Chapter 4: The Failures of "Post-Racial" America
As mentioned in previous chapters, many viewed Barack Obama’s presidency as the pivotal marker for a post-racial America. While this era marks a shift away from more overt forms of racism, post-racial ideology allows for a more covert form of racism takes its place. The success of one black man does not entail the elevation of all others, as evident in the continued slayings of unarmed black and brown men by law enforcement. An anonymous artist voiced this sentiment in their comic, “A Tale of Two Cities in Post-Racial America”, in which one half showed a poster of Hope, the “first ever black male sworn into the highest position in the land,” and in the other half “a continuing nightmare” is represented in a vigil for Oscar Grant III, “NOT the first unarmed black male to be executed by the police in the prone position.” There is this duality that is not addressed in colorblind ideology—an ideology that is by and large constituted by white people, according to surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center.
An issue with colorblind ideology is that it effectively creates a platform for the dominant (i.e. white) ideology to speak over those who experience the everyday effects of racism. Operating under the assumption of a post-racial society, many groups have co-opted the messages of social justice movements to derail them. Notably is All Lives Matter, a counter-reactionary response to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The core of the Black Lives Matter movement is that all lives matter, but the current justice system does not recognize black lives equally. To claim #AllLivesMatter draws attention away from the injustices and does nothing but derail the movement. We see this in Josh Odam’s photograph of a BLM mural vandalized to replace all instances of ‘black’ with ‘all.’ The labor put into the original piece is coopted and the black voice is effectively erased.
Come Michael Brown’s killer’s acquittal, waves of reactionary protests swept the nation. “Black Lives Matter” plays a prominent role in the chants we hear in the streets, but amid the flames we can see a lone “All Lives Matter” sign. Despite whatever good intentions the #AllLivesMatter factions may have believed they were coming from, they echo exactly the same danger colorblind ideology spreads: to accept the feel-good messages of colorblind ideology and to claim “yes, everyone is equal, all lives matter”, you must ultimately ignore the voices saying the contrary and ignore the racism and its everyday violence persisting in their lives.
This “speaking over” persists until it shifts the blame of racism unto the victims themselves. Marrying colorblind racism with the American dream, we get the bootstrap ideology: people of color should simply grab themselves by the bootstrap and claim their stake in the American dream. Assumptions of this ideology’s inverse are particularly troubling. Failures to succeed become due to personal attributes and shortcomings, rather than to systemic oppression. The reason people of color live in poorer circumstances become not due to racism and systemic oppression, but instead because of their own inferior nature and moral constitution. From this comes an outright racist meme from the white nationalist, Alt-Right movement: the Dindu Nuffin and Dinduism, a pejorative originating from 4chan used to circumscribe guilt to the black victims of police slayings. “Dindu nuffin” references the plea for innocence often used in defense for unarmed black men killed by the police, and instead uses the phrase to signify the victims’ guilt of being a ‘thug’ or ‘criminal’ and deserving of death.
An example in this is seen in the highly redistributed and ‘memed’ doctored photo of a Ferguson protestor holding a sign that reads “No mother should have to fear for her son’s life every time he robs a store.” This is another example where a black voice is appropriated, bastardized, and coopted by a counter-reactionary movement to evoke an incendiary message that is the exact opposite of the voice’s original intention. In the original photo, protestor Jermell Hasson held up a sign that read: “No mother should have to fear for her son’s life every time he leaves home #BlackLivesMatter #StayHuman.” The doctored photo dehumanizes and villainizes Hasson and the Black Lives Matter movement. This photo becomes a card in the hands of a dangerous ideology that paints victims as the deserving recipients of violence. The doctored image’s uncountably high share rate compared to the original photo goes to show how effective the derailers were in their erasure of the humanizing original message.
To answer Anna Everett’s question, “Have we become post-racial yet?”: no, and we should not operate on these assumptions. Post-racialism and colorblind ideology do little but serve those who benefit from the dominant ideology.
