So Explain This: The Myth Of Post-Racial America

Posted by J. Alexander Mitchell on 07.23.2009

“What would you do if someone tried to f--- with you in your own house?”

"What would you do if someone tried to f--- with you in your own house?"

"Wha… wha?"

"I said ‘WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF SOMEONE TRIED TO F—WITH YOU IN YOUR OWN HOUSE?!?!"

"I'D BUST SOME CAPS!"

"'Bust some caps!'… Give that man a gold star!"

-Paris and Cisco, as portrayed by Avery Brooks and Lou Diamond Phillips, "The Big Hit"

Every time I think about the Henry Louis Gates arrest on disorderly conduct in his own home for more than five minutes, this quote pops into my head, and I find it hard not to laugh inappropriately. For the record, anyone that likes good movies should probably avoid ‘The Big Hit", but this exchange summarizes my feelings on the subject matter. For the uninitiated, Professor Henry Louis Gates, a Harvard professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American studies, had just returned home from a trip to China when he discovered his front door jammed. With the help of his driver, he forced his way into his home, but not before a neighbor saw them and called the police, reporting that two Black men were trying to break into a house. An officer arrived, and asked Dr. Gates to come outside. Though he initially resisted (I have read the quote "Yeah, I'll talk to ya mama outside!" attributed to Dr. Gates, though I haven't found any proof that he said it), he eventually showed the officer both his driver's license and his Harvard ID. The officer, who had followed Dr. Gates into his home without permission, continued to question Dr. Gates, at which point the professor began asking to see his ID and became even more agitated. The officer decided to leave, and Dr. Gates followed him outside – still on his own property – and kept yelling at the officer. At this point, he was arrested for disorderly conduct. The interesting part is whether or not race was involved and, more to the point, how can we apply this situation to the thought that we are in a "post-racial" society. In my opinion, many people want desperately for our country to be "beyond race", and point to the election of President Obama as evidence that we have moved beyond it. However, I would submit that we are merely in the second leg of a multi-part relay race, and that to assume that we are "post-racial" is both disingenuous and gets in the way of continuing the incredible progress we have already made.

First off, a disclaimer – this article will speak specifically about Black experiences, and skews heavily towards events in Texas and Louisiana. The reason for this is that I am Black and I live in Texas. As such, I have ready access to this information. I believe most of my points have parallels across varying minorities. Again, though, for ease of demonstration I am sticking mostly to "Black" and "TX/LA" issues.

There are two things that need to occur, in my opinion, before we can move to a post-racial society. The first is that the barriers of entry across class lines (which happen to trend along racial lines as well) must be destroyed. We have made huge strides toward that (as we have in most aspects involving race), and new factors such as increased Pell grants and the imminent health care packages show that we are working well in that direction. The second thing that is needed is a cultural shift in our attitude toward race. I believe we need to be able to have honest discussion about race and subculture tied to race. We have made huge strides in that direction as well, with the election of President Obama serving as obvious evidence of our growth.

However, it is this area that I find the most difficulty. Again, we want to declare the relay completed, when we have just started. I find the fact that many in the majority want to say that we have no more racism troubling; I think that the differences in viewpoint between the majority and minorities merely highlights that we have more work to do. Dr. Gates' arrest provides a wonderful example of this - Most commentary that I have received from (mostly White) friends that I have discussed this with that argue race was not an issue revolved around a single argument: Professor Gates should not have kept yelling at the officer. Most commentary that I have received from (mostly non-White) friends that I have discussed this with have argued that the officer should not have followed him inside his home and should have ended things as soon as Dr. Gates proved that it was, indeed, his home. Ultimately, there is no concrete way to prove whether or not this is indicative of racial profiling or not.

That is the key difficulty – most racism in the 21st century is not overt. Gone are the days when Black people were hung or berated with the N-Word in a sign of what is obviously racism. Yahoo news put up an article about Dr. Gates' subsequent release (the charges have since been dropped), and I found the observation of one statistician very interesting:

Racial profiling became a national issue in the 1990s, when highway police on major drug delivery routes were accused of stopping drivers simply for being black. Lawsuits were filed, studies were commissioned, data was analyzed. "It is wrong, and we will end it in America," President George W. Bush said in 2001.

Yet for every study that concluded police disproportionately stop, search and arrest minorities, another expert came to a different conclusion. "That's always going to be the case," Greg Ridgeway, who has a Ph.D in statistics and studies racial profiling for the RAND research group, said on Monday. "You're never going to be able to (statistically) prove racial profiling. ... There's always a plausible explanation."

The emphasis was mine in this quote. Again – the nature of racism in the 21st century is not overt. If one chooses to ignore race in a situation, one often can. If one chooses to see race in a situation, one often can. This can lead to a lot of failures in communication.

