POST-RACIAL?

One claim that is often repeated about Barack Obama’s candidacy is that it marked the birth of a “post-racial” America, unhampered by the painful legacy of slavery and segregation. This is repeated by commentators who believe it is true, as well as those who use it as a straw man in taking pot shots at America’s shortcomings in race relations.

I’ve always had a problem with this. There is nothing “post racial” about the 2008 election. While it ultimately culminated in the election of a nonwhite president, racial issues presented hurdles throughout the primary and general election campaigns that would likely have been insurmountable to other candidates. What is remarkable to me about Obama’s election is that he was judged by the content of his character, in spite of having a skin color that was a barrier to such judgment for too many Americans, even now. This is not to say that America is a racist country, or that the election of Barack Obama is not transformative – it is. But it does not somehow mean that we are “past race,” as some people might be comfortable claiming.

Marie Arana discussed the race issue in yesterday’s Washington Post, and she made no such claim. Her column was of the second variety discussed above – she lamented our failure to achieve “post-racial” status and criticized the conception of Obama as a “black” man:

Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black.

We call him that -- he calls himself that -- because we use dated language and logic. After more than 300 years and much difficult history, we hew to the old racist rule: Part-black is all black. Fifty percent equals a hundred. There's no in-between.

That was my reaction when I read these words on the front page of this newspaper the day after the election: "Obama Makes History: U.S. Decisively Elects First Black President."

The phrase was repeated in much the same form by one media organization after another. It's as if we have one foot in the future and another still mired in the Old South. We are racially sophisticated enough to elect a non-white president, and we are so racially backward that we insist on calling him black. Progress has outpaced vocabulary.

To me, as to increasing numbers of mixed-race people, Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president. He is more than the personification of African American achievement. He is a bridge between races, a living symbol of tolerance, a signal that strict racial categories must go.

I understand where Arana is coming from. As a biracial person, she has a great deal invested personally in Obama’s victory, and she can be proud of it. But that doesn’t mean that African Americans can’t claim Obama’s victory as something particularly special. After all, Obama identifies as black. Just because Arana doesn’t identify more with one race in which they have roots doesn’t mean other similarly situated people can’t. Her failure to recognize this strikes me as an ironic form of ethnocentrism: the fact that identifying with a particular race has not been important to her seems to exclude the possibility that it could carry meaning for anyone else.

Worse, her harping on the failure of America to become “post-racial” reeks of the sociological tendency to reject racial distinctions instinctively. It leads people to long for a culture where race is not only eliminated as a barrier, but also eliminated as a defining characteristic. This is a tragic way to look at the world, because it longs for a result that never can (or should) be achieved. Race is, and always has been, a defining characteristic of humanity. It may divide us, but it also provides an opportunity to enrich us: racial difference can be used to encourage people, even from childhood, to look past the surface and be more tolerant and thoughtful in judging each other.

Barack Obama may be biracial, but he has chosen to be a member of black culture. And whether we like it or not, separate cultures (black, white, Asian Latino, Arab-American, etc.) still exist in our country. We should not look at a black man and feel the need to ignore his cultural identity just for the sake of “getting past race.” Race is not something to get past – it is a fact of life to be accepted and cherished. We should not hang our hopes on the day when all the races blend together - barring a horrific genocide or a shameful reversion to nativism, this simply won’t happen. What we should hope and pray for is a country where, despite our cultural differences, we judge each other by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. The election of Barack Obama is, of course, an encouraging step in that direction, and not just because of his own background. In his comments on race (particularly in his "A More Perfect Union" speech from March 2008), I see someone who is unafraid to confront the reality of race in America and build a country that is united in building a better world because of its differences, not because it has shunned those differences.