No Magic Bullet

Recently, the New York Times published an article entitled "Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race." The title alone struck me as a piece of folly. Reading between the lines, it sort of implies that Obama has the power to close the divide on race. Or that, perhaps, his presence indicates racism is dead. (Yes, we've come far, but we still have a ways to go). I just find that so interesting. Now, not only is he an agent of change, but he's also imbued with superhuman powers of post-raciality! I wonder if he shoots beams out of his eyes or something. I mean, honestly.

Beyond the title, the article does reveal some interesting findings. For example, blacks and whites differ (vastly) in their interpretations of the world and de facto segregation is rampant:

Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites. Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing. And about one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks.

Indeed, the poll showed markedly little change in the racial components of people’s daily lives since 2000, when The Times examined race relations in an extensive series of articles called 'How Race Is Lived in America.'

As it was eight years ago, few Americans have regular contact with people of other races, and few say their own workplaces or their own neighborhoods are integrated. In this latest poll, over 40 percent of blacks said they believed they had been stopped by the police because of their race, the same figure as eight years ago; 7 percent of whites said the same thing.

Nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000; 26 percent of whites said they had been the victim of racial discrimination. (Over 50 percent of Hispanics said they had been the victim of racial discrimination.)

And when asked whether blacks or whites had a better chance of getting ahead in today’s society, 64 percent of black respondents said that whites did. That figure was slightly higher even than the 57 percent of blacks who said so in a 2000 poll by The Times. And the number of blacks who described racial conditions as generally bad in this survey was almost identical to poll responses in 2000 and 1990.

I quote this article at length because the information is pretty revealing. In terms of the respondents' perspectives, it seems like folks are living in different worlds. Then again, considering how few of us really, truly intermingle, that makes a whole lot of sense. I remember when I went away to college (a tony, Seven Sisters, liberal arts school), it was the first time I was in close quarters with a large number of whites. It was eye opening, to say the least. I was certainly disabused of certain misconceptions, while also finding myself the object of scrutiny, exoticization, and all types of nonsense. Oh, my first year roommate! But, I digress. Quiet as it's kept, race still matters.

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