It's time to talk about race. No, we can't keep ignoring this. Beyonce performed to millions on Super Bowl Sunday with her song "Formation" which is about her southern, black roots that still define her to this day and a silent majority found her performance (video and song) to be anti-police due to criticism over police shootings. Kendrick Lamar has been awarded the Grammy for "Rap Album of the Year" for "To Pimp A Butterfly" accompanied by a performance of his songs encapsulating the black experience from incarceration to African roots and social media, yet again, lashed out at the rapper.
These serve as striking examples of how we truly deal with race in America. It is a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" situation that has gone on too long for us to continue throwing the phrase "post-racial" around. Obviously, we haven't moved too far past this point. We see quotes of Martin Luther King Jr. used to justify the silence of racial issues, but ignore his lessons on the white majority working to actively reverse the negative repercussions of slavery and segregation. We want to say that race shouldn't divide us, yet we continue to step around the lines drawn in the sand becoming more concrete.
Fear is what I believe is driving this silence of racial discussions. A fear that we have created a reality in which we hid the ways discrimination and oppression still exist. A fear that Obama's rise to the presidency does not erase prejudice that trickle down and still exist in the minds of the generations to be raised. A fear that we are in denial of the equality, liberty, and opportunity that we say we provide for everyone.
Talking about race gets you called a racist, but not a presidential hopeful that wants to build a wall or expel Muslims against our interpretation of the constitution. Explaining how people of color are more likely to struggle due to historic systematic exclusion from suburbs, jobs, and schools gets you called a racist while gerrymandering proves this is a continuing problem. Writing about these issues on your Facebook wall results in a loss of "friends."
To argue that race is a social construct not only (by definition) reinforces that it is something that is a factor in our world, but proves that we are desperate to put race behind us. However, we keep ignoring the history and the issues that led to this point. All of this leads to a very difficult, yet simple question... are we actually ready to have a serious conversation about race?
