Post Racial America
This is a repost from 2014. A current google search for Who said America is Post Racial? yielded Microaggressions and Traumatic Stress: Theory, Research, and Clinical Treatment. “Many media personalities made comments about the United States entering this alleged postracial era, including radio host Lou Dobbs, who in November 2009 said, “We are now in a 21st-century post-partisan, post-racial society” … MSNBC host Chris Matthews even claimed, “[President Obama] is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was Black tonight for an hour.” Although Matthews’s comment was likely well-intentioned, it actually is reflective of his implicit bias and covert racism: Because the newly elected president did not fit Matthews’s schema of Black people, he was deemed to have no race—or, more likely, to seem White.”
It is a cliche among certain pundits that this is not “Post Racial America.” No one seems to know what PRA would look like. PRA might be less noisy, with fewer odors, than the current model. The opinion that we do not live in PRA seems unanimous. I heard the PRA denial, and began to wonder something. Who said America is Post Racial?
Mr. Google has 119 million answers to the question “who said america is post racial?” The short answer is nobody. The closest thing on the front Google page is an NPR commentary from January 2008. This was the early stages of the BHO run for the White House. The commenter said that the election of a dark skinned POTUS might usher in a post racial era in America.
This piece will not have any fresh opinions about race relations in America. That subject has been worn out elsewhere. If someone finds it to their advantage to denounce “racism”, there will be an audience. The truth is, very few people have ever said that America is Post Racial. Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library















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