Life in "Post-Racial" America, 2012 Election Edition
In
2008, I was not connected to any of the social networks that I am currently
plugged into other than this blog. Then,
MySpace still (kind of) mattered and I still used it. I had not yet started to use FaceBook and at
the time REFUSED to use Twitter. I am
inclined to think, at times, that my life was actually better for it.
See,
in 2008 I remember exactly how Election Day went for me. I woke up, went to work, then home for a
moment then to the gym. I had already
voted early and therefore missed the crowds at the polls. I stayed in the gym for longer than usual
because they’d started reporting from the districts with their counts up really
early, and that included several of the so-called “battleground” states with
heavier Electoral College counts. It was
no later than 9pm that it was becoming obvious who had won the election and the
tenor around the gym – say in about 90% or more of the people actually there –
was positive. There were those who were
not pleased with the outcome, but it was never more than just a non-verbal clue
as to how they felt about what was going on, but nothing far out front.
In
2012, though, we play by a whole new set of rules, apparently. Twitter is much more the breeding ground for
the uncouth behaviors of those who choose to operate without a brain/mouth filter. Last night, my phone and IM records indicate
that I fell asleep sometime around 10pm in my inability to adjust to daylight savings,
and the text timestamped 23:18 indicated that Mitt Romney had failed to
contribute one more high-profile name to the black unemployment numbers. I was on my couch half-sleep when the
President spoke and away from the computer.
I would eventually come back alive at about 4:30 and jumped right to my
routine of looking through random Tumblr blogs and checking my Facebook feeds
over my morning coffee. What you’re
seeing here is a sprinkling of the things that came up in my daily journey.
See,
after the 2008 election and its well-known outcome we were said to be in “post-racial”
America, and the suggestion was that any perceived racism was a creation of the
mind on the part of the person who felt they were seeing it. See, if America had come so far as to elect a
member of the arguably most marginalized group ever to walk its soil to the
highest position in the land, then SURELY racism had been conquered, right?
A
lot of black people tend to lack a full amount of trust for other groups, out
of this paranoia for a return to past times.
The first thing a great many will tell us is to “forgive and forget,” and
learn to let the past be in the past.
The problem with simply leaving the past in the past and not learning
from it is the ease with which forgetting it allows it to become repeated.
Now
I’m not saying that this venom is native to the minds of EVERYONE who chose not
to vote for Obama, no more than I would say that every black person who DID
vote for him did so because he was black.
It stands to reason that MOST voted as they did due to political
ideologies, or blind party faith. What I
am saying is that it was suggested to me that his election in the first place signaled
the physical manifestation that racism was no more and that our collective
paranoia was no longer warranted.
Funny,
I don’t recall even HEARING of shit like this in public discourse before we had
a chocolate-colored President. I mean, I
knew all along that it existed. I
honestly EXPECTED that it would, but before the situation that many apparently most
feared became their reality they had no real reason to go about lobbing insults
or out-front hatred in this manner.
As
I type this, I have been awake about 7 hours today, and I have already seen
three passive/aggressive, easily-backed-off-of "you're overreacting!" suggestions that the "problem" be “eradicated,” PLENTY more than
these few images from a good friend’s Tumblr blog this morning and the ire of
several people who simply refuse to accept that the GOP again fielded a weak
candidate who did not have the message or presentation of a plan that anyone
with sense would have believed long enough to get themselves elected. I am personally willing to accept a “post
racial” America, but when I wake up to things like this – having seen more
instances of the word ‘nigger’ in a 1-hour sampling of twitter than I hear in
ANY day that I spend 5-8 hours listening to hip hop music – I am pretty sure
that we were never in one, and no one who looks like me have been the ones
holding up the proceedings this time.
It’s
been said that in any confrontation that someone resorts to using that word in
anger that you have already beaten that person.
To be totally honest, the fact that these people get themselves worked
up into such a frothy rage over something that they will not (legally) be able
to change is funny. The problem is that
despite having “beaten” them, I still don’t feel like I actually won anything.
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