Ransom Notes: This marathon race about race is a long way from being over

The cheering has stopped, the streets have been cleared of the debris from the parade and the speechifying has mercifully ended. Now that Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States, we can look forward instead of backwards and claim that the discussion of race in America may have run its course. The race is over.

After all, Obama said it himself, that 60 years ago, his father, a Kenyan immigrant, would not have been served at many lunch counters in Washington, D.C. Only in the last two decades have some of the miscegenation laws been taken off the books to even allow his father and his mother, a white woman from Kansas, to marry.

The reality, of course, is that the race is still being run, and simply having a Black president doesn’t stop the discussion.

Certainly, the election of a Black president has sparked some activity along the race frontier. It is estimated that white hate groups have redoubled their efforts, and their recruitment drives are finding loads of new blood. A cordon of protection that is unprecedented, not because he is young or from Hawaii or from Chicago, surrounds Obama. He has that protection because the threats of harm came his way as soon as he was regarded as a serious candidate (he was one of the earliest primary candidates to receive Secret Service protection). He has that protection because he is Black.

There are those who argue that Obama represents the end of racism. There are those who argue that he represents the end of affirmative action. There are those who regard Obama as the realization of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.

He is none of those things.

Racism, like lice, or roaches or halitosis, won’t go away just because we wish it so. It must be eradicated, using the strongest possible medicine. It requires a bleaching agent so strong that it literally risks our very lives… that is how deep racism is ingrained in our society. Racism is not at its end, and, sadly, it will likely get worse before it gets better.

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