Are We All Postracial Yet?We hear much talk about the advent of a “postracial” age. The election of Barack Obama as President of the U.S. was held by many to be proof that we have once and for all moved beyond race. The Swedish government has even gone so far as to erase all references to race from its legislative documents. However, as Ferguson, MO, and countless social statistics show, beneath such claims lurk more sinister shadows of the racial everyday, institutional, and structural racisms persist and renew themselves beneath the polish of nonraciality. A conundrum lies at its very heart as seen when the election of a Black President was taken to be the pinnacle of postraciality. In this sparkling essay, David Theo Goldberg seeks to explain this conundrum, and reveals how the postracial is merely the afterlife of race, not its demise. Postraciality is the new logic of raciality. |
Contents
Postracial conditions | |
Postracial logics | |
Postracial subjects | |
Are we all postracial yet? | |
References | |
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African Americans American animals anthropocenic anthroporacial anti-racism anti-racist Anti-Semitism apartheid aspirational assertion August Barack Obama become black and brown Charlie Hebdo claim color colorblindness commitment conception constituted contemporary contrast critical cultural David Starkey David Theo defined delimit denial denied dismissal driving economic erased erasure European experiential explicit extended extermination Facebook Ferguson Freedom Charter Gaza Gazans global Goldberg heightened heterogeneous historical Huffington Post human identified impacts increasingly individual insistence invisible Islamophobia Israel Israeli killed Latinos less lives marked Michael Brown migrants mode modern multiculturalism Muslims neoliberal non-belonging Obama outbreaks outbursts Palestinians percent political population possibility postracial postracial condition privilege projected proliferating race racelessness racial arrangements racial articulation racial definition Racial nonracialism racial power racial profiling racial reference racial subjects racist expression readily refusal reinforces rendered renewed response reveals seeks segregation skirmishes social society South Africa structural conditions supposedly targets terrorists threat threatening turn underpinning violence viral