From USA TODAY…Race remains hot topic despite Obama presidency
By Shannon Mullen, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press
The election of the first black president in U.S. history was supposed to usher in a post-racial era in America.
But a series of controversies since then, from the White House “Beer Summit” to the conflicts between the tea party and NAACP, shows that race is still a hot-button issue.
“As a society, clearly we’re not over race,” said Hettie V. Williams, lecturer in the African American History Department at Monmouth University.
Unlike the racial disturbances of the 1960s and ‘70s, the race-related controversies of the past two years have, for the most part, played out over the airwaves and across the blogosphere, not on the streets of America’s cities.
And virtually all of these episodes have, directly or indirectly, involved President Obama, whose historic election raised hopes of a sea change in U.S. race relations.
That hope has dimmed considerably since November 2008.
Since the summer of 2009, the percentage of U.S. voters participating in a Rasmussen Reports survey who think relations between blacks and whites are getting better has fallen from 62% to just 36%.
In the same poll, blacks were more pessimistic than whites. While 39% of whites saw improvement, just 13% of blacks share that view.
But Williams, of Monmouth University, and others still see reason for optimism. Mixed marriages are on the rise, she noted, and more Americans of mixed parentage feel comfortable identifying themselves as multiracial.
In New Jersey, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse states in the country, nearly 2 of 3 residents say it is important for people of different races and ethnic groups to live, go to school and work closely together, according to the latest Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Press Media poll. Forty percent say blacks and whites are now treated equally.
Obama backlash
To what extent race figures into the backlash against Obama is difficult to assess, scholars say.
“When we listen to the vocabulary, where people are talking about ‘taking our country back,’ it does sound like a veiled reference to race,” said Wayne Glasker, director of the African American Studies Program at Rutgers University, Camden.
Yet the broader context of Obama’s presidency is that Americans are deeply unhappy about the state of the U.S. economy and many are understandably resentful about the bailout of the big banks that helped cause the recession in the first place, he said.
“Race is in the mix, but it isn’t all about race,” Glasker said. “There’s a whole lot of populist anger out there, and unfortunately for him, he’s at the center of that vortex, all of that is whirling around him.”
But Deepa Kumar, associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, sees disturbing parallels between the rise of right-wing, “anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim” groups across Europe and the rhetoric of the tea party and Pamela Geller’s Stop Islamization of America group, which has led the fight against the ground zero mosque.
“I think they’re taking a page from their European counterparts,” she said. “They’re saying, ‘OK, people are frustrated, they’re anxious about the economy.
How can we get them to direct their anger at certain groups of people and thereby increase our audience for our ideas?’”
Kumar, for one, faults Obama for not doing more to counter this trend.
“He has had a tendency to not want to talk about race and to thereby give the impression that we in fact do live in a post-racial society where racism is a thing of a past,” she said.
Deeper issues ignored
Tukufu Zuberi, a sociologist and professor of race relations at the University of Pennsylvania, says the media presents a superficial view of the role of race in America.
“There is a tremendous disconnect between what we see and hear and read in the media and the racial realities that people are experiencing in society,” Zuberi said.
He cited Gates’ arrest — and the “Beer Summit” that followed — as an example.
“Even though they had a beer, that beer did not resolve the question of African-American men and the problems they have in their confrontations with police,” Zuberi said.
Among black men between the ages of 20 and 34, 1 in 9 is behind bars, according to 2008 report by the Pew Center on the States.
“The issue of race is not solved by the election of President Obama, it’s not solved by having a beer,” Zuberi said.
“Is there a change? Yes,” he said. “Obama symbolizes the hope. The question is, do we have the resolve to change the world to realize what that hope means.”
