{"id":21687,"date":"2013-07-15T02:30:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-15T02:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=21687"},"modified":"2013-07-16T17:40:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T17:40:54","slug":"the-first-black-president-has-made-it-harder-to-talk-about-race-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=21687","title":{"rendered":"The first black president has made it harder to talk about race in America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/having-obama-in-the-white-house-has-made-it-harder-to-talk-about-race-in-america\/2012\/03\/14\/gIQAmbMUWS_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">The first black president has made it harder to talk about race in America<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Washington Post<\/a><br \/>\n2012-03-23<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"mailto:reniqua@reniquaallen.com\" target=\"_blank\">Reniqua Allen<\/a><\/strong>, Freelance Journalist and Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow<br \/>\n<em>New America Foundation<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, I was standing outside a posh bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with my friends of almost two decades. I made an offhanded comment about the ratio of blonde-haired-blue-eyed chicks to brown girls like me. It seemed like a zillion to one.<\/p>\n<p>My pals, who are white, didn\u2019t get why I was bringing this up. \u201cNo one cares about race except you,\u201d one said.<\/p>\n<p>I tried to explain my frustration with having to always choose between an all-black experience or being the \u201conly one,\u201d whether at work, in grad school or even out for a night in New York. I waited for a nod of sympathy; instead, my best friend threw her hands up and said: \u201cHow can we all be racist? Look at who is president!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t have a response.<\/p>\n<p>Right now the nation has embarked on a massive conversation about race surrounding the tragic death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. On Friday, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">President Obama<\/a> weighed in. \u201cI think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out: How does something like this happen?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an important conversation to have \u2014 but I fear it won\u2019t lead anywhere&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/having-obama-in-the-white-house-has-made-it-harder-to-talk-about-race-in-america\/2012\/03\/14\/gIQAmbMUWS_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first black president has made it harder to talk about race in America The Washington Post 2012-03-23 Reniqua Allen, Freelance Journalist and Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow New America Foundation A few weeks ago, I was standing outside a posh bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with my friends of almost two decades. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,394,20],"tags":[10158,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-21687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-reniqua-allen","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}