A ‘Postracial’ America?

Change has come to America. We are making progress on that day:

When black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when red can get ahead, and when white will embrace what is right.

To hear some folks tell it, we’re already colorblind. We now have our first “biracial” or “mixed race” President. As one Wichita Eagle reader commented:

I’m sick and tired of people saying “a black man is in the White House.” First, he’s biracial. Second, he’s not African American; he was born in America. He’s just an American with dark skin who’s our president. No big deal.

So, does President Barack Obama mean “the end of black history”? That was the question posed by Robert L. Harris Jr. and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, the co-editors of “The Columbia Guide to African American History Since 1939.”

In a recent blog post, Harris and Terborg-Penn observed:

Has President Obama fulfilled Dr. King’s dream of freedom, justice, and equality for all Americans? As President Obama declared in his Inaugural Address, we are on a journey toward realizing the promise of America. In his March 18, 2008 speech on race, delivered in Philadelphia, then candidate Obama explained “…I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy…” President Obama understands perhaps more than others that his inauguration is a beginning and not an end.

Similarly, during a WNYC celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Prof. William Jelani Cobb noted:

African Americans have been attempting to be post-racial since 1619.