2008: “Color-Blind” Nation

2000-2023: A "Color-Blind" Nation
Written By Stephanie Brizee

Big Idea

Many saw the election of America’s first Black President as proof that racism was behind us. However, the rise of White Nationalism showed that the “afterlife of slavery” is still very much alive in American society.

What’s important to know?

  1. The Election of Barack Obama: The election of the first African American president in the U.S. led some to think racial divides had been overcome. However, election and post-election discussions revealed that racism had evolved rather than vanished.

  2. White Nationalism: The rise of White nationalist rhetoric has revealed the degree of deep-seated racist ideas that remain and that after 400-years America still has a lot of work to do to become a truly equal society.

1: The Election of Barack Obama

With the election of the first African American president in 2008, Barack Hussein Obama, many people argued that the United States had moved past its racist history. The “birther” argument during Obama’s election campaign and throughout his presidency confirmed that racism had not died. Rather, new tools and new approaches emerged to spread its ideas. Scholars Bettina Love and Brandelyn Tossolt argued that the assumption that Obama’s election dispels the idea of America "still being racist” was more of a commentary on “the public's view of racism as a changing construct" (Love et al, 2010, 20) than on any real change.

Obama takes the oath of office administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. at the Capitol, January 20, 2009.

Source: Wikipedia

Rather than ushering in an era where Americans had moved past racism, a survey published by the Associated Press in 2012 revealed that “whites demonstrated more racism than in 2008 when Obama was elected” (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 212).

Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2018) has argued that we live in an age of color-blind racism and that the presidential election of 2016 “prove[d] the significance of color-blind racism” (p. 222). Bonilla-Silva defines color-blind racism as a new White supremacy that continues the racial hierarchy in America by using different, more subtle and sophisticated methods than the overt racism of the Jim Crow era. Qualities of this new racial structure are

[T]he increasingly covert nature of racial discourse and racial practices; the avoidance of racial terminology and the ever-growing claim by whites that they experience ‘reverse racism’; the elaboration of a racial agenda over political matters that eschews direct racial references; the invisibility of most mechanisms to reproduce racial inequality; and finally, the rearticulation of some racial practices characteristic of the Jim Crow period of race relations. (p. 17-18)

In the 2016 presidential election, the resurgence of White supremacy was on full display within the rhetoric of the candidates as well as throughout the policies and narratives that vilified non-White individuals.

The toxic political rhetoric, and the rise of the “alt-right” all demonstrate blatant racism. An obvious example of racism at the highest level is when then presidential candidate Donald Trump said of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Similar statements appeared throughout the 45th President’s term of office, and those racist statements stood in direct contrast to some of the awareness-building protests and public outrage at the deaths of Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others.

Students

Want to learn more? Watch the video below on the Presidency of Barrack Obama.

Video from Crash Course Black American History.

2: White Nationalism

In Charlottesville, Virginia (2017), alt-right members prepare to enter Emancipation Park holding Nazi, Confederate, and Gadsden "Don't Tread on Me" flags.

Source: Wikipedia

Part of White Nationalism’s appeal has come in the face of downward economic trends among struggling White families. The alt-right tapped into what many White people expressed as feeling oppressed by “reverse racism.” Despite the articulation of a number of reasons outside of race that explain the economic downturn, White Americans experiencing poverty continue to support racist immigration policies and mimic racist rhetoric used by elected officials and their political appointees. Supporters eagerly repeat racist taunts such as “Send them back,” at political rallies in response to three women of color in the United States Congress who have criticized certain political policies. Analyzing this phenomenon, researcher Frantz Fanon 

[C]oncludes that feelings had a unique ability to trump facts. … That is, people who experienced phobic emotional responses to Black people were likely to disregard conspicuously available “reasonable evidence” that people of color posed no threat to them in actuality…. The widespread social panics over the perceived threats of criminality, terrorism, welfare dependence, and undocumented immigration in the post-civil rights era are similarly dismissive of facts and evidence. (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 223)

While the recent partisan rhetoric may be stirring up “color-blind racism,” as well as giving new life to old-fashioned racial animosity, the systemic nature of this reality keeps America in the same cycle of racial divide.

Recent studies conducted by sociologists comparing the views of fringe White supremacist groups with mainstream attitudes found that “their [White supremacist] ideologies on race are remarkably similar to mainstream discourses” (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 225). Even after four hundred years (1619 – 2023) racist ideas remain with us. 

Your Turn

The Red Summer of 1919 resulted after African Americans had gained ascendency economically and politically. The backlash after President Obama’s election seems to repeat the same pattern. What continues to drive the resistance to the ascendency of Black men and women to positions of power and prestige in the United States?

Stephanie Brizee
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2007: “Wealth Building” and the Great Recession
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2010: The War on Drugs and Its Legacies