I will give an anecdotal example. I live in Dallas, TX. There is a "section" of Dallas, Highland Park, which is its own city surrounded by Dallas. Highland Park was a very affluent neighborhood in Dallas that decided they did not agree with many aspects of Dallas and had enough wealth to incorporate the neighborhood to become its own city, complete with its own police force, fire department, school district, etc.. The first four times I drove through Highland Park I was stopped by the police and questioned. I was never ticketed – merely questioned. The first two times my registration had expired. The third time I was going two miles over the speed limit. The fourth time there was a warrant on my car for an ex-girlfriend that had run up a number of tickets in Dallas while using my car (Writer's Note – Don't date ghetto chicks… particularly if you are an IT consultant that is constantly travelling and have a car you can let them use while you are out of the state. That doesn't work out well). What makes this story interesting was that each stop occurred at night – it was convenient for many of my hang out spots to cross Highland Park to get to my home. In Texas, your registration sticker is on your windshield. So, whereas there was something "worthy of stopping me" in each situation, I later wondered how in the cop was able to see my sticker while my car was moving at night without any external lighting that I can recall beyond street lights. In Louisiana it makes sense – your sticker is on your license plate, so anyone following you can see it. However, at night it is difficult to believe they saw my tag on my moving vehicle when they were stationary. Moreover, I had done nothing wrong and everything was in tip-top shape when I was stopped due to my ex-girlfriend's warrants. This required that they ran my license plate through their computer system. The questions became "Do you run everyone's license plates through your computer? If not, why did you run mine?" Of course, this question was a mental one, as I did not verbalize it because, as you can guess, I did not want to go to jail. I'm not even going to get into pulling someone over for going two miles an hour over the speed limit. When one looks at this situation, if one chooses to see racial profiling, one will. If one chooses to see someone that has bad luck with one particular area, one will.

Ultimately, the cultural side of our walk towards post-racial society is two-fold. On the majority side, understanding that there are issues of race that one may not understand is crucial. If you have never experienced racism, you must accept, embrace, and, most importantly, respect the fact that others that have will come to vastly different yet equally valid viewpoints than yours. On the minority side, we must recognize that we see race where others don't, then learn to speak and act with so that others that do not have our experiences will understand.

I recognize that I see race. The Highland Park episodes were not my first time dealing with what I perceived as profiling; as a young man on the West Bank of New Orleans, I was stopped while walking on a random dirt road because I fit the description of a criminal. When asked what this description was, I was told "talk Black kid with short hair". Now, I am unfamiliar with what you as the reader may picture as a New Orleanian in the late 80's/early 90's looks like, but trust me when I said that this description fit a lot of people. Unfortunately, I continue to see race, and that is often the differing point between my views and many majority friends and associates. For them, racism is something that happened decades ago that we are well beyond. However, here is what I would counter that with:

• 1998 – James Byrd is lynched by three White men, that drag him behind their truck with a rope until he dies.
I still do not drive in non-highways in Texas because of this.


• 2006 - Shaquanda Cotton is given seven years jail time for shoving a teacher's aide. Note – not punching the teacher aide… not stabbing the teacher's aide… not shooting the teacher's aide… shoving the teacher's aide. To contrast, a White girl the same age was given probation by the same judge for arson - specifically, burning down her family's house.



• 2006 - Six Black boys are charged with aggravated battery for beating down a White boy in a racially-charged incident. The part that I had difficulty with was the charge – aggravated battery requires assaulting someone with a deadly weapon. The weapon in this case – their tennis shoes. Not steel toed boots or anything like that, but regular Jordans.
  
  
• 2008 - Brandon McLelland is run over by two White "friends" (the extent that they were friends has varied in reports, but, in my opinion, friends don't let friends drag each other to death) after they got into an argument over drinking and Brandon's dating of a young lady that just happened to be White.



• 2008 - A high school in Charleston, MS has it's first interracial prom. You read that year correctly - not 1948... not 1968... not even 1988... in 2008. Actor Morgan Freeman - who is from the area - offered to pay for an interracial prom every year since 1997, and the school board only accepted it in 2008. The reasoning? The White parents did not want an interracial prom. According to Canadian Director Paul Saltzman, who recorded the event for the documentary "Prom Night In Mississippi",
  "When I was doing the research and asking people 'What was the problem in having the prom together?' what whites usually said is, 'You know, blacks are into drugs; they're into violence' and on and on and on,"
  
  Though this groundbreaking prom did occur, there were still enough White families that resisted the idea to create a separate White prom.



• 2009 - Black nationalist groups and KKK members have a standoff after the "friends" accused of killing Brandon Mclelland are released and charges dropped due to lack of evidence and a gravel truck driver citing that he "may have" run over McLelland (Writer's Note – how can you "may have" run over someone? Is this not something you would notice? Moreover, the police found the guys truck with ample evidence, as reported at the time – of an attempt to wash bloodstains off the bumper, undercarriage, and bottom of the car. What had they run over… a jackelope?)

Each of these has a plausible, non-racial explanation; for example, who can really defend a six-on-one beatdown? Shouldn't families be allowed to have a separate prom? Can we say concretely that Brandon McLelland's "friends" killed him due to racial bias? Is it any wonder why, why we hear of Henry Louis Gates' arrest, some people ask "Why do people see race in everything"? Conversely, every event mentioned with one exception occurred in the last three years. The issues being dealt with are not part of some far-flung, shameful past, but are current events. Is it any wonder why some people choose to still see race?

So explain this to me: Is this really a post-racial America? If it is not, how can we continue our path to a post-racial America?