The Myth of Transcending Race

by Shannon Joyce Prince

"Race and racism cannot be
transcended, only dealt with."

The dream that Senator Barack Obama represents is a fairy
tale reverie where illusions such as "being post-racial" and "transcending
race" masquerade as realities. However,
the onus of having a post-racial attitude is always placed on the
oppressed. It is never the teachers who
refuse to place qualified black students in advanced placement classes, the
bankers who don't loan to qualified Hispanic entrepreneurs, or the whites who
lock their car doors when a non-white man passes them on the street, who are
rebuked for being out of step with the post-racial era, but rather the
non-whites who address the prejudice they face at such individuals' hands.

In the face of mammoth amounts of inarguable evidence of
current discrimination against non-white people in housing, banking, education,
employment, criminal justice, healthcare, environmental zoning, and countless
other areas, being post-racial means making believe that racism is over or of
decreased significance even while in some areas prejudice worsens. For example, in 1964 two thirds of the
prison population was white while thirty years later two thirds of the prison
population was non-white although there have been no correlating changes in the
crime patterns of the races. A growing
"for profit" prison system is only making this form of racism worse.

"The onus of having a
post-racial attitude is always placed on the oppressed."

Furthermore, race and racism cannot be transcended, only
dealt with. Navajos cannot transcend
the fact that due to environmental racism they are 1600% more likely to get
cancer than the average American citizen.
Blacks cannot transcend the fact that studies have shown that more
qualified black women are three times less likely to get a job than less
qualified white women and that white men with criminal records are more likely
to be hired than black men without criminal records. Conversely, while transcending race is something non-whites must
do to accommodate whites, whites, including white politicians, are not asked to
transcend their whiteness. If
transcending race for non-whites means that they lessen their usual attention
to racial injustice, transcending race for whites would mean that they start
paying attention to their historical and current, de jure and de facto white
privilege. It would mean white people
divesting themselves of their ignorance about the way things such as the New
Deal, Wagner Act, Federal Housing Administration loans, etc. aided and continue
to aid even the poorest and most hard-working whites at the expense of
non-whites.

Obama is lauded for making whites feel good by pandering to
moral cowardice and not asking whites to fight for a nation where all men being
created equal is reflected in the equal treatment all men receive. It's as though we are being asked to believe
that the weariness whites feel when hearing about racism is more burdensome and
worthy of relief than the weariness non-whites feel when actually experiencing
racism. Non-whites who ask for racial
equity are seen as demanding a special luxury.
When whites attack non-whites for wanting a level playing field, what
they are really doing is demanding to be able to keep their white privilege
hand outs - and they do so with Obama's blessing. Obama pretends that suffering from racial injustice is no more
significant than suffering from other mainstream American ailments. However, racism, as an inter-generational
human rights abuse, does demonstrably more harm to all aspects of American
lives than any other of America's problems.
Furthermore, while racism alone places extreme obstacles in the path of
a non-white American, everything from poverty, to poor health, to mortgage crises
and predatory lending that a white person can face is exacerbated by racism
when faced by a non-white citizen. A moral leader would recognize that
those races singled out for pernicious treatment must be singled out to receive
justice.

"Being post-racial means making believe that racism is
over or of decreased significance even while in some areas prejudice worsens."

Obama offers whites the permission of a black man to forget
their responsibilities. And ultimately,
that's what anti-racism is - a responsibility.
It's not about white people plagued by white guilt giving hand outs to
blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, or Asians. It's about the responsibility all Americans who consider
themselves to be patriots have to make sure all other Americans experience
equality, justice, and the other rights guaranteed them by America's core
documents. If whites were truly
patriotic, incendiary condemnations of racism wouldn't be controversial,
because such language would be recognized as passionate defenses of American
values. Those who compare Obama
favorably to non-white leaders who are more firm in their condemnation of
racism would do well to remember that the Declaration of Independence is the
original source of inflammatory defenses of liberty and justice. Such language is always acceptable until it
is extended to the rights of non-white peoples. Unfortunately, when non-white peoples demand American rights they
are unjustly seen as playing the victim or seeking to use racism as a way to
avoid responsibility for their own behavior.
To tell people who have always worked twice as hard to get half as far
that they need to stop using racism as an excuse for lack of personal
initiative is a cruel and fallacious insult.
It is interesting to me that when it comes to attacking black people,
all pretenses of post-raciality and racial transcendence disappear.

When Obama avoids directly attacking racism saying that
he refuses to focus on what divides us, he is refusing to take a stand for
what's right. He mislabels those who
address racial inequities as the authors of societal divisiveness as opposed to
those who perpetuate racial inequities.
I'm not sure who the "us" is that Obama is so worried about dividing if
he discusses racism. Discussing racism
doesn't divide America into whites and non-whites but racists and anti-racists
- is Obama worried about hurting the feelings of bigots? Besides, imagine if Frederick Douglass had
decided not to focus on slavery because it divided us - or if Susan B. Anthony
had neglected women's suffrage for the same reason. America would have suffered.
Great Americans know that if you only focus on the issues that unite
Americans, the oppressions that divide Americans are allowed to flourish like a
cancer. Obama even acts as though one
cannot fight both the problems that are common to all Americans and the
problems that divide us - as though if he chooses to address racism he cannot
possibly also address the failing economy, rising gas prices, or an ailing
public school system as well, giving himself a pass to ignore racism. Equality, liberty and justice are not
distractions from America's other problems but America's core values.

"Obama mislabels those who address racial inequities as
the authors of societal divisiveness as opposed to those who perpetuate racial
inequities."

There is a well known proverb about people who share Obama's
attitude - it states that "Evil prospers when good men do nothing." From the school child who watches a bully
torment his victim to the German farmer who pretends not to see the
concentration camp in the next field, people who choose not to be divisive, to
passively accept what is wrong, make possible societal evil. Yet somehow Obama has managed to change this
attitude from a transgression into a virtue.
That people are celebrating as uprightness what has long been known as
wrongdoing demonstrates the dangerous state of the nation's psyche.

Shannon Joyce Prince is a student at Dartmouth College. She
can be contacted at [email protected].

Notes:

For
a (far from comprehensive) introduction to white privilege and how it benefits
all whites regardless of class see: http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=614,
http://www.reparationsthecure.org/Articles/Lamb/MeetingOpposition,
and When Affirmative Action Was White by
Ira Katznelson

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