{"id":43957,"date":"2015-11-13T19:43:10","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T19:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=43957"},"modified":"2017-02-19T21:39:42","modified_gmt":"2017-02-19T21:39:42","slug":"people-talked-of-a-post-racial-us-when-i-arrived-in-2008-that-seems-ludicrous-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=43957","title":{"rendered":"People talked of a \u2018post-racial\u2019 US when I arrived in 2008. That seems ludicrous now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2015\/nov\/13\/people-talked-of-post-racial-us-in-2008-seems-ludicrous-now\" target=\"_blank\">People talked of a \u2018post-racial\u2019 US when I arrived in 2008. That seems ludicrous now<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Guardian<\/a><br \/>\n2015-11-13<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/harikunzru.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hari Kunzru<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I arrived in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_York_City\" target=\"_blank\">New York<\/a> in 2008, in the midst of a bitterly fought election campaign. When <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a> declared victory, I was standing at the corner of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/125th_Street_(Manhattan)\" target=\"_blank\">125th Street<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Seventh_Avenue_(Manhattan)\" target=\"_blank\">Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard<\/a>, the historic heart of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Harlem\" target=\"_blank\">Harlem<\/a>, as part of an emotional crowd watching the speech on a big screen. People around me were in tears. I have never been hugged by so many strangers. Even for someone sceptical about the new president\u2019s ability to deliver on his promise of \u201chope and change\u201d, the symbolism of a black family in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/White_House\" target=\"_blank\">White House<\/a> was deeply moving.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone tends to see the world through the prism of their own experience, and I had been lucky enough, in Britain, to live through a period of real racial hope and change, from the frank terror I had felt as a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paki_(slur)\" target=\"_blank\">Paki<\/a>\u201d kid in the early 80s, to feeling part of a confident \u201csecond generation\u201d of British Asians who were suddenly visible in many areas of public life in the late 90s and early 2000s. That period of progress was brought to a grinding halt by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/September_11_attacks\" target=\"_blank\">9\/11<\/a>, of course, but those years left me with a streak of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/whiggish#English\" target=\"_blank\">Whiggish<\/a> optimism that now seems naive&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2015\/nov\/13\/people-talked-of-post-racial-us-in-2008-seems-ludicrous-now\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People talked of a \u2018post-racial\u2019 US when I arrived in 2008. That seems ludicrous now The Guardian 2015-11-13 Hari Kunzru I arrived in New York in 2008, in the midst of a bitterly fought election campaign. When Barack Obama declared victory, I was standing at the corner of 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,20],"tags":[7837,2103],"class_list":["post-43957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-hari-kunzru","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43957","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=43957"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51635,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43957\/revisions\/51635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}