Black Backlash in the Age of Obama

Charles Blow's op-ed Black in the Age of Obama raises several points and backs them with stats that lets us know that all's not good for black folks these days.

Check this one:

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2008 hate crimes data released last week, anti-black hate crimes rose 4 percent from 2007, while the combined hate crimes against all other racial categories declined 11 percent. If you look at the two-year trend, which would include Obama’s ascension as a candidate, anti-black hate crimes have risen 8 percent, while those against the other racial groups have fallen 19 percent.

Race and Outliers

The epilogue at first appears to be the final presentation of a randomly selected and researched outlier. But we soon learn that the closing outlier narrative is in fact a narrative about the author, Malcolm Gladwell. We learn, perhaps not surprisingly at this point, that Gladwell’s own successes are rooted in the hidden advantages and subjective opportunities that his parents and grandparents received.



In other words, an outlier is often the product of other outliers.

Among other important issues, Gladwell explains how light skin color allowed his otherwise disadvantaged black relatives to excel in ways that their fellow dark-skinned Jamaicans did not. Having an ancestor who had “a little bit of whiteness” or having one who got a chance at meaningful work became an “extraordinary advantage.” It was an advantage not simply based on working hard but rather on arbitrary yet powerful cultural and structural factors.

What stood out to you concerning Gladwell’s discussions of race or skin color and outliers? Why or how so?

Or

…and this one might be tougher, what issues concerning race or skin color should those of us trying to think seriously about the distribution of hidden advantages and subjective opportunities for students at SIUE be considering at this point?

Société post-raciale? "C'est stupide."

Back in November, Colson Whitehead and Percival Everett, among other literary artists, participated in Les Belles Étrangères, a festival in France that highlighted the works of American writers whose works had recently been translated into French.

During his time there, Whitehead was interviewed for a French arts and culture publication, fluctuat.net. Toward the end of the interview, he was asked whether he thought we were entering a "post race" period with the election of Barack Obama.

Whitehead is quoted as responding that only an "idiot" would think we are living in "une société post-raciale" and asks whether anyone really thinks racism has magically vanished from the surface of the Earth. If so, he concludes, "C'est stupide."

Here in the States, Whitehead's work is labeled as "post race" in some quarters. Most notably perhaps, Toure opens his review of Sag Harbor in the Times announcing that "Now that we’ve got a post-black president, all the rest of the post-blacks can be unapologetic as we reshape the iconography of blackness." But given Whitehead's status as one of the most popular black writers of literary fiction during this contemporary era, I have to admit I'm pleased that he continually rejects the post race designation in terms that are straightforward and comical.

And speaking of race and representation, the interview from fluctuat.net displays a cover of one of Whitehead's novels. The American edition of Whitehead's Apex Hides the Hurt, as you'll note from the image on the left above, downplays the idea of race, especially when we consider how pronounced race is on the cover of the French version known as Apex.

Race and the Job Market

I sometimes worry that many of the college students we work with here underestimate the significance of racial inequities. The recurring narratives about only needing to work hard to succeed suggests that there's a disconnect somewhere. Perhaps, some important realities are being overlooked.

An article In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap in the Times points out in fact that

there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without.

And more

College-educated black men, especially, have struggled relative to their white counterparts in this downturn, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates — 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent.

Notably, the report indicates that the black men interviewed for the article "wrestled with 'pulling the race card,' groping between their cynicism and desire to avoid the stigma that blacks are too quick to claim victimhood."

The Malcolm X Mixtape 2010

Displacing Race

Above is a screen-shot from Disney's new movie The Princess and the Frog, which features a black heroine. Nonetheless, in a review of the movie, Manohla Dargis writes that the film "displaces race" because "given the commercial stakes" it's a subject the movie "cannot engage."

Militant Black Boys

Militant Black Boys: Understanding Huey, Riley, and African American Social Consciousness

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been having extended conversations about race, education, visual ideas, U.S. politics, satire, and African American illustrated narratives with groups of young black men at SIUE. We refer to our project as The Interactive Reading Group, a discussion group that utilizes a blog for exchanging ideas.

Tomorrow (Thursday), November 19, 2009, from 2:15 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. in Peck Hall Room 3117, we will host a small exhibit that focuses on some of our conversations about Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks, a comic strip and television show that highlights the experiences of two young black boys, Huey and Riley, who are trying to adjust to living in a white suburb. Taken together, Huey and Riley are comical, outrageous, and in different ways, militant.

More and more, we've tried to confront the problems concerning a lack of intellectual opportunities and educational spaces for African Americans at the university beyond the conventional classroom. "The Interactive Reading Group" has been one small yet sustained approach we've taken.