"Despite [color-blindness's] suave, apparently nonracial character, the new racial ideology is still about justifying the various social arrangements and practices that maintain white privilege."
-Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and Racial Inequality in Contemporary America
Some of the topics that Okamura covered was the reinforcement of the model-minority stereotype, Hawai'i as a model of multiculturalism, and Obama's campaign and presidency in relation to colorblindness and "post-racial America". (Going off of the article)Although we see Barack Obama under a good light as the face of change for America in 2008, that is not necessarily the case. The things that he has said in his campaign did raise an influx of colored voters, but that also did raise white voters as well. I think the interesting thing that Okamura brought up was that everything that Obama has talked about race was everything white people wanted to hear. Post-racial America sounds like something that we were achieving as a step into his presidency, but it is still far from our grasp; just because we had a colored president does not mean we are closer to being post-racial-- we want to believe we're in that time because it gives us some sort of comfort as if we are "living in the future". An interesting point that Okamura talked about was Obama's affiliation with the Asian American community through the "model minority stereotype" because when he denoted the cultural values, it matched up with the myth. With that being said, it reinforces the myth of the AAPI community and along with it, it brings down other communities.
I feel that it is interesting to read an article on the faults of our last president because I have always seen him under a good light, like most other people that don't read too much into it. The way he classifies himself as a part of the Asian American Community through the model minority ideals of being "hardworking" and whatnot puts the AAPI community under a weird situation where the model minority myth is still in other people's minds when they think about the community. Although these qualities are seen as good, it is oppressive towards not only the AAPI community, but also many other communities because it puts them under bad representation as well.
Question: Why is the political ideology of Post-Racial America self-defeating? Why do people rest themselves on this idea when it is still nearly impossible to achieve?
References:
Okamura, J.Y. (2011). Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian America and Hawai‘i, Patterns of Prejudice.
Photo Received: https://thesatinbonnet.com/postracialsociety/
No comments:
Post a Comment