Krissah Williams Thompson: I’m Not Post-Racial

For 18 months, I traveled the country interviewing voters. Not one of them uttered the word. It’s not a word my friends or I ever use, so I probably heard it first on cable news or read it in a newspaper. And now everybody’s throwing it around more than ever.

Post-racial.

It’s offered as a congratulatory term or more often posed as a question: Is America post-racial? What does that mean? That we’ve left race behind, or that race is a problem that has been overcome or can now be ignored?

The first time I recall seriously mulling the concept of “post-racialism” was last December. I was sitting in the auditorium of a high school in Spencer, Iowa, a small town where a videographer and I were talking to locals before the caucus. Apart from the candidate’s body man and a couple of Secret Service guys, Barack Obama and I were the only black people in the room. And the room was going wild for Obama.

As a 29-year old rookie campaign reporter, I was too much of a political novice to predict how far the Illinois senator would go, but after my experience that day, I was sure that the country had been moving steadily away from our historical racial paradigm. It shook me to think that I hadn’t noticed it in my own life. That auditorium full of rural Iowans felt post-racial. It gave me a chill. I liked it.

Still, as exciting as it was to see that all-white Obama-maniac crowd, and the multi-racial crowds that later rallied for him and celebrated his victory, the term post-racial itself has become disconcerting. It means moving beyond something — and I don’t want to move beyond everything it suggests. Post-racialism is relatively easy to understand in a standing-room-only sports arena or at a campaign rally, and it will probably be evident at Obama’s inauguration celebrations, where people of all different backgrounds will stand together and cheer. But post-racialism outside that political pageantry gets more complicated. It means the loss of so much that I cherish about who I am and where I come from. Is a colorblind America really what we are striving for? Isn’t the point to live lives that are open to differences but still celebrate our unique cultural heritages, family traditions and religions?  Read More.

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