No, Racism Did Not Start with President Obama
Days before the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture near the Washington Monument, a couple of bizarre political developments illustrated why we Americans need it.
And I do mean all Americans. "Even if you think this isn't your story," as the museum's director Lonnie G. Bunch III recently told the Washington Post, "it is."
That's a reasonable response to the cynical wags and trolls who pepper Internet comment threads with sarcastic objections like, "I thought segregation was over" and "When are we going to have a museum for white people?"
We've got 'em, pal. But having visited museums of various sorts across this great land of ours, I am happy to report that the contributions made by Americans of color to our national narrative are increasingly included. Diversity is in. Conscientious curators like Bunch, former head of the Chicago Historical Society, have made a difference.
Yet too many of us Americans still harbor woefully incomplete views of life on the other side of our racial divide.
Take, for example, the comments that last week cost Kathy Miller her position as volunteer chairwoman of Donald Trump's presidential campaign in northeastern Ohio's Mahoning County.
Problems emerged after a videotaped interview with Britain's Guardian in which she was asked whether Trump's candidacy has encouraged a "just-below-the-surface" racism to surface.
"I don't think there was any racism until Obama got elected," Miller replied. "We never had problems like this. You know, I'm in the real estate industry. There's none."
Say what? This takes the usual Republican "Blame Obama First" strategy to a new low. Being in real estate, for example, surely she has heard of "redlining," the denial of conventional mortgages and insurance to homes in predominately black zip codes.
Or she could google up the words "panic peddling" or "blockbusting" that stirred white flight and destabilized neighborhoods to turn racial anxieties into big profits.
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