We white folks are feeling pretty good about ourselves these days. And why not? A couple months ago, almost half of us voted to put a black guy into what is now ironically called the White House – more than enough to win him the election, when combined with his avalanche of African-American support. And polls show that even a majority of those who didn’t vote to put him there think that, all in all, America has done the right thing by breaking the color barrier at the very top of our meritocracy.
Since the election, we’ve imagined how the world will look to us with renewed respect and affection and hope, and envy even, because we’ve had the audacity (particularly after the colossal disgrace of the past eight years) to hand the keys to a member of the race whose oppression and struggle defines our history. And we’ve rejoiced in the anticipation, not to mention the first anecdotal reports (breathlessly passed along by the news media), of young African-Americans using Barack Obama’s election as inspiration to improve themselves and set their ambitions higher. You go, girls! (and boys!), we root silently. If a black man can get himself elected president, what’s stopping you from achieving the American Dream? No more excuses!
But wait just a minute, there, bub. Our cheerleading assumes a universal, colorblind buy-in to an “American Dream” that was dreamed up, after all, by white people. And who’s to say that the young African-Americans we’re rooting for might not already be achieving at the same level as young whites – if only the society we’ve inherited didn’t still keep a rather stiff boot on their necks?
Sure, we voted in enough numbers to elect a black guy president – but aren’t we still complicit in the maintenance of inherently racist educational, economic, political and legal institutions that keep the vast majority of African-Americans from succeeding on anything like Obama’s level? Well? Say something, cracker! Defend yourself, peckerwood!
Those no doubt bear some resemblance to the arguments that will soon be offered (though perhaps without that last bit of derision) by Tim Wise, the “anti-racist” activist and author whose latest treatise, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, is coming out in paperback this month. Full disclosure: I have not read this slim (120 pages) volume of buzzkill musings, but that’s OK – I just got around to finishing Wise’s last book, the less-slim yet provocative White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son.
With its brevity, its already-clichéd title, its lack of hardback-itude, and its Inauguration-friendly release date, Between Barack and a Hard Place bears all the earmarks of a cash-in. But Wise should be forgiven the indiscretion, because in recent years his authorial career has suffered from exquisitely poor timing. White Like Me first hit bookstores in early 2005, and (after not exactly flying off the shelves) was already headed for the remaindered racks when Hurricane Katrina suddenly shone a brilliant light on the struggles of poor blacks in our major cities – and white America’s inattention to those struggles. Sensing that the book had just barely missed its historical moment, Wise’s publisher offered him, in effect, a mulligan: a second edition that would incorporate an “open letter” to his fellow whites about Katrina. The new version, as fate would have it, was published in late December 2007 – just a week before a gaggle of honkies caucusing in Iowa launched the Obama campaign toward the presidency. (more…)
