What has Barack Obama’s election victory got to do with race? A closer look at post-racial rhetoric and its implication for antiracism education

Abstract

Our charge in this article is that it is becoming almost impossible to speak about race after Obama’s election victory because for many Canadians and Americans, the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the first African American President of the United States ushered the US into a post-racial era. This thinking not only obfuscates any discussion about race and racism but also ignores the historical and contemporary evidence of racism in the United States. For those of us living in Canada, we cannot help but examine the post-racial rhetoric and its implications for antiracism education in Canada and the United States. The article asks these questions: if race is analytically reductive and has no intellectual validity, then what is the social significance of race in the era ushered in by Obama’s election victory. How do we address the limits and possibilities of defining race as an ascribed status linked with physical characteristics of skin colour and pigmentation while engaging race and social difference in a power and conflict analysis? How do we contextualize concepts such as ‘race,’ ‘racism,’ and ‘post-raciality’ to the broader process of institutional and structural transformation in the era ushered in by Obama’s election victory? Our article invites complex and multiple discussions on these questions and their implication for antiracism education in Canada and the United States.

Keywords:

• race
• racism
• post-raciality
• antiracism

Notes

1. Constable Michael Shaw, a White male, was on patrol in the Bridle Path, an ultra-affluent Toronto neigbourhood when he saw Ronald Phipps, a Black male, delivering letters. In spite of the fact that Ronald Phipps was wearing a Canada Post’s coat and carrying two mailbags, Constable Michael Shaw asked him of his identity card and ran his name through the computer. Even that was not enough for Constable Shaw; he trailed Ronald Phipps until another White post office worker confirmed the identity of Phipps as an employee of Canada Post before he finally let him go. Ronald Phipps took the matter to the Ontario’s Human Rights Commission, and in 2009, the commission ruled that Constable Michael Shaw was guilty of racial profiling.