post-racial society?

hold that multicultural celebration i was just writing about. white supremacy, pure and uncut, still has its place in our culture. yesterday, the new york post had a cartoon of police officers shooting a chimp with the headline "they'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." what? man, this is nuts. it compares obama to a chimp/monkey/gorilla, and anyone with an inch of knowledge about racism knows that blacks have often been derided as monkey like in our culture. secondly, the cartoon advocates violence against obama. in actuality, obama is being murdered in this cartoon. read that headline again...crazy. and this is a paper with a huge circulation. millions read it. we always knew that murdoch's papers were rabidly right wing, but this is so obviously hateful and offensive that it is nothing short of stunning that it could be published.

the paper commented that a chimp recently escaped in the new york area, and the cartoon is a reference to that. if so, why does it mention the stimulus bill? of course the murdered chimp in the cartoon is obama, and of course, such an analogy and cartoon is incredibly racist.

i often think of myself as beyond surprise. mellish, the cynic who has seen it all. yep, that's me. but, i must say, i am stunned by this. it is not that it's the worst thing happening in our culture. no, bombing people by remote controlled drone is worse. rather, it is the unmitigated racism in it that throws me. for, in our culture, we usually like to pretend that all is well, that diversity reigns supreme, and that racism has become a minor detail. this argues otherwise. racist, white supremacist sentiments still have their place in our culture. (in reality, white supremacy is as strong as ever, in institutionalized, systemic terms. i am speaking about cultural manifestations here.) it is still ok to equate blacks, regardless of their success, with monkeys. it is still fine to joke about the murder of black leaders.

obama wants to be on the winning team. he will even send drones over pakistan, troops into afghanistan and bad words toward chavez to show that he is really one of us. but, for millions in our culture, he will always be on the other side.

for in post racial america, racism is alive and well.

and did i mention that the cartoon was from a new york paper, not an alabama paper? this is the mecca of cool, of art and jazz, of seinfeld and sex in the city.

to quote obama, "there is not a red america and a blue america, there is a united states of america."

sad, but true.