In this volume, I pick up where I left off in my last collection of essays, which was published in 2008, shortly before Barack Obama had been elected. That collection, which spanned the previous decade, explored several themes I revisit here: white denial, white privilege, and historical memory, among others. But this volume, because it covers a period in which Obama and Trump have led the nation—and in which race issues have been elevated to a new level of predominance—seems far more urgent than its predecessor.
These essays, most of which were previously published online, track the arc of the nation’s racial drama through the supposed “post-racial” Obama years to the nightmare of Trumpism. The glaring consistency of specific themes during both presidencies makes the point I was making that day, back in 1994, to my aunt. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The war has never stopped. It won’t until we decide to stop it.
Rather than organize these pieces in purely chronological order, I have opted to begin the collection with sections focused on the Obama years and then on Trump, followed by sections arranged by theme, which span the entire twelve years since Obama’s election. Each section begins with a brief description of my thought process as I penned the included essays: what was happening at the time and why I found these pieces essential to include.
By the time you’re done, I hope that you will recognize two things. First, that post-raciality is a fantasy. This one shouldn’t be too difficult to prove unless you’ve been hibernating for the past several years. Still, it is worth coming to terms with just how deeply racism and racial inequity are embedded in the soil and soul of this nation. And second, that we all have a choice to make. Just as racism is part of the American character, antiracism has also been part of our history. We may have been conditioned to accept the former, but we can choose to embrace the latter. The only thing standing in our way is a willingness to look in the mirror, our own and the mirror of the nation—and the courage to be honest about the reflection staring back at us.
I.
POST-RACIAL BLUES: RACE AND REALITY IN THE OBAMA YEARS
IT CAN BE hard to watch video from years past when you know that something terrible is about to happen. The people in the video have no idea. They are frozen in time and place, their decisions made, their movements predetermined. You, on the other hand, have the benefit of hindsight, and the curse. No matter how many times you’ve watched the footage, it never fails to haunt, because you know what’s coming.
It’s how one feels—provided they aren’t a Mets fan—watching the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. You know the Red Sox are one out away from their first championship in nearly seventy years. But you also know that Gary Carter, Kevin Mitchell, and Ray Knight are all about to single, and then relief pitcher Bob Stanley is going to throw that wild pitch to Mookie Wilson, bringing in the tying run. Then Wilson is going to hit that slow ground ball to Bill Buckner at first base. And you know, because you saw it happen the first time, and have watched it many times since, that Buckner won’t make the play. The ball will go under his legs, the winning run will score, and the Mets will take the next game, and with it, the Series.
For a more historically significant reason, it’s also how one feels watching JFK and Jackie emerge from the plane at Love Field on November 22, 1963. You find yourself studying little details, like the thin blue tie John is wearing or the first lady’s pink suit and the matching pillbox hat perched on her head. You do this knowing what they do not: that within less than an hour, these items will be covered in the president’s blood.
It’s how one feels watching John’s brother Robert give that speech in the Ambassador Hotel five years later. He finishes, amid excitement and promise, and you find yourself thinking, Hey Bobby, how ’bout this time you come down off the riser and go out the front doors? Ya know, just for fun? I’ve heard the lobby is lovely. Wouldn’t you like to see the lobby? But no, he disappears behind a curtain and heads for the kitchen, just like you knew he was going to—you and Sirhan Sirhan.
It’s how one feels watching footage of Dr. King’s “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speech, delivered in Memphis on April 3, 1968. In one of his most stirring orations, King mentions he’d like to live a long life, because “longevity has its purpose.” He delivers this line not knowing what you do: that James Earl Ray will be checking out of the New Rebel Motel in the morning and moving over to room 5B at Bessie Brewer’s boardinghouse on South Main. It is a room overlooking Mulberry Street, whose window Dr. King can see from the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, and whose occupant can likewise see him.
More serious than a baseball game, less so than the prelude to assassination, it is also how I feel when I watch the video from Grant Park in Chicago on November 4, 2008. It is difficult to gaze upon the multiracial crowd as they cheer the announcement that Barack Obama has just been elected president. It is more challenging still when his family, Michelle and Sasha and Malia, take the stage with him, because unlike them, I know what’s coming after. Obama, unlike Kennedy, will leave office upright, but as for the nation? That is a very different matter.
And yet, it is worth remembering that this scene happened. Surely there is a lesson here, even if it may be hard to discern at times. At least by now, we should know what the lesson isn’t, and perhaps that’s just as good for our purposes.
Immediately after Obama’s victory, a strange excitement befell a portion of white America. For the far right, the response was anger, but for this other group—relatively liberal and well-meaning—the reaction was different. Traveling through the Detroit airport the next day, I recall seeing white women going up to random black people whom they did not know and hugging them. From their behavior, one would have thought the election hadn’t been merely a victory for Barack Obama, Senator from Illinois, but also for Barack Obama, close friend of Denise, the Delta gate agent who was due some personal congratulations.
Trying not to be too cynical, I allowed that maybe these white folks were just cognizant of the overwhelming support Obama had received from black voters, and the sense that the historicity of the moment made it something to celebrate. And if they were Obama supporters, perhaps this was simply a clumsy but heartfelt attempt at racial ecumenism. But as the months ticked by, it became apparent the excitement wasn’t just about Obama. It was about a sense many seemed to have that with the victory of our first black president, the nation had become “post-racial” and fulfilled its promise.
Indeed, there had been stirrings of this for months. A year before the election, when Obama wasn’t even the front-runner, a few of his supporters were quoted in the Washington Post saying that what they liked about their candidate was that he “transcended” race, and didn’t have “the baggage of the civil rights movement.” It is hard to imagine why any Democratic voter in 2008 would consider civil rights activism “baggage,” let alone of an unseemly variety, but there it was. Then there was the poll taken a month or so before election night in which at least a quarter of white voters who admitted holding racist stereotypes of blacks as a group, insisted they were going to vote for Obama. He would be their political Cliff Huxtable, their black friend, their “I’m not a racist” card. It was a card they would play many times in years to come.
To these folks, Obama’s victory was a deliverance if not from racism itself, then at least from the conversation about it, or so they hoped. America’s never-ending dialogue about racism and its legacy could come to an end, or so they believed. This was the message from conservative pundits, unhappy about the election but prepared to use it to paper over ongoing racial divisions. So too was it believed by many a liberal, and not only white ones. Oprah Winfrey insisted that something “big and bold” had happened. Will Smith said Obama’s victory meant there were no more excuses for black people. If he could become president, Smith insisted, “don’t tell me you can’t get a job at the department store.”
It would not be long before the nation would be brought back to reality.
The essays in this section span the eight years of the Obama presidency and touch on the racial flashpoints that