That quote is a fabrication. For the time being.
But as I was listening to Thom Hartmann today (I believe he had Peter from Peter, Paul and Mary), that quote popped into my head and I thought, is it only a matter of time? Will an Obama presidency make it more difficult to address racism in our society?
It seems counter-intuitive as hell, but think about it. Think about what the right wing pundits and media will say. "Racism isn't that big of a problem, we elected a black president! How bad can it be?"
The danger, however, isn't that the idiots from the right and the pundits will dismiss concerns about racism, but rather that some Democrats will become complacent, will allow themselves to be mollified and relax their guard.
I'm not too worried about active participants, volunteers and the like. They're usually better informed and more motivated to begin with, and thus I'd say they're less likely to fall for the crap blathered about by Fox and more increasingly, ABC, CBS and CNN.
I'm more worried about people like my sister.
Briefly, she's married to one of Bush's dead-enders. He's a police officer, from a family of police officers. And a family of Republicans.
He has some troubling racist views, the sort of views where if he was called to the scene of a robbery, or a mugging, or a domestic disturbance and discovered the perpetrator was black, he would think "That's typical." Like I said, disturbing.
He seems vaguely aware that less affluent neighborhoods (in our city at least) tend to have "scary brown people" in them, but he doesn't see how United States policy has made that happen. He sees things like Affirmative Action, civil rights and--now--a black man as candidate for president, and he'd think "What's wrong with them? Why can't they succeed?"
Just by what I've written above, he seems like an asshole, but believe me he's not. He's great to my sister and my family, he's well aware of my liberal leanings and doesn't taunt me about it or try and pick fights. Usually, when he gets a little to bigoted for me, I just leave the room or he dials it back or changes the subject. He's not perfect and I'm certainly not excusing his racism, but I don't want people to think he's a bad person. Though I'm sure some of you will.
Anyway, I'm not worried about him. Convincing him of the merits of liberalism would be a full time job, and I just don't see him enough and frankly, I don't have the patience.
My sister's a very intelligent woman. Valedictorian of high school, grad school, she teaches speech therapy to special education children and has plans to open her own business / service to tutor highly disabled kids.
She also is convinced that Barack Obama is not patriotic and doesn't care about America.
Some of that might be my brother-in-law's influence, which would concern me if I thought he was a bad person. But for the rest of it, she buys into those emails and smear stories on TV. She cited a lack of lapel pin and that picture where Obama's not facing the flag as some of her proof. She has yet to say that he's a secret Muslim manchurian candidate terrorist, thank heavens for small favors, but she is worried about him. She also doesn't support him because he is not in favor of gay marriage.
She's complicated, simultaneously well-informed about some things and clueless about others.
Anyway.
She is precisely the sort of person--her and her husband--who will be taken in by the meme "Black president = no racism in America." She may be less taken in than my brother-in-law, but she'll certainly think that it's safe to put racism and such concerns on the back burner while we concentrate on other things.
While electing Barack Obama would be a tremendous achievement, it wouldn't change the fact that society is built upon a foundation of oppression, that society itself is designed to keep certain people from succeeding. Things have been changing, but it's only recent that such changes are starting to bear fruit. White people have had generations to build wealth; black people have not and are still struggling in some areas. Obama is an Ideal person to bring discussions about racism to the forefront, to address these concerns head-on.
The danger in that, however, is the subtle racism that many, many white people have yet few admit to.
"He's only doing this because he's black."
"Like Obama knows anything about racism, he's just pandering!"
"He's PRESIDENT! How bad can racism be?"
We should all be especially on our guard for racism in the coming months, and perhaps more so AFTER Obama gets elected. It will be easy for the media and pundits and Americans to dismiss concerns about racism while we have a black President. We can't get complacent or allow such things to stand unchallenged.
And if there's anyone on this site or reading this diary that actually thinks racism isn't a big problem, realize two things.
- Michelle Obama is a vibrant and successful woman who very likely will be our next First Lady;
and despite ALL of that,
- this is what passes for acceptable TV these days:
UPDATE: StrangeAnimals perfectly distills my overall point. Taken from his comment below:
At the same time we take pride with his nomination in how far the country has progressed in overcoming its attitudes towards race, we should take the opportunity to examine the seeming indifference of much of the country to black America’s fate.