More Post-Racial Nonsense

Oops. Turns out the pundits were wrong. Now we're getting reports that far from being the first and greatest post-racial politician, Barak Obama may actually be setting back the post-racial movement in America. At least, that's what Shelby Steele says, as explained in a recent article in Prospect Magazine.

I have to admit that I don't think I entirely understand the logic of what Steele is saying. However, the parts I do understand don't really hang together. The gist seems to be that whites see Obama as someone who will leave all talk of race behind and just happen to be black. Meanwhile, blacks see Obama as someone who will act as a new kind of civil rights leader and advance the black cause for equality. As these necessarily conflict, Obama can't achieve both. Thus, his presidency would disappoint one group or the other on racial grounds. Thus he is not post-racial and may even set back the movement for his having tried.

This is exactly why I hate the phrase post-racial so much. It doesn't reall mean anything and just gets people's heads twisted up in knots.

First of all, I'm not sure if the choice is as stark between pleasing black America and pleasing white America. As Obama himself might say, There's only the United States of America. But even from there, I'm not sure if this argument makes sense. First, it assumes that whites wouldn't see their own interests represented in efforts to bring all people equality. I think this is false. Steele also seems to assume that blacks only want massive programs of enforced equality, which I also think is false.

The entire argument seems to say that there is no one who could ever bridge the racial divide in America because helping blacks upsets whites and ignoring race upsets blacks. Not only is this view overly pessimistic, I think it's as much nonsense as saying phrase post-racial to begin with.

What We Mean When We Say Post-Racial

I have developed a true and utter hate for the use of the word post-racial when talking about the appeal of Barack Obama (or Corey Booker or anyone else). What's set me off this time is a U.S. Today opinion story that didn't even really seem to make a point worth the time to read the thing.

What drives me up the wall is how blantantly phony the whole thing is. First of all, if we're truly post-racial, why is this a term that only seems to apply to black candidates? It seems like you could argue that John McCain is a post-racial politician because he isn't making race an issue in the campaign. If we want to go down this road, just about any white politician since George Wallace has run largely post-racial campaigns, they just haven't been labeled as such.

What we mean when we say a candidate is post-racial is that they're black, but they're not mad at anyone about it (to paraphrase Mike Huckabee). I agree that what politicians like Obama and Booker are doing is different from what Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have done. But to call it post-racial is ridiculous.