Obama’s election marked a peak of post-racial triumphalism, not its end

Evidence

The election of Obama in 2008 became the final proof to some that the United States had achieved the ultimate victory of racial progress, the end of racism. This message was offered as much to Black Americans as to non-Black Americans. In a post-election piece published in the Los Angeles Times, Hoover Institution fellow Shelby Steele asked, “Doesn’t a black in the Oval Office put the lie to both black inferiority and white racism? Doesn’t it imply a ‘post-racial’ America?” In 2008, the General Social Survey asked whether Black Americans “have worse jobs, income, and housing than White people…mainly due to discrimination.” Only 35 percent of Americans answered “yes,” the fourth-lowest anti-racist response in three decades of polling. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1292

Categorization

• XREF: The 35 percent GSS figure is a specific contested-data point useful when distinguishing reframing arguments from empirical claims. — connects to: Obama’s election rebranded rather than ended American imperial policy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 495
• CANDY: The concrete detail that only 35 percent of Americans blamed discrimination for Black disadvantage in 2008 is a punchy, shareable statistic.