‘Post-racial’ America? We’re nowhere close to that — and may never be

By David McElroy · April 13, 2012

When Barack Obama was elected president four years ago, we heard a lot of talk about it being a watershed moment in leading us to a post-racial America. If a black man could be elected president, race wasn’t going to matter so much, the theory went. A glance at recent headlines shows we’re nowhere close to this — and I’m not sure we ever will be.

The immediate reactions to the shooting of Trayvon Martin point toward just how deep the fracture lines lie. Blacks — and especially black politicians — lined up strongly against shooter George Zimmerman. The initial narrative we heard was that young black men are under attack in America by white people. (Complicating matters is the fact that Zimmerman is half Hispanic, which muddies the waters a bit, but people selling the narrative are willing to ignore that detail. Of course, calling Zimmerman white since one parent was white is a bit like calling Obama white for having a white mother.)

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have been active in calling for Zimmerman’s arrest and punishment. Barack Obama was quick to align himself with Martin when he said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” And the New Black Panther Party offered a $10,000 bounty for the “capture” of Zimmerman. I wonder if they would have been upset and ready to agitate if the races had been reversed.

On the other hand, gun groups were quick to start a defense fund for Zimmerman. Texas attorneys offered $10,000 toward his defense. And plenty of people were quick to believe Zimmerman’s side of the story. I wonder if they would have been so quick if it had been a black homeowner who had shot a white teen-ager.

Whether we want to admit it or not, most people still see the world through a racial lens. We assume certain things about people based on their race, especially when combined with certain social or educational factors. A black male who dresses as though he just stepped out of a rap music video is seen as a potential threat by most people. A white man in a suit is generally seen as safe and is accorded some deference. A white man dressed like a blue collar worker is assumed to be a simpleton. An introverted Asian is assumed to be smart. And so forth. Most people have these stereotypes — and race plays an active role in most of them.

The only thing Obama’s election four years ago meant is that enough people were sick of eight years of George W. Bush that they weren’t going to vote for the GOP nominee. That’s it. The fact that so many people are now willing to consider a black candidate is a good thing — and that’s definitely more widespread. Obama’s success in 2008 and Herman Cain’s success in the Republican presidential race before he imploded both say that voters are more willing to look past a candidate’s race.

But when given a choice, most blacks are going to vote for a black. Most whites are going to vote for a white. Most Hispanics are going to vote for a Hispanic. That’s just the way humans are. We like to support people who look like us and are from the same places we are. We’re always going to give a slight advantage to people who are more like us.

Humans are tribal. We may hide it for the most part, at least in the ways that used to lead to regular wholesale slaughter of tribes, but we have a strong need to identify with something — and to see “the other side” as the enemy. Just look at the intensity of hatred between fans of sports teams, in many cases. I’ve known rabid fans who wouldn’t even date fans of their rivals. It was too controversial for them.

If race suddenly quit existing, humans would find some other way to divide up and hate each other. Remember the Star Trek episode about the planet where the people where black on one side and white on the other? The people who were black on the right side oppressed the people who were black on the left side.

If we reach some future world hundreds and hundreds of years from now when there’s been so much mixing of races that everybody looks the same racially, there will be something else. It might be earlobes (attached or not). It might be eye color. It might be a million things. The only thing I’m sure about is that people will find excuses to hate the people they see as “the others.”

We’re not approaching the day of post-racial America, and I don’t think we ever will be. We have to recognize that we’re tribal and accept that these divisions are deeply embedded in us. It’s a great goal to treat everybody the same — and I’m all for it — but I’m not naive enough to believe we’re going to live in a world like that.

Race still matters. Sadly, it probably always will.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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