The Age of Obama

The day after the election a friend of mine posed this question to me: "So, are we living in the post-racist era?" He was (mostly) kidding.

The next night I found myself caught in a discussion about whether or not President-elect Barack Obama was sufficiently black with three especially white friends. (I, of course, argued that he was not. I acknowledge that there may be some irony here.)

It is hard to deny that this election was the most significant presidential election for race relations in our nation's history, no matter what happens in an Obama Administration. As someone (an Obama supporter) said to me in the days following, "I feel compelled to congratulate black people.... Does that make me a racist?"

Obama, who made a point of not identifying himself as a "black candidate" and was often described as "transcending" race, has suddenly become a symbol of progress for all blacks. The only thing everyone seemed to agree on about Obama's election was-whether or not he ends up winning the war in Iraq, solving our economic crisis, providing health care to every American or introducing a college football playoff-that it was a historic moment for his race.

All of this is true, and yet it feels largely self-congratulatory. It is as if we were hanging a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner up over the White House-Obama's election is a momentous symbolic achievement, but it does not materially change much. Obama's presidency will help normalize blacks in positions of power, perhaps change stereotypes about black culture and provide a new type of black role model, but it will not fund poor schools in black neighborhoods, change sentencing guidelines that put blacks in jail at such a disproportional rate or provide health benefits to black families.

The answer to the initial question that my friend posed to me is, obviously, "no" (and if you're not convinced, the hundreds of hate crimes that the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented since Election Day help back that up). I highly doubt many full-fledged racists are going to have epiphanies due to Obama's election. But the question fundamentally misses the point. Yes, racism still exists, but not in the Strom-Thurmond-"Segregation forever" manner in which it once thrived.

Racism of today is much subtler than it was in the middle of the 20th century (I understand that I'm not breaking new ground with my racial analysis here). It manifests itself when people say things like, "I'm not voting against Obama because he's black, I'm voting against him because he's not one of us," or "I have nothing against black people, I just don't like black culture." It arises from a basic unfamiliarity with people of other races that causes essentially decent and open-minded people to misunderstand someone else's background.

And this is why Obama's election is not the dawn of a new day that people are making it out to be. Yes, Obama is black-he faced issues that only a black candidate would have to face throughout the campaign. But he is also not black-he was not raised by black parents, he is not a descendent of American slaves, he grew up in Indonesia and went to a private high school in Hawaii. The dominant obstacles facing blacks today stem from a specific culture and background-a culture that Obama (as he himself notes in "Dreams of My Father") was not a part of-not the mere biological fact of having African ancestry. Obama's election does not prove that any African American can be the president some day because there is nobody of any racial background with the unique upbringing that Obama had.