Jonathan Okamura’s article on Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate was honestly one of the first articles I read that depicted the former president under not so good of a light. From this reading and Glenn Omatsu’s piece on the history of Asian American Activism, both articles have depicted how heavily the liberation movements in the 1960s have been compromised the immediate decade after their emergence through the brutal corporate and majority-white government offenses, which the remnants can be still observed in today’s narrative. One of such consequences is the imposition of a “post-racial” America that is the main observation in Okamura’s article. It is evident, as mentioned in many of our other lectures, that this is one of many other methods where the white majority would pit different minorities against another in order to prevent them from advancing the fight for equality and preserving the white status quo. In this instance, we can see that individuals of the minority groups who are given the opportunity to climb up the social ladder are eager to also preserve the current social norm for their personal gains while marginalizing the majority of others in the minority groups. The emphasis on a shift of racism to a cultural aspect is also especially detrimental to all minority groups. As seen in both articles, this leads to current institutions dismissing many struggles that minorities face as their lack of effort in acculturation and shutting down any remarks of inherent institutionalized racism. The fact that Obama used his racially ambiguous background to reach out and adopt identities of many different racial groups on the basis of cultural values is extremely harmful in terms of falsely promising himself being able to truely represent the different racial groups that he has imposed himself upon, as there is a difference between acculturation and truly existing as a certain race in the United States due to all the physical racism that one will only be subjected to if they are physically a certain race. As pointed out by Okamura, the Obama campaign heavily marketed Obama with the “Aloha Spirit” with promises of bringing some form of Hawai’ian representation of their culture and their “Aloha Spirit” into government, but little of such effort can be seen during his term in office.
Question:
As seen from both readings, Asian-Americans are very much put in an awkward position with the increase of neo-conservatism and polarization in our communities. How should we as a community start to approach to demystifying the divisive post-racial and Reaganomic narratives that are heavily embedded in our communities?
Video: Barack Obama’s Speech - A More Perfect Union (2008), given in the 2008 Democratic Convention is a perfect example of his post-racial undertones in his presidential campaign
References:
- 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, 45:1-2, 133-153, DOI: 10.1080/0031322X.2011.563159
- Omatsu, G. (2012). The 'four prisons' and the movements of liberation. The State of Asian America, 19-69.
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