Let’s face it: We need a new way to talk about racePosted in Articles, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2013-07-06 23:49Z by Steven |
Let’s face it: We need a new way to talk about race
Our conversation about race in America is still stuck in black and white. In order to move forward, we all need to learn a new vocabulary.
By any measure, we are living in the best period of racial experience in American history, exemplified not only by the obvious fact that the president, Barack Obama, is a twice-elected African American, but also that all around us there is evidence of the astonishing social progress that has been made in the last 50 years.
A half century after Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, African Americans have progressed into positions of visibility and authority in virtually every field of employment. There is growing acceptance of African Americans by other groups socially and intimately. There is also evidence of significant numbers of African Americans gaining economic purchase and power, including a few joining the ranks of the absolute wealthiest, while millions more enjoy middle-class prosperity. And then there is what can loosely be called the “Obama Coalition,” the disparate group of Americans from across the national demographic that banded together in 2008 and 2012 and which was most powerfully observed during crowd shots including Americans from all walks of life during the two election night celebrations.
But this undeniable progress must be paralleled with a reality that illustrates that this is a less than optimum time in American racial experience. While great numbers of African Americans have progressed into what we can loosely call the mainstream of the wider society, equal numbers have been essentially running in place in poverty or losing ground during the post-civil rights era, the disparities of family wealth by group remaining immense and growing. A most distressingly enormous number has become trapped in a hard-to-transcend culture of dispiriting poverty, where segregation, unequal education, economic exploitation (payday loans, food deserts, etc.), gang violence, and an unending cycle of incarceration combine to make everyday life crushingly difficult. They are seemingly unseen unless they gain head-
lines for violently criminal activity…
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