Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Obama's impact on race in America
For civil rights activist Si Kahn, the evolution in racial relations in America can be summed up by a visit to Mert鈥檚 Restaurant in downtown Charlotte, N.C. A nouvelle soul food place where you can dine to the sound of sweet Southern gut-bucket blues, the restaurant is packed these days with 鈥渁 wonderful mix" of young people, he says.
鈥淪o many shades, shapes, sizes, facial characteristics, languages, accents,鈥� he continues, 鈥淎cross lines of race and ethnicity, they hold hands, embrace, kiss.鈥�
Though President Obama has been in office for just a year, 鈥渁 tiny blip in time for an entire culture to evolve, Mr. Kahn sees noticeable changes in American race relations. Racism among young people especially, he says, continues to fade.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a year after the inauguration of America鈥檚 first black president, historians and civil rights activists offer mixed assessments about Mr. Obama's impact on race relations in the country. Some like Mr. Kahn are overwhelmingly positive. But others say there鈥檚 still a long way to go.
The mixed assessments show up in several surveys and polls. A recent Pew Research survey found a dramatic increase in how black Americans felt about their place in society. Four out of 10 black Americans say they are better off now compared with 2007, when only two in ten felt that way.
But a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday shows a decline in the number of Americans who say Obama鈥檚 presidency will help race relations, from 60 percent on the eve of his inauguration last year to about 40 percent today. The fall is highest among African-Americans. Three-quarters of blacks said they expected Obama鈥檚 presidency to advance racial equality last January, but only 51 percent of blacks now say he has helped.
鈥淚t is pure fantasy to think that the election of the first African-American President is going to change [racial inequality] overnight,鈥� says Yolanda T. Moses, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside.
Racism and racial disparities still exist today, she says, 鈥渂ecause there are systems in place from banking to real estate to child protective services that continue to privilege one group over another. That is what we have to change.鈥�
Two racially-charged incidents
Both sides point to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor and a prominent African-American scholar, as well as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid鈥檚 comments on Obama, to support their view.
Mr. Gates was arrested at his house in Cambridge last year after neighbors called in the police about an intruder, an incident Gates and others charged reflected racism. Obama initially weighed in on Gates's side, and then had the cop and the professor over to the White House for a reconciliatory beer. As for Senator Reid, it was recently revealed that he had said during the 2008 presidential election that Obama could win because he was a 鈥渓ight-skinned鈥� African-American candidate without a 鈥淣egro dialect鈥�.
鈥�The Gates鈥� episode and Senator Reid鈥檚 comments emphasize that this is a long journey with potholes and perhaps setbacks along the way,鈥� says Dr. Benjamin Akande, dean of the School of Business and Technology at Webster University in St. Louis, Mo. He adds, 鈥淭hey also remind us that perhaps one day, sooner rather than later, this will no longer even merit conversation.鈥�
But those incidents weren鈥檛 really about race, counters Jason Hill, a professor of philosophy at De Paul University in Chicago. 鈥淪peaking as a black person who identifies as a liberal, I believe the [Gates] issue was about civic responsibility performed by an officer of the law and that Gate's race was purely incidental,鈥� he says, adding, 鈥淲hat we ought to learn from this issue is the value of not elevating an error of judgment to the level of a national catastrophe.鈥�
Similarly, he says the only thing offensive about Reid鈥檚 comments was the use of the word 鈥淣egro.鈥� Everything else Reid said was true, he adds. 鈥淩ace relations have improved in tandem with the continued advancement of blacks into the middle class strata,鈥� he says. 鈥淪uch blacks are non-threatening to whites because, among other things, they both share quintessential American middle-class values and, like Obama, are not distinctly "black" in the old stereotypical manner.鈥�
The very notion of a 鈥減ost-racial鈥� society emerging from the election of a black president is a 鈥渞acist idea,鈥� according to John Altman, an associate professor of political science at York College of Pennsylvania, and one that minimizes the gains made by black leaders over the past five decades.
Continued racial disparities
Some suggest Obama himself hasn鈥檛 done enough to address the problems of African-Americans. Mr. Altman and others point to a study released Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute showing racial inequities have worsened in the recession, with unemployment among African-Americans projected to reach a 25-year high this year, soaring to 17.2 percent.
鈥淲hen the only memorable thing that our current president has done to further the discourse on race relations is to bring together a white cop and a black college professor for a beer, it will be a long time before anything changes,鈥� he says.
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