00:02Hello everyone! I'm Lyric and this is my show. I was just texting my boyfriend.
00:09Today we're going to talk about the phrase post-race. For many people this election was
00:18a huge wake-up call. A wake-up call from a deep deep sleep that I believe was induced
00:22in part by the belief that we're in a post-racial society. So what is post-race? I decided to
00:29take
00:29to the streets of New York and find out.
00:30We're talking about important issues. Oh, important issues. We need to find some important issues.
00:35Right, some more important issues than race. Have you ever heard post-race before?
00:38Never heard of it. I know nothing.
00:40You know nothing about race. I know nothing.
00:42Have you heard that? I haven't heard that. I don't think I've heard that.
00:44Oh, you mean presidential race? No, no, no.
00:48I've heard my uncle speak about it a few times, but I didn't really listen.
00:51In what context did you hear it?
00:53Surrounding the election. You know, it's just thrown around in there.
00:55It's interesting. What is it exactly?
01:00Post-race would be a world where race actually doesn't matter, but it's still hugely a factor.
01:07So, it's clear that we need to break this term down. Where did this actually come from?
01:12Well, in 1971, a group of 70 politicians and professors formed a group called the Southern Growth Policies Board.
01:19This group was responsible for putting together policies for the future of the South.
01:25The New York Times reported that there were four black people there out of the 70 who declared that racism
01:31was over.
01:32Now, let's just cut to 2008, shall we? When we finally elected a black president.
01:37This was another chance for people to throw around the term post-race, because the leader of the free world
01:42was black, right?
01:43An example, here we have Chris Matthews on NBC saying,
01:47You know, I forgot that he was black for an entire hour.
01:50So, are we post-race?
01:52Do you think we'll ever be post-race?
01:54That's like such a depressing question.
01:57I hope so. I can only hope.
01:59I don't think anybody should be worried about race.
02:01It'll be minimized, but it won't be completely gone.
02:06Like, what are we now?
02:08We're humans. We differentiate between one person and we look for things to make them different. It's always going to
02:14happen.
02:15Thank you, Ben. Will you just sign a little paper for us?
02:20Now that we've gone through the history of this word, some really awkward times where people have had to use
02:25it,
02:25I brought in a very old friend and a new friend of mine to help us talk about what this
02:30means for us now.
02:32Okay, so let's talk about how we see post-race play out in our everyday lives.
02:36Have you guys heard it amongst your friends in the streets or in the news?
02:40I see it every day in the comment sections. I often see people saying,
02:44Oh, haven't we moved past this? Get over it.
02:46It doesn't really acknowledge or respect the fact that we had a system of laws in this country that put
02:54people in the position to have to regard themselves and their personal safety and livelihood on the basis of race.
03:01And to now conveniently want to sweep it away is just not appropriate.
03:06If you take an example of someone like Barack Obama, I think people who support the narrative of post-race
03:12would point to his success,
03:14but it completely is an erasure of the very real struggles he had to face as a black man in
03:19America.
03:19One of the things I found when I was studying his rhetoric on race was that he had talked about
03:23trying to hail a cab in New York City,
03:25even at that point of being someone of national stature and notoriety, still having problems doing that.
03:30Well, no matter how many degrees you get or whatever those vestiges of respectability are,
03:36there are still people who will see you and treat you like you are less.
03:40So now that we can all agree that we're definitely not post-race, do we even want to be post
03:46-race or do we see a future for ourselves where we're post-race?
03:50I think it's both impossible and also would be destructive.
03:53My blackness was never the problem.
03:56White supremacy was.
03:58I want to be able to celebrate blackness and I think so much of black culture reacts to that and
04:03it should.
04:04So I wouldn't like to see that erased.
04:06It's dangerous not to name it, not to name the fact that race like gender and all sorts of other
04:13identity markers do matter
04:14and they really do shape our cultural understanding of who we are and what we can be in the world.
04:20Not only are we damaged and harmed, but it harms everyone else who doesn't get the richness of what we
04:26bring.
04:27I think in order to get past this, we need to prioritize honest and open education surrounding the institutions
04:35that like specifically were meant to keep black people, women, etc. out of positions of power and how those still
04:43have lingering implications.
04:44The conversations we need to be having about race, the conversations that we need to be having about injustices, just
04:51need to be happening out in the open.
04:52I think that we're in a really important juncture where we can either speak our truth or continue to impede
04:59progress moving forward.
05:01Because I actually do believe that most decent human beings want the same things values wise.
05:07Definitely.
05:08So listen everyone, we'll never be post-race.
05:11But this doesn't even have to be a bad thing.
05:14All we have to do is be post-racist.
05:16Also to be clear, this is not an end-all be-all conversation.
05:20This is an invitation for you to go out there and have these conversations with your friends, with your family
05:25and with your co-workers.
05:26And I'll see you next time.
