Week 9-Tao Zheng- A03

One of this week's readings, by Jonathan Y. Okamura, "Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for

a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian America and Hawai‘i", reviews Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign as a post-racial candidate and evaluate Post-racialism in terms of color blindness and multiculturalism. Okamura criticized the Neo-conservative concept of post-racialism as "to deny the significance of race in the United States in order to maintain the racial status quo of White dominance"(Okamura, 2011). On the other hand, Obama's presidential campaign is a breakthrough in the "conflict-ridden history of race relations" (Okamura, 2011). I agree with Okamura that the U.S. is hardly a post-racialism country; racism and discrimination of minority races continue to exist in the country. In addition to the discuss post-racialism, Okamura also discusses

Obama's campaign and election from the perspective of Asian America and Hawai‘i given

that "Obama has been claimed as ‘the first Asian American president’ and as a ‘local’

person from Hawai‘i"(Okamura, 2011). All the claims of being the "first Asian American president" and as a native from Hawai are attempts to attract votes for himself to be president. Obama's famous campaign is that, "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America*there’s the United States of America." However, according to Okamura, "Such cannot be the case as long as racial hierarchy, inequality, injustice and oppression persist, and racial identity continues to be a principal source of meaning, representation and solidarity, especially for racial minorities." I hope one day will come that United States truly becomes a post-racial society with no racism and discriminations. I would really like to see an true asian American to be the president of the U.S. one day in the future. 

Question: How can we bring force an American society as post-racial with no racism and discrimination?

Works Cited

Okamura, Jonathan Y. "Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian America and Hawai‘i." Patterns of Prejudice  Vol. 45, Nos 1-2, 2011.

Tesler, Michael. Post-Racial or Most-Racial?Race and politics in the Obama Era. The university of Chicago Press, 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo22961444.html