Monday, July 27, 2009

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor -- A "post-racial" America?

In A "post-racial" America? Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor looks at what the arrest of African American scholar Henry Louis Gates--and the resulting uproar when he dared to protest that he was a victim of racial profiling--says about racism in the era of Barack Obama. This excerpt is of special interest:


...It's not good enough to say that schools in African American communities do poorly because they are overcrowded and underfunded--and then in the next breath say that's that's no reason to drop out of school or get bad grades. That makes no sense because it disconnects the causes from the inevitable result.

And when you're the most powerful political figure in the Western world, it does nothing to acknowledge the poor state of public education, housing, jobs and health care, all while chastising the victims of these circumstances to try harder and do better, despite the conditions that make this impossible.

No comments:

Post a Comment