{"id":78616,"date":"2022-10-20T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T12:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=78616"},"modified":"2022-10-24T12:36:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T16:36:48","slug":"postracialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/postracialism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Myth of Postracialism: How It Evolved & Why It’s Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Was the Civil Rights Act a victory over racism? How did postracialism undermine antiracist positions? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the post-Civil Rights era settled in, the myth of postracialism overtook American consciousness. According to Ibram X. Kendi, the author of Stamped From the Beginning<\/em>, the idea of postracialism is an inherently racist concept because it obscures racist policies and their effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s how the idea of postracialism evolved\u2014and why it\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Myth of Postracial America<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As Black people gained legal protections and society moved away from open racism and discrimination, leaders started talking about a \u201ccolor-blind\u201d or \u201cpostracial\u201d society. The idea of color-blindness seems appealing\u2014it implies that nobody notices or cares about racial differences, which in turn suggests that racism is no longer an issue. But Kendi points out that not seeing race means not seeing the racial disparities that exist because of racism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, he points out that postracialism undermines antiracist positions by delegitimizing any accusations of racism. As Kendi explains, postracial logic says that people who criticize racist policies or behaviors <\/strong>are themselves racist <\/em><\/strong>because they\u2019re insisting on racial differences even though race isn\u2019t an issue anymore<\/strong>. Kendi suggests that this is a new way of accusing someone of \u201cplaying the race card\u201d\u2014that is, exploiting their status as a racial minority as a political tool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postracial Myth
<\/strong>
In an article called \u201cOur New Postracial Myth<\/a>,\u201d Kendi explains in more detail how the idea of postracialism arose during Obama\u2019s first Presidential campaign and how it gradually evolved into a justification for racism.

Kendi says that with Obama\u2019s early successes in his 2008 campaign, the media mistook his and his supporters\u2019 calls for change as evidence that change had already happened. In other words, Kendi said, Obama\u2019s success was taken as evidence that race no longer mattered to US voters<\/a>. By the time Obama was elected President, the media was declaring that anti-Black racism was over<\/a>.

Whereas this idea began as a misguidedly optimistic narrative of racial progress, Kendi suggests that it transformed into an excuse to ignore racial inequities and undermine antiracist activists<\/strong>. The logic is that because America is now postracial, people who call out racial injustice are themselves racist<\/a>. Kendi argues that both versions of the postracial narrative are appealing in part because average white people don\u2019t want to see themselves as racist, and postracialism reassures us as a society that we\u2019re not.

Yet as Robin DiAngelo argues in White Fragility<\/em><\/a>, racism isn\u2019t just about individual people\u2019s views or actions<\/a>\u2014it\u2019s about systemic discrimination that causes systemic inequities<\/a>. In other words, we can judge whether a society is racist by looking at its outcomes<\/strong>\u2014and in the US, the outcomes reveal inequity that is, if anything, getting worse. For example, numerous studies conducted during and after Obama\u2019s administration (that is, during the supposedly postracial period) have found that racial income and wealth gaps<\/a> have been growing wider<\/a> in recent years<\/a>.\u00a0

One factor has improved, though: Americans\u2019 perceptions<\/em> of racial equality. One study found that the average American estimates that from 1963 to 2016, Black families went from having half the wealth that white families had to having 90% of the wealth<\/a>. The reality: In both 1963 and <\/em>2016, Black families had only 10% of the wealth that white families had. This discrepancy between our perception of racial equity and the reality of racial inequity might be part of why it\u2019s so easy to underestimate racism\u2019s impact.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Was the Civil Rights Act a victory over racism? How did postracialism undermine antiracist positions? As the post-Civil Rights era settled in, the myth of postracialism overtook American consciousness. According to Ibram X. Kendi, the author of Stamped From the Beginning, the idea of postracialism is an inherently racist concept because it obscures racist policies and their effects. Here’s how the idea of postracialism evolved\u2014and why it\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":24806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,24],"tags":[741],"class_list":["post-78616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-society","tag-stamped-from-the-beginning","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Myth of Postracialism: How It Evolved & Why It's Wrong - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The passing of the Civil Rights Act gave rise to the myth of postracialism. 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