The Bogeyman Is Still Black

Obama’s election as the first black U.S. president was seen as a colossal victory over racism. Since the election, however, Americans are fighting the racism battle more fiercely than ever and apparently with no holds barred.

Whoever applies for a visa to visit the United States must state his or her race on the application. Whoever wants a bank loan in the United States must indicate whether they are “white, black, Hispanic, Asian or other.” That’s a pretty wild mixture of geographic, linguistic and pigmentation categories.

Then there’s the case of Henry M., employed by the city of Atlanta as a software engineer. Henry’s mother is Korean and his father is an African-American. A bank official told him there was a problem with his application for a loan because he had not indicated the correct race on his form. He had indicated he was “Asian” instead of “black.” No problem, Henry corrected his application — but subsequently realized that in southern U.S. states anyone of mixed race is still considered a black, or “Negro.”

When Elly A. traveled to the U.S., she was asked by group of black women seated at an adjacent table in the airport coffee shop where she was from. Elly explained her father came from Ghana and her mother was British. When she started to add where she had been raised, one of the women interrupted her saying, “You’re either black or you’re not, honey.”

Whoever thinks that’s all in the past will get a quick education in the United States of 2012. The opinion of the woman at the coffee shop still holds sway even today.

It explains why Tiger Woods, the world’s most famous golfer, who is half Thai and also has roots in India, is always referred to as a black athlete. And why Barack Obama, raised by a white mother and grandmother, was never considered a “white youth.” It is because of that orientation that anyone one-fourth, one-eighth or even just one-sixteenth African-American might choose to keep that fact hidden.

Racial attribution ensures that everyday life in America is tinged with discrimination and prejudice. Not a day passes without mention of some — often brutal — act of racial discrimination. In St. Louis, the virtual center of the nation, one finds lifelong residents who have never ventured into East St. Louis just across the Mississippi. That’s where blacks live, that’s where it looks like deepest Africa; it’s dangerous to go there.

People stay with their own kind. To wander outside the zone is to invite danger. As in the case of the black computer technician called to the home of a customer, a college professor. It was late in the day and this was to be his last service call, so he brought his girlfriend with him as they planned to take in a movie after the job was completed.

His girlfriend stayed in the car and the technician went to work on the computer. Within five minutes, the professor’s doorbell rang — police. ID check. When it was discovered the computer technician had an outstanding fine, he was led away in handcuffs. From the front door, the professor considered who in the neighborhood might have called the police because a black woman was sitting in an automobile in their neighborhood.

Racists Become More and More Irrational

Every couple of years in America, a case comes up that catapults the subject of racism into the headlines. Like the recent fate of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was on his way home in a gated community in Florida when he was shot to death by a self-appointed sheriff named George Zimmerman.

And because the victim was a black youth, the shooter was briefly questioned by police and allowed to go home. Had a nationwide protest not evolved from that, Mr. Zimmerman would still be on neighborhood patrol instead of awaiting trial.

How is it possible that the U.S. president is black? Didn’t we celebrate his election as a colossal victory over racism barely four years ago? But precisely because the nation elected a black president, we all comfortably assumed that racism was suddenly a thing of the past.

Those who see social progress as the whip of political correctness are now forced to move the limits on taboos once again. How else can we explain the fact that a timid centrist like Barack Obama is treated more disrespectfully by a large segment of the public than any president before him? How else to explain the unbridled hatred directed at him in talk radio programs, television shows and blogs?

Disrespecting the President

A few months ago, Montana Republicans got together in Missoula where they put up an outhouse painted to look like it had been riddled by bullets and bearing the sign, “Obama Presidential Library.” Inside there was a phony birth certificate for a certain “Barack Hussein Obama” that was stamped “bullshit.” (Every sixth voter in America is still convinced that Obama is a secret Muslim born in a foreign country).

On the highways, one occasionally sees bumper stickers bearing a chimpanzee’s face with a caption in capital letters reading “Obama 2012.” A new vulgarity is spreading across America, all egged on by increasingly irrational conservatives.

Mostly it’s the Midwest and the South that are firmly in the grasp of the hate mongers who, mouths foaming, predict the coming of evil and the downfall of the nation. “Black” is conflated with “communist” and “socialist” as well as “Satan,” all these being old examples designed to produce fear and contempt.

They even deny Obama’s victory itself. People like Tea Party Republican Congressman Joe Walsh now claim that Obama won the election just because he’s black. Even this is the same old story: Anyone who believes that blacks are inherently inferior is left with no explanation for their success other than that they were the result of affirmative action or reverse discrimination.

The End of the White Man’s Superiority

The anger, the hatred and the rabble-rousing are also due to one other factor. A recent headline in USA Today trumpeted, “Minorities are now a majority of births.” More than half of babies born in 2011 were minority, that is to say, to parents who weren’t permitted to check the box listing their race as “white.” The “whites” produced 10.2 percent fewer babies than they had in the previous year. In addition, the average age of whites is now 42.3 years, compared with blacks, whose average age is 31.

After 400 years of political dominance, the end of white superiority is now visible on the horizon in the United States. The tirades of those upset by that fact, as loud as they may be, will not be enough to change the course of history.