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Hudson Institute Explores a "Post-Racial America"

The Hudson Institute and the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise recently hosted a panel discussion about the possibility of a "post-racial" era in America and its relation to Obama's historic win. Panelists offered mixed opinions to document that a post-racial America began before Obama's journey to the White House.

Rev. DeForest Soaries, Jr., of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey, said, "When hip hop music became more popular in the suburbs than it was in the cities, you could have called that a post-racial development... Today, my children who are nineteen have more in common with their Caucasian and Hispanic and Asian counterparts in ways that defy the notion of race as we understand it. And so, the post-racial phenomenon didn't really start with Obama. I think the issue of accountability within the race, and moral consistency, is as critical a notion to post-racialism as anything else."

Syndicated columnist William Raspberry drew the 2007 events in Jena, Louisiana, into the discussion: "...The most powerful problems confronting Black America are internal and demand internal solutions. There are still some external issues, but they're not the predominant ones, and we can't keep forgetting that, so when a Jena, Louisiana, happens, we all get in buses and cars and planes and go running down there as if, if we can settle Jena, we will have made some enormous progress. Why? Because Jena looks a little bit like Montgomery and Rosa Parks. We keep trying to create 1960s templates in 2008 and 2009… and it doesn't fly anymore. We simply haven't done the proper analysis of what it will take to do the next work that has to be done. This is what I’m hopeful will come out of the Obama presidency."