people would be the ones to fire the first shot across the bow when that day came. But none of these propositions were true, I noted. The race war had already begun, and there had never been a cease-fire.
It had begun in August 1619 when the first Africans were brought to the colonies as indentured servants: the precursor to enslavement. It had begun when colonial elites fixed upon the term white to describe all of European descent, no matter their station. This trick was one they had played to manufacture a kind of pan-European unity, which would then create distance between even the poorest of these and the Africans next to whom they toiled. It had begun when those colonists drove indigenous peoples from their land and praised God for the diseases they had carried from England, to which the latter had no immunity.
The race war had been going on for a long time and had already claimed millions of lives. Most had been people of color, but hundreds of thousands of whites had also perished fighting it. Among them: some in our family. They died fighting to maintain white supremacy and enslavement in the South, or they died fighting to crush the Confederacy and its dreams of a permanent slavocracy. But in both cases, they had died because four score and seven years earlier, their forefathers had failed to end the race war that their forefathers had begun some 140 years before that.
In other words, by the time she would ask me the question, the race war had been raging for fifteen generations. To ask if and when it might begin was like asking whether winter was on its way, even as the mercury dips to minus-ten and the snow piles up in six-foot drifts. There was no question as to the likelihood of a race war. It had been in full swing for over a century by the time the McLean family (whose reunion we were attending) came to colonial America in 1750. The only issue now was how the war would end. In short, I had some questions of my own.
Would white folks come to recognize the injustice of the war, and lay down our weapons? Would we decommission our armies of perpetual injustice—from law enforcement officers to corporate executives to teachers to bankers—and insist on finally ensuring the blessings of liberty for all on equal terms? Or would we continue to turn the other way and pretend none of these were implicated in the persistent inequities that all but the immutably obtuse can see? Would we address the legacy of enslavement and segregation or continue denying that these had anything to do with us, even as we have accumulated vast advantages because of them? Most important, would we take personal responsibility for having initiated the conflict? Or would we continue to see the dark-skinned other as the instigator, and only now fret about a race war because we see those others refusing to concede?
Finished with my reply, I watched as my aunt quickly rose to leave and play bridge. In so doing, she provided me with the answer to my questions—and it had been precisely the answer I expected. Confronted with the bill of particulars and our role in running up the tab, most of us will shrug. It has always been so. So far as I can tell, more than a quarter century later, it still is.
Over that twenty-six years, much has happened to confirm these suspicions. Yes, the United States elected its first black president, but then followed that up by electing the man who, more than anyone, insisted the black president was not even a real American. The election of Barack Obama, as D.L. Hughley puts it, was like intermission at a Broadway show—a temporary break to let the audience get up, stretch their legs, and then get back to the scripted action. When I was growing up, the Sunday afternoon NFL game on CBS would always bleed over into the six-o’clock hour, which is when 60 Minutes was due to begin. And so, at around 6:15 p.m., the announcer would break in to say, “And now, we return to your regularly scheduled programming.” This is what the replacement of Barack Obama with Donald Trump felt like to me.
In this volume, I pick up where I left off in my last collection of essays, which was published in 2008, shortly before Barack Obama had been elected. That collection, which spanned the previous decade, explored several themes I revisit here: white denial, white privilege, and historical memory, among others. But this volume, because it covers a period in which Obama and Trump have led the nation—and in which race issues have been elevated to a new level of predominance—seems far more urgent than its predecessor.
These essays, most of which were previously published online, track the arc of the nation’s racial drama through the supposed “post-racial” Obama years to the nightmare of Trumpism. The glaring consistency of specific themes during both presidencies makes the point I was making that day, back in 1994, to my aunt. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The war has never stopped. It won’t until we decide to stop it.
Rather than organize these pieces in purely chronological order, I have opted to begin the collection with sections focused on the Obama years and then on Trump, followed by sections arranged by theme, which span the entire twelve years since Obama’s election. Each section begins with a brief description of my thought process as I penned the included essays: what was happening at the time and why I found these pieces essential to include.
By the time you’re done, I hope that you will recognize two things. First, that post-raciality is a fantasy. This one shouldn’t be too difficult to prove unless you’ve been hibernating for the past several years. Still, it is worth coming to terms with just how deeply racism and racial inequity are embedded in the soil and soul of this nation. And second, that we all have a choice to make. Just as racism is part of the American character, antiracism has also been part of our history. We may have been conditioned to accept the former, but we can choose to embrace the latter. The only thing standing in our way is a willingness to look in the mirror, our own and the mirror of the nation—and the courage to be honest about the reflection staring back at us.
I.
POST-RACIAL BLUES: RACE AND REALITY IN THE OBAMA YEARS
IT CAN BE hard to watch video from years past when you know that something terrible is about to happen. The people in the video have no idea. They are frozen in time and place, their decisions made, their movements predetermined. You, on the other hand, have the benefit of hindsight, and the curse. No matter how many times you’ve watched the footage, it never fails to haunt, because you know what’s coming.
It’s how one feels—provided they aren’t a Mets fan—watching the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. You know the Red Sox are one out away from their first championship in nearly seventy years. But you also know that Gary Carter, Kevin Mitchell, and Ray Knight are all about to single, and then relief pitcher Bob Stanley is going to throw that wild pitch to Mookie Wilson, bringing in the tying run. Then Wilson is going to hit that slow ground ball to Bill Buckner at first base. And you know, because you saw it happen the first time, and have watched it many times since, that Buckner won’t make the play. The ball will go under his legs, the winning run will score, and the Mets will take the next game, and with it, the Series.
For a more historically significant reason, it’s also how one feels watching JFK and Jackie emerge from the plane at Love Field on November 22, 1963. You find yourself studying little details, like the thin blue tie John is wearing or the first lady’s pink suit and the matching pillbox hat perched on her head. You do this knowing what they do not: that within less than an hour, these items will be covered in the president’s blood.
It’s how one feels watching John’s brother Robert give that speech in the Ambassador Hotel five years later. He finishes, amid excitement and promise, and you find yourself thinking, Hey Bobby, how ’bout this time you come down off the riser and go out the front doors? Ya know, just for fun? I’ve heard the lobby is lovely. Wouldn’t you like to see the lobby? But no, he disappears behind a curtain and heads for the kitchen, just like you knew he was going to—you and Sirhan Sirhan.
It’s how one feels watching footage of Dr. King’s “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speech, delivered in Memphis on April 3, 1968. In one of his most stirring orations,
