The biggest lie that has ever been proliferated since Obama being elected to the office of the presidency is not anything that has to do with the budget or the economy.
The biggest lie that has ever been proliferated since Obama being elected to the office of the presidency is a "post-racial" America.
I've admittedly never really dealt with anybody that took open issue with my race to the point where it escalated into a confrontation. Never say never, of course, yet so far it has not been an issue. However, so far, I could say that I have not.
Racism, in itself, is a mutated form of tribalism, in that for all the years that human race has walked the face of this earth, has been institutionalized in some form whether it is through slavery, legalized apartheid, racial profiling, or race- and ethnic-based immigration policies. It is the dream of many to "eliminate" the disease that is racism, however, the reality is that as long as we tie skin color to any sort of system of risk or value, whether it is propensity to commit crimes, sexual prowess, ability to perform in a professional climate, and so on, there will still exist a bastion of racism.
However, personal convictions, which fuel racism as it is, more often than not lead to disgusting consequences -- slavery in most of the Western Hemisphere well into the latter half of the 19th century, slave trade, apartheid systems in the United States and South Africa, mass ethnic murders in holocausts in Armenia after World War I and Germany before and during World War II, rampant discrimination, white farmers being forced to leave from Mozambique, and it goes on and on. If you are a racist, and you don't like me for being a black man and you simply want to have nothing to do with me, then that's your problem. If you are a racist, and you're waging a campaign for the systematic violation of the human and civil rights of others through systematic containment and murder, then it becomes everybody's problem.
Quite few people here in the United States -- largely, white and conservative -- will claim that this is truly a post-racial society, that political correctness now seems demonize "whiteness", that the playing field is actually level, and now it is up to black and Latino Americans to make the most of the opportunities that have presented themselves since the Civil Rights Movement concluded with Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968. Yet, while there may be truth that self-empowerment push of leaders such as King, Malcolm X, W.E.B. Du Bois, Cesar Chavez, and Dolores Huerta has transitioned to a "you [the white majority] owe us for the past four hundred years" mentality, it is honestly a representation of an endgame that was four centuries in the making -- blacks and Latinos having a general resentment of whites because of the past transgressions committed by the white majority and whites having a general resentment of blacks and Latinos for consistently feeling like they still have to pay for the "sins of their fathers". At the same time though, blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asians are more sensitive to racial issues than whites -- reaching to the point of hypersensitivity amongst Latinos and especially blacks.
However, racism does not have to be blatant -- it can be passive as well. Passive racism is most seen with racial profiling and racial bias. Generally, the latter (i.e., preferring to date someone of a certain race) is far more tolerated than the former (i.e., a police officer pulling someone over for no reason other than the color of their skin). In short, skin color and tone is always going to carry some weight of relevance.
Unfortunately, that is the reality that we live in.
That reality was made apparent in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teen, who was killed by 28-year-old George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic man, in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, which lies a few miles northeast of Orlando. Zimmerman had no real reason to call 911, except to further his belief than young black men are just criminals, and further had no reason to shoot someone unarmed. It was the same reality illustrated by James Byrd, Jr's death. The same reality illustrated by Emmett Till's death. It's the same reality faced by thousands of men, women, and children that were only assaulted and slayed for the color of their skin -- "black", "white", "red", or "yellow".
So, anyone that tells you that the United States has transitioned to a post-racial society is telling you a bold faced lie. As long as we're still using skin color to judge and decide how much value they have as a human being, even to the extent of violating their human and civil rights, then racism will remain a fabric that is deeply woven in the quilt of society.
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