The post post-racial period

Much was made of a the idea that Obama's election began the advent of a "post-racial" America. Now, I'm unclear what was meant by this turn of phrase to begin with so I chalk it up to the magical thinking that surrounded Obama in general.

10 months later, nothing much has changed. So many voices are insisting that the "post racial" age is not to be. This, too, is nonsense. The end of the post racial mirage is credited to - you guessed it - anger and frustration with Obama. We didn't elected the guy just because he's black but being opposed to him is because he's black. The logic here is a small stack of fallacies:

Obama's election meant we were entering a post racial period.
Blow back against Obama means the post racial period was a mirage.

Both the previous sentences are false.

Obama was elected because he had a D after his name on the ballot. That's really the long and short of it. Any number of competent Democrats would have defeated McCain in 2008. Kerry, Clinton, Gore, pre-affair Edwards...to name a few.

Obama has fallen in popularity from the stratosphere to the around 50-53% in the polls because of his policies and actions as President. It is also the result of the gulf between the implied promises of his campaign and the reality of his governance. Still, his fall in the polls, while more dramatic than many post war Presidents, is within a normal range. Ford, Clinton, and George W. Bush - all white - had similar fall offs in popularity after being in office for a few months. Bush's popularity fell dramatically in the months after both his election wins.

In other words, Obama's being judged on things other than race.

I commend Obama and Biden for stepping on President Carter's retrograde insistence that those protesting in D.C. last weekend were motivated by race. They killed that narrative quickly and decisively. In the future, Maureen Dowd, Janeane Garofalo, Keith Olbermann and more than a few others will think twice about inventing racism where it largely does not exist.

Does this mean the country is post racial? Certainly not as a whole. But much of it is. Many of us - of all races - do actually prioritize and assess our relationships and make judgements on criteria other than race and have for quite some time - often against a headwind of insistence that race is the central fact of American life. In the last 20 years this insistence has usually come from rich, white progressives and black "leaders" who have an ongoing interest in keeping racism alive. This is one area Obama can be a truly transformative President: He can shut the liberal racial reactionaries up forever.