructed deliberately or constructed by society and the media, race was used as an instrument rather than a liability in the political sphere, in which Obama transcended the negative stereotypes that blackness so often tends to encompass.
Western society may be taking race less seriously. Nevertheless, the New York Times article, “Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race” reveals that 60 percent of blacks find race relations to be generally poor, compared to 34 percent of whites. It seems clear that the notion of post-raciality is mostly a white concoction.

Race matters, even if it matters in different ways than it did decades ago. Social and political discussion, balanced dialogue, and most importantly, racial awareness, not ignorance disguised as post-raciality, will give rise to racial progress.

Blindness-blindness should never be equated with racial equality or racial harmony.