Sunday, November 16, 2008

A Post-Racial Society?

Right after the election I read a comment online by a man who said he couldn't understand why people were getting so excited about the race of the winner. If we live in a post-racial society, he opined, it shouldn't matter.

I snorted and said to myself that anyone who lives in the United States and considers it a post-racial society is probably white. I later expressed this opinion to a friend whose skin color is darker than mine. She agreed and added, "And on crack!"

And then I read this profoundly discouraging article about the uptick in racially-motivated crime after the election.

A post-racial society? Maybe sometime in the future people will be judged, as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." But I'm afraid that day is not yet.

1 comment:

The Mama's said...

No - that day is not quite here! But white people like to pretend that it is because it absolves their guilt. ;)