The Race

The race issue in these elections has been about as present in the media as it has been absent from its principal protaganist's speeches.

AFP published a dispatch today entitled "From slavery to White House: long, bitter road for US blacks", that retraces African-American history from 1619 and the arrival of the first slaves from Africa on North American territory, to the establishment of the NAACP and the birth of the civil rights movement, to Barack Obama's candidacy for the US presidency in 2008. (The Economic Times picked up the dispatch here). Thus Barack Obama's real chance of becoming president of the United States is depicted as the apogee and perhaps conclusion of the African American struggle for equality in their homeland.

I find this view of history curious. Barack Obama isn't black, he's of mixed race. He was brought up in Kansas by a single white mother. This is not to insinuate that Barack Obama cannot identify with African Americans. Of course he can. He is subjected to same discrimination as African Americans are. And he will strive to improve the lives of millions of African Americans if he is elected. (We know, for instance, that one of his priorities is to overturn the Supreme Court ruling that limits racial minorities' ability to challenge any pay discrimination).

But his personal history is not that of the vast majority of African Americans across the United States, which is rooted in the collective memory of the slave trade and more recently, in the civil rights movement of the 1960's. It is marked by a much wider variety of influences, which includes heightened awareness of white working class plights.

This richness is an immense advantage for Barack Obama in his political career. Why it is never raised by the media is baffling. It is possible that racism has become so politically and socially taboo in the United States that it is a journalistic shot in the foot to openly dissect the issue. But I believe this phenomenon is easier to understand through the sociological prism that encourages us to tend to notice what makes a person different from us before noticing any similarities. Thus American corporate news media, which is overwhelming dominated by white males, systematically calls Barack Obama black simply because he isn't white like them. He's different.

The media's need to recurrently use the label "black" reinforces a polarized view of the world, one that functions on oppositions and on an us-and-them mentality. This in turn hinders progress towards the ultimate goal of a harmonious post-racial society. Thus, despite Obama's delicate management of racial issues, the theme remains central because the news media cannot conceive of his presidency in any other way. (For more discussion on post-racialism, see Aman Gill's recent article in The Indypendent).

This, of course, ties into the wider issue of the way news media is run in the United States. Major news corporations like CNN have been exemplary in hiring journalists that are demographically representative of the modern United States. The blogosphere is also teeming with bloggers with minority backgrounds. But there has been preciously little trickle-down of this effect into the local media. The immense impact these media have on regenerating and reinforcing segregation between racial and social class groups should not be underestimated. If we want to aspire towards a society in which race is incidental, the mainstream media needs to accurately reflect the country's demographics and its concerns.