Despite Obama's win, society isn't colorblind

"How come we overcame and nobody told me?"

Florence, the maid on "The Jeffersons"

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Deborah Douglas is an editorial board member.
(Sun-Times file)

Black professionals daily live what W.E.B. DuBois called a double-consciousness. America saw it writ large this week on the podium at the Democratic National Convention as Obama & Co. packaged and presented an oft-unseen version of the black family, one that is presentable and palatable to a white America still skeptical about this smart-talking guy with the funny name and big ears.

That's why I was perplexed -- but not surprised -- by the missing voices of civil rights during prime time at the convention this week. Be mad at the Rev. Jesse Jackson all you want for his hot-mike jive talk about Barack Obama or for his aggressive methods of getting his point across. Hate on Al Sharpton for his rhetoric and his hair (I do).

If not those voices, we'll need voices like those who can speak loudly and brashly for people who can't speak for themselves. If elected, Obama will be busy managing so many interests, driven bleary-eyed by his double-consciousness, he won't have time to tend to traditional civil rights issues unless we hold him accountable.

"What the Barack Obama candidacy is doing is cementing this idea that we are colorblind," said Charles Gallagher, sociology chairman at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. "How are we going to have serious conversations about racial equality when all you have to do is point to the White House?"

While I understand that Obama has strategic reasons for playing down minority grievances by playing up imagery of a post-race, colorblind society, we shouldn't get it twisted. Racial inequality still exists by nearly every quality-of-life measure.

Take education: Chicago parents are bracing for the unthinkable -- keeping kids out of school on the first day to make a larger point about equal education funding across race and class. While the protest method chosen by Sen. James Meeks is flawed, the inequality is real. Equal funding would improve student outcomes, lure better teachers to marginal schools and create a viable business environment in neighborhoods with better schools, according to an analysis by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.

What's missing is the will to make things right. That takes people with the cojones to press these issues, and it's not always the smooth voice of nuance that gets the message across.

The problem with all the pretty imagery we've enjoyed this week is that it suggests the country is past race, that an individual's outcomes are determined solely by merit. It suggests that the unheard civil rights voices should be relegated to the pages of history because the playing field is now equal, and if you don't make it to the middle class, it's your fault.

Young people weaned on a diet of multicultural imagery fed by TV and other media might be prone to believe this. But that's only plasma and paper reality. We still largely live, work and worship separately.

Obama & Co. wore the proverbial mask about which poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote eloquently. As a middle-class black professional, I and so many others don that mask every morning before heading out the door to navigate two worlds -- one black, one white. Frankly, in both places I feel alternately comfortable, then not.

What can't happen is to ask marginalized people to don the mask permanently, to shut up and sit in a corner because our symbol of progress in a tailored suit is so much more important than progress itself.

Deborah Douglas is an editorial board member.