Poll Position - We Are Not (Yet) PostRacial.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been theorizing that the election of Barack Obama is perhaps the worst thing to happen to US race relations in more than 40 years. This has been stated tongue in cheek, but I've wondered if there's more truth than hyperbole in my own statement. Seriously, the past year or so has seen seemingly one racist scenario after another, in a series of unfortunate events I'm too weary to recap here. These incidents have come from both the left (how soon we forget) and the right with equal intensity. They seem to indicate that even though the Obama election is historic, and a great step in the right direction, we've still got a long way to go before we're truly "postracial".

If nothing else, we're hyper-racial right now. Some white people are on edge and unnerved everytime the topic of race comes up. Some black folks get angry that whites go immediately on the defense and disregard any semblance of racial discussion the moment things get uneasy. And of course, there's that whole segment of America that simply is not happy about a blackish guy being in charge, and feels newly emboldened to shout racial epithets at the HNIC and his family since such action is now far more socially acceptable.

So, in short, I kinda feel like we're seem remarkable progress because enough white folks on both sides of the aisle were able to push aside racial hangups to select who they felt was the right guy for the job. On the other hand, there's definitely a feeling that we've taken a bunch of steps backward, because, aww hell, if you've read this blog the past year, you already know why.

To get a consensus, I turned to AverageNation™ and decided to settle this the Democratic way. While this poll registered a record number of votes (well over 300), the results weren't really surprising.

So, most of you (41%) agreed with my mixed bag assertion. 22% think it's better to know thine enemy than guess. 18% think Dr. King's Dream of a postracial America was prolly conceived during one very restless night in Birmingham. Only 3% think November 4th proved that we're already postracial. 14% think the resurgence of wingnuttery prove that Obama's election was a net negative.

I suppose time will ultimately tell.

Question: How did you vote? Are we postracial, or did we completely misunderstand what the term postracial was supposed to mean?