As the saying goes, "Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you." After watching Prof. John Jackson on C-SPAN this weekend, I am feeling a little, well, paranoid.
Jackson, author of "Race Paranoia," posits a new paradigm in race relations. He distinguishes race, racism and racial paranoia. Race is a social construct; previously non-white groups have become white. In this new political landscape, race has been "pushed so below the surface that we think it no longer matters."
Jackson argues that straight-up racists have also been pushed out of sight:
Archie Bunker is dead. No one is a self-proclaimed racist. That’s not the game you want to play. That’s progress but it also means that we’re living in a world where we have to talk about race when there are no explicit racists.
Jackson says racial paranoia is real. It is fueled by politically correct racial interaction, residential segregation and segregated social networks. "We are not privy to what’s going on in other communities." He added:
Barack Obama has to walk an interesting tightrope between the candidate who doesn’t want to talk about race and the candidate who’s going to get the country to talk about race. His candidacy demonstrates that schizophrenia – putting out fires on one end and lighting them on the other end.
That racial schizophrenia is reflected in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that found that nearly half of all white Americans say race relations are bad. Among African Americans, 60 percent say things are "not so good" or "poor." Three in 10 of white and black Americans admit feelings of racial prejudice.
ABC News’ politically correct analysis of the polling data underscores Jackson’s point that there is "no way to structure our conversation about race." The hoped-for dialogue about race has given way to an "index of racial sensitivity," which effectively classifies voters based on whether they have any black friends.
Voters were not asked about public policies that trigger racial animosity. Still, 31 percent of whites with "low racial sensitivity" think Obama would "do too much" for African Americans.
The bottom line: 21 percent of voters overall acknowledge the race of the candidate matters. That is roughly the same percentage of white Democratic primary voters who said they would rather drink muddy water than vote for Obama.