From President Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson, Jr. to GOP Chairman Michael Steele, there is a new type of black politician — and a new black body politic — that was not born of the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s yet continues to benefit greatly from that era’s successes.
This new movement of ethnic movers and shakers is not mired in thoughts of radical ethnocentrism — so prevalent in the televised characterizations of black people from the ’60s and ’70s — but is comfortable in multi-racial situations and, most importantly, has appeal in mainstream American politics.
But in her latest book, “The Breakthrough: Race and Politics in the Age of Obama,” political journalist Gwen Ifill denies the election of Obama as a post-racial mark in our history.
Instead, she writes, the term “post-racial” is a vague description that means different things to different people, as much as the idea itself.
For the sake of argument, let’s give a face to the theory. A post-race narrative would sound something like this: Minorities have broken through society’s highest and toughest glass ceilings by being given the same opportunities as whites — no longer tainted by the sins of their great-grandfathers. Essentially, a post-racial society is color-blind.
This explanation sounds noble. We should all strive for a world in which immutable differences don’t foster prejudice and discrimination. But where does that leave race? After all, can we truly ignore the race factor in housing, education and employment, yet expect to celebrate it during Black History Month?
When Attorney General Eric Holder called the United States a “nation of cowards” when it comes to race relations, maybe it indicates a people that don’t know where they’re going with the issue — including those in post-racial power.
Decades ago, television was the medium through which Americans got their first glimpse at how this new model of society might look. In the 1970s, “The Jeffersons” was the media’s epitome of blacks “movin’ on up.” The main character’s ancestors were impoverished Alabama sharecroppers, but the sitcom portrayed Jefferson as a tenacious entrepreneur with several successful businesses. The ’80s was all about “The Cosby Show,” which featured a black mother with a law degree and a black father with a medical degree.
“The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” was our generation’s dose of this burgeoning, ethnic upper-middle class — an inner-city youth from West Philadelphia thrown into Bel-Air’s world of wealthy families and private schools. Let the clash of civilizations begin.
In each of these fish-out-of-water fictions, black families — for the first time created to appeal to a mass audience — attempted to show a not-so-common transition. For these characters, black was what they were, not what they were trying to be. But these shows also highlighted a major problem in creating minority characters that would appeal to whites: Minorities had to generalize their identity and distance themselves from their peers.
When the Fresh Prince’s Carlton Banks, the preppy, ivory-tower academic, was rejected from a black fraternity for not “being their type,” there was no need to decode “type.” It was, with one swift pejorative, an assertion that he wasn’t black like the rest of them, many of whom donned dreadlocks and African-inspired garb.
We may risk losing our ethnic ties — a large part of our identity — in a new color-blind society. But we also don’t want our ethnicity to dominate the conservation. Creating a new society is never an easy task, to be sure, but perhaps we will someday find a world in which something can be eternally present, yet never noticed — or vice versa — in politics, pop culture and life.
Cervantes is a government sophomore.
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