Post-racial America
Encyclopedia
Post-racial America is a theoretical environment where the United States is void of racial preference, discrimination
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...

, and prejudice. Some Americans believed that the election of Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

 as President and wider acceptance of inter-racial marriages signified that the nation had entered this state, while others believe that groups such as the Tea Party movement
Tea Party movement
The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...

 prove it has not. In January 2010 the Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center
The Pew Research Center is an American think tank organization based in Washington, D.C. that provides information on issues, attitudes and trends shaping the United States and the world. The Center and its projects receive funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts. In 1990, Donald S...

 conduced a poll in conjunction with National Public Radio that indicated that 39% of persons of African-American descent felt they were in a better position than they had been five years ago, an increase of 19% from the previous poll taken in 2008. Actor and director Mario Van Peebles
Mario Van Peebles
Mario "Chip" Cain Van Peebles is an American director and actor who has appeared in numerous Hollywood films. He is son of filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles.-Life and career:...

 made a television documentary titled Fair Game that challenged the idea that the United States had become a post-racial society.

Issues

Many television pundits and activists note that the allegedly "post-racial" landscape is littered with accusations of reverse racism against people of color, exemplified by FOX News' Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Edward Lee Beck is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks...

's televised assertion that President Barack Obama is a racist with a "deep seated hatred of white" people. Likewise, media frenzies over selected excerpts from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's speech to graduates ("a wise Latina") and USDA official Shirley Sherrod's NAACP speech (about black and white farmers) marked these women of color as purveyors of anti-white racism , even though further scrutiny of their entire speeches found neither were articulating an anti-white bias. Thus, one hallmark of the "post-racial" era is increasing declarations that people of color are the ones "playing the race card
Race card
Playing the race card is an idiomatic phrase that refers to exploitation of either racist or anti-racist attitudes to gain a personal advantage, typically by falsely accusing others of racism against oneself.-Usage:...

" and inflicting racism on white people, while whites remain "innocent" of race or race-less.
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