What happens after?: A Discussion on the Post Racial

At first, I was astonished that there were so many people named Henry Louis Gates Jr, living in Cambridge. Not that “something like this” couldn’t happen to Henry-Harvard-Louis-Professor-Gates-African-American-Scholar-Jr, but getting arrested on your own porch for being suspected of opening your front door, whether with your key or your shoulder, seemed bizarre. Stupid, if you will.




And not just because it was his own house. There are plenty of situations in which you can, and should be arrested in your own home. Situations which warrant the time and attention of those who are in charge of serving and protecting. But this wasn’t one.

So what intrigued me was not that he got angry, or got arrested for being angry. The abuse of power, as an expression of racial superiority, is nothing new. It was that this situation became a symbol of the death of our burgeoning post racial society that caught my attention and begged the question,

what post racial society?

I have never enjoyed conversations about post racialism. On the one hand, it is hard to have a conversation about an idea where there are so many conflicting definitions. On the other, it is hard to accept an idea as new if it operates within the model of time conflated with progress, and overlaid on race, that has played a huge part in entrenching racism into our present racial society. On the third hand, when is this post racial society supposed to begin? And how far beyond our borders does it expand? On the fourth hand, who is in charge of removing all the race traces from the present _ _ _ _ _ _ society? The FCC?

How many hands do I get?

But in an effort to give post racial society a chance to defend itself, I went on a hunt for some definitions. One of the most interesting things I found was how frequently President Obama was linked to it – either as a symbol of its success or its imminence. One article defined him as the “documentation of change that has already occurred,” stating, “It is exactly because America has made such dramatic racial progress that whites today chafe so under the racist stigma.” The author goes on to say that the president “tapped into a deep longing in American life – and presenting himself to a majority white nation – Obama knew intuitively that he was dealing with a stigmatized people.”

Another article cited David Duke’s “nonchalance” about Obama’s candidacy as evidence of a blossoming post racial society saying, “we've come an awfully long way when a white Supremacist sees past race.”

Neither of these arguments supporting our post racial society inspire much confidence in me. A single person’s tepid feeling towards Obama, while he still maintains that Obama is “a racist person,” does not seem like a radical change from whatever previous racial society we just left. And using Obama, by virtue of his blackness, to absolve generations of unmitigated institutionalized racism, does not seem like a reversal of much besides who's getting which adjectives. It is hard to resolve that our post racial society is supposed to be, “an America where all groups are equal recognized for their achievements, but where all people are free to be distinct individuals,” at the same time it is thought to represent a heightened period of our already unrestrained “pro-nonwhite, anti-white policies and beliefs.”

Not only does the wording become impossible to follow as the very definition of a post racial US doubles back on itself, I begin to wonder what post-racial theory was before Obama. It seems that the entire society hinges on the function of one (1/2) black man to absolve, victimize, empower, protect, destroy, and preserve whiteness. All at the same time. And for a role that is supposed to bring about a time where we can all be “over race” there’s a lot of race in that job. Which brings to light the fact that the way race operates in the United States is much more nuanced than racial guilt or anything else that fits neatly into post-racial theory.

It therefore comes as no surprise that when Obama comments that the police acted “stupidly,” it is assumed he could only mean that the stupid act extended only to the profiling. And, in referring to race, has brought our delicately constructed post racial world crumbling down.

The reaction to his comment make more sense when taken as a measure of how instantly we rely on ingrained ideas of race relations. Gate’s race and gender in combination with the accusation of robbery distracts us from the idea that with another combination, one may focus on the idea that the police department may need a refresher course on what constitutes grounds for arrest instead. Or that profiling as a practice happens all too immediately, and may function to keep even those who work against racism blind to all its mechanisms. For those who were shocked or upset, what was it about the situation? Notions of Black masculinity? That it overrode age or physical ability?

Take for example, Richard Aoki. Imagine, Aoki, a Japanese-American man, only slightly older than Henry Louis Gates Jr, and a scholar on race and ethnicity, were arrested in the same situation. How would the press have reacted? What would have been the highlights of their story? How many people would have understood Obama’s comment to mean, the police shouldn’t have profiled Aoki and assumed as an Asian-American man in the US he had an inherent tendency towards violence – they handled the situation stupidly. How many people would have thought Aoki, at 58, capable of threatening the police officers to the extent that it would have warranted his arrest? The notions of East Asian masculinity promulgated throughout our present day society make it difficult. Is that what was so upsetting before? These are the same notions that make any idea of a post racial society impossible. If we are unable to interpret situations for more than they seem, post racialism is a dangerous place to arrive.

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Richard Aoki was a member of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. He was the only Asian American man to hold an official leadership position – Field Marshall. Aoki passed away in March of 2009. A documentary of his life and activism is set to be released this year.