Tuesday's dramatic win for Barack Obama has finally put an African-American in the White House. This is an historic moment for the presidency, considering that up until Barack (with the exception of Catholic John F. Kennedy) every president of the United States has been white and protestant. So, now that we have a black man in the highest position of power in our nation, this can only mean one thing: To quote Stephen Colbert to Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree, "Is then Racism over?"(The question, at about the :43 second mark.)
Stephen later, discussing this historical moment, as only he can.
5 comments:
The interesting part is that the majority of former slave-holding states voted for McCain. I can't say if this is because they are in fact, racist in the majority, or if they just continue to vote Republican because in recent elections that is the way they vote regardless of the candidates. It was the more metropolitan areas that got Obama voted in. Now the question is whether we voted for him because statistically speaking the majority of those populations are Democrats, are more tolerant and less racist, or if, because of the "melting pot" of so many minority groups in these areas voted overwhelmingly in Obama's favor. And because most of these areas have more electoral votes (due to a greater density in population), Obama racked up a lot more votes than McCain. Which is also something interesting to think about.
As for racism being over, it's hard to say. However, I can say that this is just further evidence that affirmative action should be abolished. If the nation can elect a minority president--one of the most prestigious job titles in our country--do we really need this law to keep things "fair?" But the ironic thing is that I'm not sure that a minority president will get rid of affirmative action. For one thing, he might lose popularity with a large group of his supporters if he tried to get rid of a law which favored them. Also, his ethnicity might be challenged by critics if he did something like this.
I certainly don't think that racism is over completely, but it's definitely less prevalent than has been in history. And hopefully, there will be less and less people claiming racism (when there really isn't any) now that we have a minority president and people in our nation have proven that they can look beyond the color of someone's skin.
Racism isn't over,and I don't think it ever will be. You know the song from Avenue Q, "Everyone is a Little Bit Racist"? Yeah, the show and song are supposed to be funny, but part of why they're funny is because what they say is true. I think this is in part because humans are animals, and Animals have survival instincts that include the ability to identify self and not-self. Differences to a certain extent innately cause fear.
But fear is also and more importantly learned. Children observe their parents behave in a racist way, and they learn to do the same. So if one day every person raised his or her children not to fear another based on skin color and the like, maybe we'd see an end to racism. But maybe not. Because observational learning isn't the only one at play. From even one negative interaction with one person of another race, one can learn that fear and generalize it to every member of that race. And that negative experience might be accidental or inflicted by a third party, so how could we stop all of those?
And how can we so completely alter society that stereotypes stop existing? Because maybe you weren't raised to hate people of other races and maybe you never had a bad experience with one, so there's no fear, but there's still racism because you and they know about those stereotypes.
I'm not saying Barak Obama's victory isn't wonderful and historic. But his ability or lack thereof to lead this country is irrelevant to the color of his skin and the birthplaces of his parents. If racism were really over, I don't think we'd be talking about race.
Gaby M
I think that it's getting better. The fact that enough people voted for Obama, who will be the first bi-racial president in history just shows how far we've come.
However, I still feel that racism will always exist. Everyone is predjudice on some level whether they admit to it or not. De facto segregation is still prodominant even in suburban areas like ours. If you notice, there are still those groups of people of the same ethnicity who all sit together at lunch. I don't think anybody intends to exclude others, but I think that kind behavior can create racisim. It's all a product of isolation It's important to break out of your own social circle and meet different people in order to gain different perspectives on life or realize that maybe we're not all that different.
I think the fact that we have voted for Obama shows that we are getting close to becoming less racist. sadly i don't think that people will ever stop being racist. Its somehthing that is learned at a young age, so we have to learn at a young age not to be racist or predjudice.
I heard of this study that was done. In which they took a group of young children and showed them pictures of two people and asked them which one looked more threatening. The peoples pictures were almost completly a like except for one thing the: peoples race. One was of a white man and the other was of a black man and the children said that the black man looked more threatening. I believe the black man was a school teacher and the white man was a convict. This shows how predjudice is learned when we are younger. If were going to end this we have to teach kids not to be predjudice.
No, racism is only going to get worse. It should however, be one of Obama's main objectives to educate the ignorant members of America to stop hating each other based on religious or ethnic background.
Andrew E.
Maximus
Post a Comment