This past week brought a series of high-profile, racially-charged shootings in the US, with police violence directed against African-American men in Baton Rouge and Minnesota, followed by an African-American sniper who killed five enforcement officers in Dallas. The sniper, a former war veteran, was allegedly propelled by his animus for white people, but in particular white cops.
At first blush, as one followed the news, one's first reaction was that American society, unable to bridge the divide between law enforcement and communities of color, was falling apart, and for it to be put back together again, it needed to take another look at its “national conversation on race.” And President Obama admitted as much in his speech last Tuesday at a memorial service in Dallas for the five slain police officers, where he called on Americans to overcome their racial divisions. That was an appeal, sadly, that he has repeated often throughout his seven years in office.
“I am not naive,” he said in his impassioned and at times weary address. “I have spoken at too many memorials during the course of my presidency.” Will race -- or what Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish sociologist, called “The American Dilemma,” in his classic 1944 book of the same name -- remain a perennial problem in the US, a problem that dwarfs all others and doesn't get solved and won't go away?
To be sure, the status of blacks has, of course, changed dramatically since American apartheid (for what else to call it?) was ascendant in the South, and to a lesser extent in the North, in the decades before World War II and Martin Luther King's iconic “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation's capital on April 28, 1963, attended by no less than 250,000 civil rights supporters.
Consider this: A mere ten years before Brown v Board of Education, the 1954 landmark case in which the Supreme Court ruled that state laws establishing separate public schools for blacks and white students was unconstitutional, Americans were asked in a survey whether “Negroes,” a dismissive term fashionable at the time, “should have as good a chance as white people to get any kind of job.” The majority of whites responded that “white people should have the first chance at any kind of job.”
In other words, blacks at the time were not only expected to sit at the back of the bus (which they did, until Rosa Parks challenged the notion in 1955 and provided a springboard for the civil rights movement) but to stand at the back of the employment line as well.
In fact, many African American activists readily admit that, by numerous, if not all, measures, the pace of change has been impressive following the start of the affirmative action era, though they are convinced that affirmative action itself, the policy that favors members of “disadvantaged groups” — read, black — who suffer from discrimination, a policy that in essence seeks to bridge inequalities in employment and access to education, housing and opportunities, has done nothing really to help the black underclass.
As for the struggle by impoverished blacks for equal opportunity, the end of the struggle is not yet in sight, for there are still "many rivers to cross." All of which shatters the view, embraced by many analysts after America inaugurated its first black president in 2009, that American society was now "post-racial." Alas, America's racial fault lines endure, and despite the progress already achieved, the ghost of Jew Crow is still around, reminding Americans that the imagined utopia of post-racial America is just that — an imagined utopia.
Though the lynch mobs of yore have been relegated to the history books, systemic prejudice continues to divide and polarize white Americans and people of color. To this day, practitioners of systemic prejudice practice it brazenly. Look at what is called "white flight," the practice by whites resistant to integration who, in order to circumvent the courts' rulings on race, move away from suburban or urban neighborhoods once blacks move there substantial numbers.
A case in point? Around 1960, after desegregation began in American schools, Clifton Park Junior High in Baltimore had 2,023 white students and 34 black students. A decade later, it had 2037 blacks and 12 whites. The end result? Affirmative action was not going to help, for you cannot legislate how people think of each other. A mindset emerges organically in a social system, and it does so in response to an infinite number of variables in that system. No Supreme Court is going to reverse it.
Perhaps one day, after white Americans have acknowledged the existence of racism in their culture, apologized to its victims, and made amends, the utopian dream of a post-racial America will be realized. Not before.
At first blush, as one followed the news, one's first reaction was that American society, unable to bridge the divide between law enforcement and communities of color, was falling apart, and for it to be put back together again, it needed to take another look at its “national conversation on race.” And President Obama admitted as much in his speech last Tuesday at a memorial service in Dallas for the five slain police officers, where he called on Americans to overcome their racial divisions. That was an appeal, sadly, that he has repeated often throughout his seven years in office.
“I am not naive,” he said in his impassioned and at times weary address. “I have spoken at too many memorials during the course of my presidency.” Will race -- or what Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish sociologist, called “The American Dilemma,” in his classic 1944 book of the same name -- remain a perennial problem in the US, a problem that dwarfs all others and doesn't get solved and won't go away?
To be sure, the status of blacks has, of course, changed dramatically since American apartheid (for what else to call it?) was ascendant in the South, and to a lesser extent in the North, in the decades before World War II and Martin Luther King's iconic “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation's capital on April 28, 1963, attended by no less than 250,000 civil rights supporters.
Consider this: A mere ten years before Brown v Board of Education, the 1954 landmark case in which the Supreme Court ruled that state laws establishing separate public schools for blacks and white students was unconstitutional, Americans were asked in a survey whether “Negroes,” a dismissive term fashionable at the time, “should have as good a chance as white people to get any kind of job.” The majority of whites responded that “white people should have the first chance at any kind of job.”
In other words, blacks at the time were not only expected to sit at the back of the bus (which they did, until Rosa Parks challenged the notion in 1955 and provided a springboard for the civil rights movement) but to stand at the back of the employment line as well.
In fact, many African American activists readily admit that, by numerous, if not all, measures, the pace of change has been impressive following the start of the affirmative action era, though they are convinced that affirmative action itself, the policy that favors members of “disadvantaged groups” — read, black — who suffer from discrimination, a policy that in essence seeks to bridge inequalities in employment and access to education, housing and opportunities, has done nothing really to help the black underclass.
As for the struggle by impoverished blacks for equal opportunity, the end of the struggle is not yet in sight, for there are still "many rivers to cross." All of which shatters the view, embraced by many analysts after America inaugurated its first black president in 2009, that American society was now "post-racial." Alas, America's racial fault lines endure, and despite the progress already achieved, the ghost of Jew Crow is still around, reminding Americans that the imagined utopia of post-racial America is just that — an imagined utopia.
Though the lynch mobs of yore have been relegated to the history books, systemic prejudice continues to divide and polarize white Americans and people of color. To this day, practitioners of systemic prejudice practice it brazenly. Look at what is called "white flight," the practice by whites resistant to integration who, in order to circumvent the courts' rulings on race, move away from suburban or urban neighborhoods once blacks move there substantial numbers.
A case in point? Around 1960, after desegregation began in American schools, Clifton Park Junior High in Baltimore had 2,023 white students and 34 black students. A decade later, it had 2037 blacks and 12 whites. The end result? Affirmative action was not going to help, for you cannot legislate how people think of each other. A mindset emerges organically in a social system, and it does so in response to an infinite number of variables in that system. No Supreme Court is going to reverse it.
Perhaps one day, after white Americans have acknowledged the existence of racism in their culture, apologized to its victims, and made amends, the utopian dream of a post-racial America will be realized. Not before.
