In Search of Post-Racial America
By Tim Wise
I have to admit, I was disappointed. After all, to hear lots of folks tell it we are now living in "post-racial America," all because Barack Obama is to become the nation's 44th president in a couple of months. So, imagine my surprise when I contacted the labor department, in search of evidence to sustain the post-racial America thesis, only to discover that blacks, Latinos, and indigenous folks are still three times as likely as whites to be poor and twice as likely to be unemployed, and that black men with college degrees were still earning 30% less than their white counterparts--exactly the same as was the case on November 3rd! When they told me that black men with high school diplomas were still more likely to be out of work than white male dropouts, well, I damn near fell out of my seat.
And imagine my shock when, upon contacting the Border Patrol, in an attempt to determine when they would be re-deploying large segments of their force to the Canadian border (since, in a post-racial America, we wouldn't want to concentrate all our anti-immigrant efforts on brown-skinned folks), my query was met with a laugh, and an assurance that no such redeployment would be taking place.
And imagine how stunned I was upon getting off the phone with a staffer at the Commerce Department, who informed me that, just as was the case prior to November 4, businesses owned by white men were still receiving about 91% of all government contracts. I had argued with him, insisting that surely huge chunks of that money had been redistributed to black and brown-owned firms now that Obama was president-elect, but they stuck to their story. Nope, they promised. Nothing had changed,
Still convinced we were living in a post-racial America (after all, why would they say it on the TV if it weren't the case?), I hopped in my car and headed out to the suburbs, confident that I would find evidence of our post-raciality in such places as these.
First, I stopped off at the nearest Home Depot, figuring that I would encounter a veritable flood of dark-skinned citizenry, newly relocated to these previously white spaces, and intent on gathering the materials needed for their latest home improvement project. But nope, as far as the eye could see it was white folks with the lumber, and the paint swatches, and the energy-efficient halogen lighting, and the shiny gas grills.
Tim's travels in search of a post-racial American continue after the jump...
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