#35: Hello again, Mr. Crow

I guess I was just fooling myself

Thinking you were gone forever

You had just been hiding

In plain sight

I wasn't paying attention

Thinking everything was peachy and fine

You never went away

Colorblind society

Or just blind period

Ignoring the cultural divide

Saying there are no racial lines

A blind eye is no excuse

You’re just lying to yourself

Small slurs and subtle slights

Progress is a joke

Some work twice as hard

To get paid half as much

This is our post-racial country

Hatred because you don’t understand

Hurtful because you’re fearful

No one says that that’s the truth

But it is

Slavery was your father

Disproportionate incarceration your brother

Equality not part of the family

Your presence is a menace

Your presence as strong as ever

Hello again Mr. Crow

Don't fool yourself in to thinking we live in a post-racial society. Far from it. There are no cotton picking farms, but there are plenty of prisons and ghettos to segregate our society. It isn't overt, but it is happening. The war on drugs became a war on minorities. Urban diversity lead to white flight. The end of segregation begat subtle predatory lending (still happening today).

The scariest thing though, is that there is a bit of racism in all of us. Some people are outright hateful toward other races, but all of us struggle with racism in some way. A good question to ask yourself is, "Is my attitude towards other races and cultures fair or biased? If they are biased, why?" 

If a post-racial society is the goal, then an inherent and massive cultural shift would need to occur. The solid lines that form boundaries between our cultures and races would need to become dotted lines instead. At those boundaries is where common ground can be found and where understanding can be formed.

Of course, for anything to truly change, the dominant/majority culture must make the greatest effort as they are the culture with the most power. That would mean white people. The key to a post-racial society is white people. So if you are white, you can no longer be on the sidelines in the fight for equality, you have to be at the forefront if that is truly the goal.