post e-race... izm: or the collective disrememberence of color lines.

We're all equal now. Obama's symbolic election in 2008, marked instant proof of racial equality for those riddled with guilt about the unmistakable disparities in almost every negative statistical category from HIV/AIDS or heart disease to breast cancer morbidity rates or home foreclosures... black suffering is equal to that of white suffering. Well ain't that some equal opportunity. Many "I'm not racist at all" whites had been wanting that sigh of relief for a minute, and Obama's election became the evidence needed. His daughters attend Sidwell Friends, both Michelle and Barack are Ivy League educated, what's there to complain about, black (and brown) people?


I'm especially attuned to this newfound EQUALITY on my DC METRO ride from Ft. Totten in the mornings to Tenleytown where I teach Washington National Cathedral Scholars on the St. Albans campus. The demographics of those getting on at various stops is as statistically balanced as a Gerber commercial. Yeah, right?! In our post-racial America, aspiration is great deal more showy than reality. We need the black covergirl, the latina-or-could-be-Asian girl, and our standard white beauty in commercials. Equal. We live in a society where "... we all just get along", "some of my best friends are black" is actually true for some whites, and where even white people are fascinated by Tyler Perry movies and can do the cupid shuffle. We have overcome!


I notice this equality no more than when I get off at Tenleytown, with other people of color who arrive with me from more "urban" parts of the city. (Don't you just love how "urban" has become chic for ... well... colored?). Many or most aren't faculty or administrators at one of the many upper northwest secondary or post-secondary institutions. A guesstimate is that at least half of the Black and Latino folk who arrive with me there are help staff or cleaners or other positions graciously prepared by the first-rate public school system. It's the uniform. In our equal society, I don't see whites with these uniforms in equal numbers. On the buses going down Wisconsin, they have on a very ... well... "Wisconsin" (and I don't mean Milwaukee, Wiscompton) kinda business attire. But everybody wears a uniform. Even me. I wear my "safe black guy" uniform to Tenleytown. It's the performative necessity of being-and-race in America.

In 2006, I once attended a School Board meeting discussing racial demographics and how better schools were failing poorer children in which one Montgomery County parent lamented the negative effects of diversifying schools-- noting that tracking was good, because it prepared our "best" for "good colleges" and that there would always need to be people to do manual labor, cook and clean. This, of course wasn't a "racial" comment, but one about class, though its speaker had little class. Perhaps she didn't notice the crude overlaps between poor and working class people in the DMV and people of color. No.. I didn't say 1966, I said 2006, but i digress. We have arrived. Even if I'm not sure what people of non-color look like? But i again digress...


Did I say that I noticed our post-racial equality no more than when I get of the Metro at Tenleytown from Ft. Totten?! I mis-speak. One Sunday I decided to dress down and to do some class preparations at a Starbucks in DuPont Circle. See, they are pushing the gentrifying gays out of DuPont as evidence that "gay is the new black". I thought black was still the old new black! Does that mean the gays are moving to PG county? I'm never gay enough so I can't seem to keep up with these things. But i digress. This post is about race. I'm sufficiently black-acting, i think. Still, the NAACP revoked my black card years ago because I still argue that the etymology of the "N" word suggests ignorance on the part of those who negatively re-appropriated (and mispronounced) it for a stigmatization niggaz bought into. Anyhow... so I'm just a colored, African-American, black Negro enjoying my Cafe Mocha whipped with fudgey swirls and working on my rubric when a white sista engages me in conversation about teaching. I try my best to just keep it simple when I'm in such spaces, generally referring to what i do with broad generalities like "teacher" (to which they "Awwww... how cute..." which pisses me off), "artist" (which they always assume is theater or dance, never creative writing), or "rapper" (see I would say emcee, but that would just be too difficult, and I enjoy the puzzled looks of how a brotha can be so many things and still manage to be [and these are her words]: "so well-spoken, ambitious, and brave". Well KUDOS!! Some big black man's gotta keep massa's chillrens in order, I do declare. We's equal now! We're so equal I don't even bother to suggest how it's insulting to say that a Professor of anything is "articulate", "knowledgeable" or "accomplished". My white colleagues are seldom if ever described as such. I've actually asked them. I was dressed down, so it wasn't so much racism, right? It's interesting how white profs and teachers dressing down and working in Starbucks is "having a casual, relaxed workday". I get to be "charming", "refreshing" (why? cuz I ain't robbin' nobody!?), or "talented" (cuz when you're black and smart, you're not intellectual or brilliant... any intellectual superiority is reducible to "talent"). Did I mention that I love playing basketball and proudly like chicken and watermelon (though seldom, if ever, together). Yep. Very Black. Almost Equal.


There is one last place that I really really really think shows how America has become post-racial: my classroom. Fifteen or so students of color, a few of whom like to interrogate or undermine my credentials because i started off "too cool" and then had the audacity to demand rigor and maturity. My Duke and Stanford degrees "don't mean nothing", even though some of these students aspire to attend such universities. You see, I'm not all that surprised when white sensibility of post-racialism rears it's ironic racist head. I'm most frustrated when students of color you prepare day and night to teach, some of whom don't often see black men in classrooms at all, don't respect the journey and passion you bring to the work. I used to do the suit and tie thing on the first days, just to feign some concern about authority and professionalism; when any fool can dress the part and not know at all what they are doing. I suppose I'm wrong for expecting my professionalism to show up in the experience and knowledge i relay. I think I care too much. Yep... those white liberals got to me and canceled out my street cred. Damn.


Yes, all too often, by my own (black students), I am tested: either not cool enough or too cool. Perhaps carrying the burden of having to be too many things in this limited space of six weeks to make an impression about how Social Justice and Activism can be facilitated through a broad base of social networking and communication mediums, namely the blogosphere. Things have improved. The students are doing extremely well...and 3 of 6 weeks in, I think we've had more developed and nuanced conversations that have enabled the kind of maturity and focus I'd hoped for. But some days it's still draining. Some days I wonder if one can care too much that we're not quite equal...and read the papers and see the stats and see that we're a far cry from a society in which people are judged, principally, by the content of their character. Perhaps the students I'm teaching this summer don't quite get it, being high-achievers. Perhaps they don't know their peers who year after year fill fewer classrooms and more jails for having dropped out, more section 8 housing for having become pregnant, or remain aimless and dejected because they have just given up hope.

Yes... many days I want to erace race.... don't wanna run the race. Want to race to that space people talk about called "post" that is the after-beyond of the reality that sticks to me like DC humidity mid-summer. But somehow I find courage to do it. "Brave" she said. Nice white woman. She didn't mean any harm or know any better. Meant well by it. Was telling the truth. I am brave. In equal measure to her courage to converse with a big, swole black dude, on a computer with a rubric, dressed down, in Starbucks...whip and fudgey swirls and all.