A post racial world is more dangerous than previously thought. The necessities of equality, though possibly more faux than fact, produce the subjectivities which such an equality sought to undermine. Or, the discipline of formal white supremacy morphed into the rigidities of racial protocol upiquitous in the cultural milieu. White, black, and brown are the subjectivities produced by globality's protocols broached by divided humanisms which celebrates not the individual, but the (stratified) individuals, the three stooges of essentialisms.
To live post-racially, would be to violate all the protocols at the same time. To be Eminem, not live black, not live white, live fight, to butcher Mr. Mathers' melodic meter. To split the difference, the space between, an intersubjectivity producing racially unfiltered information, to break from globalities underlying logic of control, and to, finally, question race's usefulness as a principle.
To be post racial is to question affirmative action, minority-specific research programs and projects, and runs straight through the notion that color-blindness is an illusion. To study those intersubjective moments of non-race, would produce unfamiliar subject positions, unraced, and would guide policy away from the racial tools which have gotten us to the point that being post racial is possible.
Post racial may be positively irresponsible. Blacks trail whites in almost every major social and economic category, and the fervor for the new black face on the white throne is fascinating but not fundamentally fecund for the fostering of favorable racial relations. If post racial is coming, it need bring more than better unstructured social interaction; in need bring equality. Until more changes than my neighbors manerisms or mine toward him/her, post racial can be found alongside Oz, Neverland, or other places of positive fantasy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
We remain infected with our pasts and cultural upbringings, but having lived through integration, I am happy to have ethnic neighbors in my neighborhood. These things take time. Generations down the line will, perhaps, live in true equality. To so many, that black face on a white throne, really means something. True, things have not changed much, but having the perspective from 40 or 50 years ago, things have changed. People who live in oppression have learned not to be in a hurry, even though they often should be. People born in this decade will hopefully take the equality mantle even further. I may not live to see it, but, perhaps, you will.
ReplyDelete