“I Can’t Be Racist. My President’s Black!”
The campaign, primary victories, election, and the inauguration of Barack Obama have caused a media trend to grow and develop of which I am becoming increasingly leery. In a country that once treated black people as property, there is a repetitive declaration that we should be proud of how far we’ve come as a nation.
Not so fast, America.
Sure, it’s great that we’ve demonstrated that a non-white person can possibly become President. There are things about this occurrence that we should be happy about. If you are black, or of mixed race, or any non-white person, it should give you happiness that someone has broken down that particular barrier. If you are a person of any race that feels we should be electing the person most likely to move our country forward, you should be happy. If you are a person of any race that has given their time and effort toward the principle of All Equally Created Men, you have a reason to be happy.
Happiness is appropriate. But pride?
President Barack Obama is identified as black. As a nation, we have chosen and accepted him as our leader. Before we pull a collective muscle patting ourselves on the collective back, let’s think about how far we would be willing to carry that acceptance. Do you think Obama would have been elected if his skin were darker, or would he have then been too scary? Would he have been elected if one of his parents had not been white, because then, what reason would he have to ever be on the side of white people? What if he had married a white woman instead of Michelle? Would that be threatening to white male voters? If Obama’s manner of speech was less precise, would he be seen as less intelligent or “too black” and therefor less electable? What if, following the pattern of most Presidents before him, Obama had selected a Cabinet comprised in full or in majority of people from his own race and sex? Would it be perceived as being unfair? Would it be seen as racist? Would it be seen as a rebellious coup d’état? Isn’t it likely that Obama has been accepted because he falls into the mold of the non-threatening black male that America continues to celebrate, from Tiger Woods to Will Smith to Colin Powell? Until these questions give no one pause to consider, we should not feel proud.
Our sweeping national pride is glossing over the fact that issues of race are far from solved in our country. The more I hear about how proud we should be, the more it sounds like the odious cliché “I’m not racist, some of my best friends are black.” Just because we have a black President, it doesn’t mean that black people (or any minority) are now on a level playing field in this country. Just because you voted for Obama, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are free from personal prejudice. The news media is reminding us over and over again how far we’ve come without giving equal time to how far we still need to go.
It took us 43 Presidents and 220 years before we elected a person who was not a white man. 43 guys before we decided that the 44th didn’t have to look just like the ones before him. The Census of 1790 shows blacks making up approximately 25% of the national population. Depending on the definition of “black”, that percentage has remained fairly consistent for 200 years, with variances as a person’s amount of blackness has mattered more or less to the Census Bureau. At different times they have had to put up with different labels like African-American, black, colored, or negro, but no matter what “those people” have been called, they’ve been right here all along, building this nation with the rest of us. So the way I do the math, in a representative democracy we should have had ten or twelve black Presidents by now. The United States of America, where we supposedly hold some truths to be self-evident, could have been proud of electing a black President if we were back in the 1870s, but in the present day we should be ashamed that it took so long.
When should we be proud of ourselves as a nation? When literacy rates are the same for all races. When incarceration rates are the same for all races. When income levels are the same for all races. When expected life span is the same for all races. When the government that represents us represents us. We have one black Senator, appointed to the seat vacated by Obama. Do you know how many we’ve had historically? Senator Roland Burris just became the sixth. Ever! Proportionate to the population we should have at least 10 and possibly up to 25 at all times. Current count of the members of the House of Representatives who are black is 39 out of 435. It’s not enough.
Right and wrong are not two halves of a whole. You don’t get to balance one with the other. Obama’s ascension to the Presidency absolves no one of the prejudices they still hold, and it does not absolve the nation of an unequal and unjust history. Let’s work on that, and then let’s be proud.
