Week 9 - Andy Ho - A03

This week’s reading Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian American and Hawaii is a thoughtful article. The author Jonathan Y. Okamura contended that Obama’s presidential campaign and election victory was based on “post-racialism.” Okamura also discussed his campaign and election from an Asian American’s perspective. At first, the author defined that “post-racial relates to a period or society in which racial prejudice and discrimination no longer exist, especially after the 1970s.” Our former president Obama represented post-racialism since he was “The First Colored (Black) President” of the U.S. His success reflected a shift in our society: “a shift from a focus on race and biological relations of inequality to a concern for cultural differentiation and national identity.” (Okamura 4) However, race theorist Howard Winant argued that the thought of getting “beyond race” is as utopian, and it is impossible to reach that utopian society. His argument still holds true nowadays. In recent years, police brutality has been a common term that was fully submerged on social media. Perhaps the most notorious case of police brutality is the shooting of Michael Brown. In 2014, Michael Brown was an 18-year-old African American man who was fatally shot by a police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Due to a misunderstanding, Wilson fired multiple bullets at the scene. Brown was hit several times, resulting in his death. This case clearly represented the phenomenon “white polices shoot black people” at that time. Ironically, Wilson was not accused of any charges. From my point of view, although the “rule of law” is that no one is above the law, you are automatically above the law as long as you wear a police uniform. In addition, Okamura also discussed Obama’s election from his perspective as an Asian American. People often falsely stereotype that black people are related to thugs, stealing, drug, violence, and crime. However, Obama’s election victory proved that these prejudices were wrong. In fact, not all black people are the same. In this case, Mr. Obama graduated from the famous Harvard University, and he is also a decent man. For that, I really admire him.

Reference:

Jonathan Y. Okamura (2016). Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian American and Hawaii

Picture retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/09/11/long-history-behind-racist-attacks-serena-williams/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.51bb4b82aba2