Week 9 Xiao Zhang A03

In the article  “Barack Obama as the Post-Racial Candidate for a Post-Racial America: Perspectives from Asian America and Hawai’i”, Jonathan Okamura discusses problems in the “post-racism” society after the Obama became the president of the USA. The author discusses how the notion of “post-racism” actually drive society into a vicious cycle and actually make the social environment think that past racism is not racial discriminations and make racism legible. Indeed, the success of President Obama bring great courage to the minority group in the USA, but it doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist or is not serious anymore in US society. The notion that “minority are hardworking, inequity won’t pull them down” is actually a stereotypical or even biased view that would only bring more inequity and miseries to minorities. I found this article very interesting and inspiring. Before came to America I never thought that racism still exists in this society exactly because of the news that Obama became the president of the USA. However, a misinterpretation of all the efforts, inequity, and diversity Obama have gone through due to the racism in America could actually lead people’s thoughts into a wrong direction: “racism doesn’t hurt” even though racism actually harms all the minorities and have greater negative influences in this society.

Question: Does the media contribute to this misconception?  If so, how did they do that?

Reference:

Jonathan Y. Okamura (2011) Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian America and Hawai‘i, Patterns of Prejudice

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