Just a few years ago, talk of a post-racial society wafted through the air. Pundits wondered whether the election of the first black president signaled the end of racism. In 2011, the cultural critic Touré published Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness, which explored "the ability for someone to be rooted in but not restricted by their race." These were heady times.
Then we woke up. 2012 brought Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. 2014 brought Donald Sterling, Ferguson and Eric Garner. TV news screens overflowed with stories of unarmed black men shot down and images of white faces and black faces screaming at each other. The myth that we live in a country where race and skin color don’t matter crumbled before our eyes.
There is a possible silver lining here. As writers and artists, movies and TV shows weigh in on where we stand now, a sticky subject gets pushed a little further out in the open.
"There was this moment when we thought we're all post-race now," says Jeff Chang, author of the recent book Who We Be: The Colorization of America. "We're going to have this moment of reconciliation. Instead, what you found was even more rancor than we'd had in years before this."
Chang asks a crucial question: Could we actually be worse off now than we were in past years? That's a central theme in the new documentary American Denial, airing at 10 p.m. Monday on KERA-TV (Channel 13). The film's jumping-off point is An American Dilemma, the 1944 study of American race relations by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal.
Commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation for American Teaching, the 1,500-page volume dug into the ways of Jim Crow and posed a troubling question: What if our insistence on the American creed of equality keeps us from recognizing racism when it’s right before our eyes? From there, the film wonders whether we’re stuck in the same state of denial, and provides statistics on black men’s incarceration rates and earning power (76 cents to the white man’s dollar) that suggest we might be.
"There are systemic issues and structures that are creating different and in some ways worse racial imbalances," says Charles M. Blow, a New York Times columnist and author of the new memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones. "That's everything from mass incarceration to voter disenfranchisement to the insane war on drugs. What those things do that the codified racial biases did not do is eat away at family and community structures. They completely destroy them and rip them apart."
Blow’s comments remind us that the goal of becoming post-racial is not the same as the goal of becoming post-racist. The recognition and respect of difference is arguably more constructive than acting like those differences don’t exist. Seeing color isn’t harmful; behaving as a racist is.
"People point to the dictionary definition of racism, which treats it as a synonym for prejudice," says Justin Simien, the writer-director of the film Dear White People. "Prejudice is a terrible thing, but it's important to draw a distinction. Racism is prejudice plus power. Racism determines what you have access to in society and what you don't, whereas prejudice hurts your feelings. There's a difference."
Dear White People illustrates the point with pointed humor. The 2014 film takes its title from a college radio show hosted by the main character, Sam (Tessa Thompson). In one scene, a white student asks what would happen if there were a show called Dear Black People. There already is, Sam replies. It's called America.
Simien's film reaffirms that race can be a source of humor if the intent isn't malicious. Even network TV is catching on: ABC currently has two sitcoms, Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat, that deal with issues of cultural assimilation in the suburbs.
In Black-ish, Anthony Anderson's Andre wonders whether his highfalutin advertising job is ruining his street cred. In Fresh Off the Boat, a hip-hop-obsessed 10-year-old Chinese-American (Hudson Yang, playing the real-life Eddie Huang) tries fitting into his new Orlando, Fla., neighborhood without giving up his soul. Meanwhile, on Comedy Central, Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show (original title: The Minority Report) regularly grapples with race and culture.
You could argue that a few books, films and TV shows don’t equal that long-sought and oft-mentioned conversation about race. But that conversation has to start somewhere, and stories still hold tremendous sway over the way we think — and, perhaps, even the way we treat one another.
