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In an article in the St. Petersburg Times, actress Rae Dawn Chong wonders if African Americans are ready to give up our “victimhood” in the age of Obama. Luckily, our own Carmen Van Kerckhove offers a view more informed by racial reality.
“If your whole life has been spent in victim mode and you have an opportunity where you are not a victim, who are you now?” Chong said. “I’m not negating the reality that there still isn’t a level playing field. But are we ready to give up our identity of being victims?”
But Chong’s words also highlight a fear of consultant Carmen Van Kerckhove, co-founder of New Demographic, a New York-based diversity education firm.
Her concern: that many people who began thinking about race deeply for the first time during this election will assume Obama’s success means such issues have mostly been conquered.
“It’s obvious there are many whites who want to distance themselves from the spectre of racism which has dogged us in the past,” Van Kerckhove said. “Whether this amounts to substantive change remains to be seen. The danger now is to make sure that people don’t feel that simply by voting for Obama they’ve done their part.”
Van Kerckhove recalled a recent dialogue on race she organized among employees at a Fortune 100 company, an initiative inspired by election talk. There, she saw white executives learn an important lesson: Race issues aren’t just a concern for people of color.
“Some white executives felt they had nothing to contribute. … They had no perspective on race,” she said. “Because I think a lot of white people are conditioned to think of themselves as a neutral force, when they’re not.” Read more…
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Dr. H wrote:
“Obama is not our racial messiah”
I agree with Ms. Van Kerckhove. President-Elect Obama is not our racial messiah and our nation’s centuries of racial inequities cannot be solved in this one fell swoop. There is work yet to be done.
I also wonder if the questioning of Obama’s racial identity, of his blackness, is a form of undermining? Are we as a society minimizing the victory of a black male being the leader of the free world? Because I suspect that before his rise to political prominence, had police officers seen Mr. Obama in an African-American neighborhood, they wouldn’t have troubled to deconstruct his race, wouldn’t have bothered to question whether he grew up in Hawaii with a white mother or if he had lived in Indonesia. They would have found him “black enough”.
Posted 02 Dec 2008 at 2:14 pm ¶
macon d wrote:
Van Kerckhove recalled a recent dialogue on race she organized among employees at a Fortune 100 company, an initiative inspired by election talk. There, she saw white executives learn an important lesson: Race issues aren’t just a concern for people of color.
“Some white executives felt they had nothing to contribute. … They had no perspective on race,” she said. “Because I think a lot of white people are conditioned to think of themselves as a neutral force, when they’re not.”
EXACTLY. Great point, well said. Gotta get those white folks to realize that the lens on race can be swiveled around, ALL the way around. And then back and forth.
Posted 06 Dec 2008 at 10:40 am ¶