{"id":1874,"date":"2010-01-18T23:26:19","date_gmt":"2010-01-18T23:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1874"},"modified":"2010-01-18T23:26:19","modified_gmt":"2010-01-18T23:26:19","slug":"the_meaning_of_postracial_acco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/18\/the_meaning_of_postracial_acco\/","title":{"rendered":"The Meaning of “Post-Racial,” According to an Old-School Trekkie"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’ve been puttering around the house on this day off honoring the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., I’ve been listening to a segment<\/a> of NPR’s Talk of the Nation<\/i> called “The ‘Post-Racial’ Conversation, One Year In.” (Recall if you will that many observers believed President Obama’s inauguration a year ago would usher us into “post-racial” America.)<\/p>\n

Now, if you think about the recent flap over Harry Reid’s “Negro dialect” comment, Rush Limbaugh’s ridiculous insinuation<\/a> that Obama is politicizing the Haiti disaster, and the barely disguised (or not-at-all disguised<\/a>) racism of some of Obama’s detractors — not to mention the quickness of some of his supporters to label any opposition to the president racist — it seems pretty clear to me that we’re still a fair distance away from being over the sticky issue of race in this country. But that’s something I’ve been hearing my entire life. Far more interesting to me is the question of what exactly “post-racial” is supposed to mean<\/i>. What is this goal that our society seems to be eternally reaching toward, one stumbling baby-step at a time?<\/p>\n


\nWell, as you might surmise from this entry’s title, much of my worldview was formed by exposure to the original Star Trek<\/i> when I was a child. And I like to think our society is eventually going to reach the level of maturity illustrated so many times in that series. Consider in particular the classic episode “The Savage Curtain.” This is the one in which the Enterprise<\/i> encounters a being who appears to be none other than Abraham Lincoln himself, and when this historic personage unthinkingly refers to Uhura by an antiquated racial term, she and Kirk set him straight on what people in the 23rd Century think of such things. The relevant moment appears in this clip at about the 1:35 mark, and runs to 2:22 or thereabouts:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

I know, I know, it’s cheesy and arguably not very well written or acted. (That’s what you<\/i> may argue, anyhow; personally, I’ve got no problem with it.) And the scene is more than a little preachy, too. But think about it… imagine a world in which Reid’s comment wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows at all, because people are self-confident enough not to be mortally insulted by an inappropriate word choice or a quote taken out of context. Not a “color-blind” world in which nobody notices differences — I’m not sure human nature would even allow such a thing — but one in which people aren’t troubled<\/i> by the differences, where they in fact enjoy<\/i> the differences. That’s a world I’d like to live in, and a future I hope I live to see.<\/p>\n

On that note, I think I’m going to go try and finish the movie I’ve been working my through all weekend, a few minutes at a time: Super Fly<\/i><\/a>, the blaxploitation classic. Solid…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I’ve been puttering around the house on this day off honoring the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., I’ve been listening to a segment of NPR’s Talk of the Nation called “The ‘Post-Racial’ Conversation, One Year In.” (Recall if you will that many observers believed President Obama’s inauguration a year ago would usher us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}