Race in America

When Mark Twain penned “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” it was a revolution in storytelling--a privileged white male was writing about the capacity of his younger counterparts to form meaningful social bonds with “people of color.” Nevertheless, the book was littered with what would be today considered racist undertones in depicting Jim as a less than civilized character, perhaps entirely reliant on his white counterpart for all manner of support. By the time Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was written, another young white person and the daughter of an attorney representing a falsely accused black man, is relied upon to defend the black man from cruel injustice. And yet, the black man by this point had yet to reach a place in the American Collective Conscience that would allow him to assert himself as a guarantor of equality. With the election of President Barack Obama, and the subsequent manner in which President Obama has betrayed his own African roots, this difficulty has been all the more exacerbated in preventing us from arriving at a less race-conscious America.

When Barack Obama burst on the scene in 2006, he was immediately identified as a black man capable of winning a presidential election. When NAACP President Benjamin Jealous was asked whether Obama was truly “black,” however, his answer was telling--“he’s black enough” (Klein 1). Today, research indicates that almost twice as many Blacks and Whites in today believe that race relations have become worse than they were in 2009 (Lott 1). Ultimately, the election of Barack Obama was thought to have indicated a moment in time; one at which the U.S. had determined to cast off the shackles of racial discord and enter into a new age of socio-economic prosperity. However, perhaps due to his own racially based insecurities, President Obama has so aggressively pursued a race-based facet to all aspects of his agenda that he has thrust the country back into a kind of racial limbo.

President Obama began to pursue this agenda when he announced to the world in November that if the U.S. Economy did not improve by leaps and bounds, race relations in the U.S. would worsen to the point of disrepair. These were considered shocking statements on the part of an American President, with most international commentators unable to comprehend a correlation between economic success and racial harmony (Foster 1). Of course, President Obama’s point was underscored by a tinge of his own race-obsessed psyche in that the basis for his proposition suggests that American Blacks and Whites are all but assured of being at each other’s throats and that the only thing keeping them from so being is the illusion of economic prosperity, without which they would seek to do violence against each other.

Though subtle, President Obama’s assessment of how far we have come as a nation is horrifying in that it assumes that Black men and women simply need for some savior to pick them up by their bootstraps, as they are incapable of doing this of their own volition. In other words, President Obama suggests that if his re-distribution of wealth plan does not work, black people will become angry at their white counterparts. This vision of racial discord is especially disturbing in that it presumes in Black America the vilest of intentions. In other words, it suggests that if Black Americans do not benefit from improved economic conditions, presumably at the expense of their White American counterparts, they will take to the streets.

Accordingly, while we may have thought in 2007 that President Obama’s election was sufficient to allow us to overcome the racially-charged manner in which our social fabric has been partly formed, it is clear today that we are perhaps no further along in this regard than we were prior to President Obama’s election. This is largely true because one man’s ascendance to a nation’s highest office cannot serve to eradicate hundreds of years of oppression. It is also true because the man in question did not sufficiently rely on his own capabilities in executing the duties of this high office, preferring sometimes to instead stoke the flames of racial tension as a means of distracting interested parties from the substance of his own failings. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that we may yet come full circle in the quest to rid our nation of racial discord.

As affirmative action policies have grown and their tenets have been enforced across all manner of educational, social, and political institutions, people of color have never been so well-positioned to succeed on the merits of their intellect and skill. With young politicians hailing from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, including Cory Booker and Marco Rubio, primed to contribute to the future socio-political make-up of our nation, it may yet be the case that our citizens comprehend that not by either the color of his skin or the content of his character, but by his words and deeds. While the content of President Obama’s character may well be admirable, it has not translated into action of the kind that would serve to bring us full circle. An even younger generation of people of color capable of effecting fundamental change of a very genuine kind is now primed to make good on its promises of future racial prosperity. We must only but give them the opportunity to lead in order to determine whether they indeed will make good on the promise; one that President Obama has appropriated more as a campaign tactic than anything else. Time will tell whether our country makes it full circle and, to be sure, we are closer now to this than ever before. But in order to arrive at this cherished destination, we must be willing to insist upon some action as a means of getting there.

Works Cited

Foster, Peter. “US Race Relations Will Worsen if Economy Doesn't Improve, Barack Obama Warns.” Telegraph.co.uk. The Telegraph, 28 Jul. 2013.

Klein, Joe. “The Fresh Face.” Time.com. Time Magazine. 15 Oct. 2006.

Lott, James R. Jr. “Obama’s Racial Imbalance.” Nationalreview.com The National Review Online, 3 Aug. 2013.