Charles Mudede’s piece in this week’s paper about Black Weirdos enumerates why the concept of post-racialism began with the election of Obama and ended with the exoneration of George Zimmerman—and how it’s a fantasy of the white left.
What Black Weirdo finally exposes is that the whole postracial thing was not really about black people. It was about white people, and particularly those on the liberal side of the political spectrum. Postracialism represented their feelings for the kind of society they wanted to live in but did not exist. The danger of this well-meaning feeling is that, in content, it became for white liberals what the dismantling of affirmative action was to whites on the right: a denial of the persistence of racism in this society. Black Weirdos, on the other hand, are about black people and the black experience, and they celebrate their differences.
While you’re thinking about that, recall the piece in last Sunday’s New York Times about post-feminist feminists:
The newly minted Kate Kirschner said: “I don’t feel like my having my husband’s name diminishes my feminism.” Mrs. Kirschner, who is 32, is the associate artistic director at the Women’s Project Theater. “I think what I did is indicative of the third-wave feminism I’m part of. We don’t feel the same need our mothers did to declare our independence as women because we feel it’s more inherent. We haven’t had the same challenges they had, and for better and for worse it means we’re not waving the flag in the same way.”
Who are these mythical mothers who universally and equally participated in feminism by waving flags and stridently declaring independence, therefore making my personal independence “more inherent”?
I’ve had three men in my life—all of whom consider themselves feminists or strong allies—who’ve been in the position of changing their names to mine, but none of them has seriously considered it.
I’ll believe it’s a “choice” when men have to make it, too.
