A Thought Experiment

I saved the clipping below from The Week, my favorite weekly news magazine, and it continues to hit home with me.  The issues of race in America were supposedly resolved in November 2008, but apparently, “Mission Accomplished” was declared a bit prematurely.  Here are the recent headlines:

• Glenn Beck calls Obama a racist who hates white people (presumably, that includes his white mother);
• Jesse Jackson compares the LeBron James free agent sideshow and post-announcement reaction from ownership to slavery;
• Shirley Sherrod is vilified for racial insensitivity, and she is fired from her government job before her remarks were placed in context.  Empty and belated apologies are issued;
• Immigration reform is held hostage by images of brown people scaling fences and insinuations of Hispanic gangs performing beheadings in Arizona;
• 25 percent of Americans believe that Muslims are not patriotic Americans.

The list could go on and on, but in the interest of my own sanity, this is enough to make the point.

Can it get any more divisive?  Let’s hope not, since the future holds more racial and ethnic diversity:

• 2010 is the tipping point year, in which more non-white babies will be born in this country than white babies (US Census Bureau);
• In the US, 84% of the population over the age 65 are white; under the age of 35, however, only 62% is white (Bureau of Labor Statistics);
• A Pew Research study found that a record high 15% of new marriages in the US in 2008 involved two different races or ethnicities.

Diversity in America looks to be more of a daily reality than a goal.  It was in 2003 that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor opined that 25 years into the future (the year 2028, we hope), affirmative action programs would not longer be necessary to encourage diversity and equally.  Right now, that looks to be a long way off, doesn’t it?

The optimist inside me dreams that this explosion of racially framed issues is the final chapter of the civil rights movement - one last noisy gasp of ignorance and intolerance before inequality and discrimination arrive on the scrapheap of history. 

Along this winding path to a true colorblind society, I found this brief essay to be especially relevant:

Written by Eric Effron:

It’s a provocative thought experiment: “Imagine, “ writes author and self-described anti-racism activist Tim Wise, “if the Tea Party were black.”  In reality, of course, the Tea Party is virtually all white, but for the sake of this exercise, imagine that the members of Congress in March had been surrounded by thousands of angry African-Americans, yelling insults at white, Southern politicians and talking about “revolution” and “taking our country back.”  Or, imagine that the hundreds of gun-rights activists who recently descended on the nation’s capital, many armed with AK-47s and handguns, were black.  Would admirers of the Tea Party view such protestors as patriotic Americans entitled to voice their heart-felt opinions, or as a dangerous mob that the police and FBI should closely watch?  And what if there were a black Glenn Beck, with millions of devoted followers, calling for a public uprising against a tyrannical U.S. government?  Would he be seen as an entertainer – or as a threat to public safety?  “To ask any of these questions,” Wise concludes, “is to answer them.”

The experiment, however, cuts both ways.  If the throngs holding the Tea Party protests were mostly black, might liberals be less apt to dismiss them as cranks, and mock their laments about taxpayer money being used to bail out Wall Street?  And might liberals be less inclined to seize on the vile ranting of some hotheads as representative of the movement as a whole?  Discomforting questions, all.  We’d like to pretend we live in a nation where race doesn’t color our views of people and politics.  But a colorblind society is not a reality; it, too, remains a thought experiment.