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| Race matters in contemporary politics |
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I don’t want to sound like an echolalic, but race does matter in América, especially in something as critical as the presidential elections. The idea that América is entertaining a biracial person as a presidential candidate in juxtaposition to magazines portraying Barack Obama as Osama bin Laden seems to be a sign that racial hostility still exists. Couched as an intended parodies, caricatures displayed by mainstream media are perverted attempts to use humor to make a point. The race card used by sharks is a cat and mouse game, a diversion tactic so that race mongers can keep the pot boiling.
Those suffering from denial argue because a biracial man has been catapulted as a serious contender for the presidential office demonstrates that América has racially healed itself. There is no magical cure for racism. Pigmentation, an irreversible condition and biological characteristic, still keeps people of color in a nihilistic position; present but invisible to the dominant culture. The culturally blind perspective argues that similarities rather than differences should be celebrated. This view is tainted by idealism and a collective delusion that soothes chaotic souls. It doesn’t transform reality.
Race relations in American society have been characterized as a black-white dichotomy. Occasionally, race “experts” slip in a brown, yellow or red dicho for appeasement purposes. Blacks have varying opinions within their own group about racism. For example, Harvard Professor Cornell West’s “Race Matters,” and conservative Professor Shellby Steele’s “The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in América” are at odds. West argues that “the problem of the 21st century remains the problem of the color line.” Reducing human beings to objects of pleasure in the game of politics, robs people of color of their humanity. Steele has succumbed to the myth of the Puritan Ethic; give me a pair of boots with strong straps, and I can pull myself up alone. Steele’s notion that inferiority complexes caused by racism have now been replaced with self-doubt, strikes at the heart of blaming the victim as the social structure perpetuating inequity stands unblemished. Both tacitly mention other groups, but with no substance.
Racism’s ominous poison has afflicted all groups as competition over who are the most oppressed rings loudly in people of color communities. The root of the problem remains an untouchable. Chronic debasement cannot be altered by placing a Black man at the helm, especially when the ship is sinking; its cause is rooted in historical racism that weaves its way in and out of the social fabric of American society. It is going to take more than a psychic conversion to break the mold.
Hidden in sombras chocolates are Latino people waiting for their turn to address the masses. This group’s presence is not ephemeral. Its members are ostensibly invisible to the cultural power brokers. Only when a Brown token is needed, will he or she be allowed to hobnob with the elite.
The image of Brown captivity still lingers on in the web of destruction caused by the owners of the marketplace, insisting on making consumers out of everyone including undocumented workers as they are pushed further down the economic ladder. The immoral circumstances that once haunted América’s consciousness, causing white guilt, may surface again as Latinos grow in numbers in American society.
Immigrants have been slithering in the musty waters of xenophobia. They are ready to make a statement about their contributions to American society, earning them pathways to citizenship. They will have to cross over the path of white rage that is festering in América’s soul in order to be heard. With an undercurrent of collective shame, frustration and anger, immigrants and Chicanos/as are once again taking to the streets. They have been joined by their Brown brothers and sisters from Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and in other parts of the country where the silent majority has decided to no longer remain silent.
There may be a Brown prophet among the immigrants, but we will never know until we break the mental shackles of the oppressed and untangle the pathology of the oppressor. We will never know until we allow all opportunities for all human beings in American society to walk with honor and dignity out of the nightmares of imigraphobia and into the American dream.
Yes, race matters.
Ramón Del Castillo, Ph.D. is an independent journalist.
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