00:02Hello everyone, I'm Lyric and this is my show. I was just texting my boyfriend.
00:09Today we're going to talk about the phrase post-race. For many people this election was
00:17a huge wake-up call. A wake-up call from a deep deep sleep that I believe was induced in
00:22part by
00:23the belief that we're in a post-racial society. So what is post-race? I decided to take to the
00:29streets of New York and find out.
00:30We're talking about important issues. Oh, important issues. We need to find some important issues.
00:35Right, some more important issues than race. Have you ever heard post-race before?
00:38Never heard of it.
00:39I know nothing.
00:40You know nothing about race.
00:41I know nothing.
00:42Have you heard that? I haven't heard that.
00:43I don't think I've heard that.
00:44Oh, you mean presidential race or?
00:47No, no, no.
00:48I've heard my uncle speak about it a few times, but I didn't really listen.
00:51In what context did you hear it?
00:53Surrounding the election, you know, just throw it around in there.
00:56It's interesting. What is it exactly?
01:00Post-race would be a world where race actually doesn't matter, but it's still hugely a factor.
01:07So it's clear that we need to break this term down. Where did this actually come from?
01:12Well, in 1971, a group of 70 politicians and professors formed a group called the Southern
01:18Growth Policies Board. This group was responsible for putting together policies for the future of the
01:24South. The New York Times reported that there were four black people there out of the 70 who declared that
01:30racism was over.
01:32Now, let's just cut to 2008, shall we? When we finally elected a black president.
01:37This was another chance for people to throw around the term post-race because the leader of the free world
01:42was black, right?
01:43An example, here we have Chris Matthews on NBC saying, you know, I forgot that he was black for an
01:49entire hour.
01:50So are we post-race? Do you think we'll ever be post-race?
01:54That's like such a depressing question.
01:57I hope so. I can only hope.
01:59I don't think anybody should be worried about race.
02:01It'll be minimized, but it won't be completely gone.
02:05Like, what are we now?
02:08We're humans. We differentiate between one person and we look for things to make them different.
02:14It's always going to happen.
02:15Thank you, Ben. Will you just sign a little paper for us?
02:20Now that we've gone through the history of this word, some really awkward times where people have had to use
02:25it,
02:25I brought in a very old friend and a new friend of mine to help us talk about what this
02:30means for us now.
02:31Okay, so let's talk about how we see post-race play out in our everyday lives.
02:36Have you guys heard it amongst your friends in the streets or in the news?
02:40I see it every day in the comment sections.
02:42I often see people saying, oh, haven't we moved past this? Get over it.
02:46It doesn't really acknowledge or respect the fact that we had a system of laws in this country
02:53that put people in the position to have to regard themselves and their personal safety and livelihood on the basis
03:00of race
03:01and to now conveniently want to sweep it away is just not appropriate.
03:06If you take an example of someone like Barack Obama, I think people who support the narrative of post-race
03:12would point to his success,
03:14but it completely is an erasure of the very real struggles he had to face as a black man in
03:19America.
03:19One of the things I found when I was studying his rhetoric on race was that he had talked about
03:23trying to hail a cab in New York City,
03:25even at that point of being someone of national stature and notoriety, still having problems doing that.
03:30Well, no matter how many degrees you get or whatever those vestiges of respectability are,
03:36there are still people who will see you and treat you like you are less.
03:40So now that we can all agree that we're definitely not post-race,
03:44do we even want to be post-race or do we see a future for ourselves where we're post-race?
03:49I think it's both impossible and also would be destructive.
03:53My blackness was never the problem.
03:56White supremacy was.
03:57I want to be able to celebrate blackness and I think so much of black culture reacts to that and
04:03it should.
04:04So I wouldn't like to see that erased.
04:06It's dangerous not to name it.
04:09Not to name the fact that race, like gender and all sorts of other identity markers do matter
04:14and they really do shape our cultural understanding of who we are and what we can be in the world.
04:20Not only are we damaged and harmed, but it harms everyone else who doesn't get the richness of what we
04:26bring.
04:27I think in order to get past this, we need to prioritize honest and open education surrounding the institutions
04:35that like specifically were meant to keep black people, women, et cetera, out of positions of power
04:41and how those still have lingering implications.
04:44The conversations we need to be having about race, the conversations that we need to be having about injustices,
04:50just need to be happening out in the open.
04:52I think that we're in a really important juncture where we can either speak our truth or continue to impede
04:59progress moving forward.
05:01Because I actually do believe that most decent human beings want the same things values-wise.
05:07Definitely.
05:08So listen everyone, we'll never be post-race.
05:11But this doesn't even have to be a bad thing.
05:13All we have to do is be post-racist.
05:16Also to be clear, this is not an end-all be-all conversation.
05:20This is an invitation for you to go out there and have these conversations with your friends,
05:24with your family and with your co-workers.
05:26Check back in with me in the comments and I'll see you next time.
05:29.
05:29.
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