COLORBLIND AMBITION: THE RISE OF POST RACIAL POLITICS AND THE RETREAT FROM RACIAL EQUITY

It was summer 2004 when most of us first became familiar with Barack Obama. Then an Illinois state senator, the U.S. senate candidate delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston: the first of his many now-famous orations on a national stage. Therein he delivered several applause lines, but none were as big as when he proclaimed:

"There's not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America."

Though one might welcome such a statement were it offered in the future and aspirational tense -- as a heartfelt plea for true equality -- Obama proclaimed it in the descriptive and present tense. In so doing he traded intellectual honesty for easy and predictable ovation. After all, 2004 was the same year that research from MIT and the University of Chicago found that job applicants with "white" names were 50 percent more likely to be called back for an interview than those with "black" names, even when all their qualifications were indistinguishable. And with black and brown unemployment standing at double the white rate, even as the new upstart from Chicago poured forth rhetoric professing national unity (and with the median white family possessing 8-10 times the net worth of the median black or Latino family), it should have been apparent that Obama was engaged in political science fiction rather than the description of sociological truth.

http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/colorblind-ambition-the-rise-post-racial-politics-and-retreat-racial-equity
http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/colorblind-ambition-the-rise-post-racial-politics-and-retreat-racial-equity


Related Link: COLORBLIND AMBITION: THE RISE OF POST RACIAL POLITICS AND THE RETREAT FROM RACIAL EQUITY