In the 1980’s I thought the passing of the civil rights legislation meant that we lived in a post-racial society. As I got older, I learned that even though the legislation helped black Americans, it didn’t eradicate racism. When Obama was elected president, I made the same mistake again. It was only by being open to what black Americans were saying that I realized racism still existed.
President Obama did not think we lived in a post-racial society either, and he explained why in his autobiography “A Promised Land.” In 2009, a woman called the police for a possible break in. This man was Professor Gates from Harvard University and he was coming home from a long flight from China. Even after Gates had shown his identification, the police arrested him for disorderly conduct for berating the police officer. When a reporter asked Obama what he thought about this incident, he said the police had “acted stupidly” for arresting him when Gates was in his own home. The next day many white Americans reacted strongly and negatively to his comment. As he said in his book, “It was my first indicator of how the issue of Black folks and the police was more polarizing than just about any other subject in American life.”