Question: Does Barack Obama represent a post-racial age?
Cory Booker: Well, I reject the term post-racial, it kind of scares me in the sense that I never want that to happen to America. Ah, let’s not sanitize, homogenize, deodorize our country, dear God we are not a homogenous country like Norway or Holland, nor do I want us to be, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I want to be America. We are America, because we have strong Italian communities steeped in who they are, Irish communities with the pride of that community, Korean, Mexican, Haitian, Nigerian. We are the United States of America which is the wonderful collection of so many different races, ethnicities and religions and God forbid if we ever get to a point where we “transcend our race.” What makes America so rich, so powerful, so strong is our diversity. And I want to be a person that is who I am fully, I want to be a guy who is from New Jersey, I got my New Jersey pride, blasting my Bruce and my Queen Latifah, and, ah, but I also want to be a guy who is a Christian. I don’t want that should be something I should apologize for and I want to be a black guy, you know, I am African American, that comes with certain culture, from the food I eat to the music I listen to. My father’s Charlie Parker records or, or Earth, Wind, and Fire, all these things that are part of the African American experience and culture. I want luxuriate in them, I want to enjoy them, I want to be proud of my background and heritage and my heritage's contribution to this country, but all those things ultimately are portal for which us to all, if we truly are rooted in who we are, we eventually emerge to a deeper understanding of humanity in more texture or more rich, Understanding our true commonalities as a people. This where I found out what I found out with Schmuley in England. Now, I still never forget we were sitting there in the drunken spectacle of a purim party and the only three people left standing are the rabbi, who has got the biggest tolerance to alcohol is the Mormon, Greg Inan, Michael Benson who was the grandson of the Ezra Benson the head of the Mormon church, this is like the Prince of Mormon is right here, who does not drink and me that the Christian ex-football players who has never had alcohol and three of us who sitting looking at each other and it was a powerful moment where Mike Benson turns to Schmuley, an observant Mormon turns to a orthodox Jew and says, “Being around you and who you are and how fiercely Jewish you are, proud of Jewish you are, you made me a better Mormon” and Schmuley turns to him and says to a to Michael, he said “you know, being around you made me a better Jew” and I turned to both them and I said “Hanging out with you guys has done nothing for my love life.” Ah, but, ah, the reality is that is what the great thing is about America. The more we understand each other the more powerfully, we celebrate our cultures. I think it tighter our binds could be and it greater we bring out the power of humanity. So, let’s not have my generation of Obama’s or Adrian Fenties or Archer Davis’s or Harold Fords, these young African American guys who are coming along. Let’s let them never symbolize the over of the transcendence of race. I have anything that it celebrates that our country is becoming a place where all cultures, all ethnicities can get into the center of the arena and fight for a better America, but the thing that you said about, at the end of it though as this idea that we are beginning to heal the racial pains of the past. That we are been into address the racial disparities of the past. Now that is a good question or good point which is really what is happening in America, a generation since civil rights movement, especially for leaders in our generation who weren’t alive in 68, 67, 66, 65 and 4 when lot of that action was happening, what is this really mean and the first thing I says is looking at Obama, Harvard-educated lawyer Archer Davis, another Ivy-league lawyer or Harold Ford, another person with great presidential credentials. In many ways it is the celebration that our ancestors opened up this incredible door for even a larger flow of African Americans, Latinos other minorities in women to get opportunities, but they didn't get two or three generations ago in America and it in and of itself is wonderful thing, but we has the country we have a lot of work to do. You know, there is kids in Newark who stood up this morning and uttered something that people in Beverly Hills did, the same kids is still said the exact same thing that we are one nation under God, indivisible, I love that ideal, with liberty and justice for all. To me those words are still aspirational. We haven’t achieve them yet. You do not have to go far to see disparities, you can challenge anybody. I have done this in audiences all time. I said, “Everybody here knows who Jon Benet Ramsey is and Natalia Hallaway, privileged girls who happen to be white, who were murdered, became national scenes, but in cities like Newark there are unsolved murders of black children that don’t capture the same kind of national sensation, you have to wonder why is that. You look at racial disparities in incarceration, in New Jersey for example, 14% of our population is African American over 60% of the present population is black. Look a racial disparities so many different areas, we have not become a country that reflects our ideals yet. Nobody, black or white, Latino or Asian can say that we have achieved it yet. So, if anything this next generation of African Americans leaders or Latino young leaders or whatever ethnic group, what we have to realize is while we have benefited, so lavishly from the sacrifices of our parents. We have larger obligation to continue their struggle and not give up on the highest ideals of America that we can become that country that our children speak to every single morning and that is what excites me most is that you see a guy like Barrack Obama or whomever expressing that unbelievable commitment. That same kind of fire, that same kind of hope and optimism and belief that we can be this nation that, as King would say, “I have been to the mountaintop and I could see the promised land and we will get to that promised land.”
Recorded on: 3/11/08
Discuss
Melvin Bray on November 9, 2008, 11:44 AM
I so reside where Mayor Booker is coming from. “God forbid if we ever get to a point where we ‘transcend our race’” (Cory Booker on BigThink.com). Nevertheless, that is not what I believe ‘post-racial’ means%u2014transcendence would be ‘non-racial,’ well-meaning, yet a sociological nonentity%u2014although it may be exactly what a lot of heretofore-exclusively-privileged persons hope ‘post-racial’ means. I get the distinct impression that many want it to mean ‘over and done with race.’ However, as Robert Jensen reminds us in his book The Heart of Whiteness, “race is a fiction we must never accept; race is a fact we must never forget,” and the election of a person of color to the highest office in the land at a time of profound uncertainty, quelled only by hope, did not change this one bit.
If it is to follow the pattern of other such ‘post-’ constructs, ‘post-racial’ most appropriately identifies those who have suffered through the crucible of race and come out the other side determined to live/trust beyond race%u2014still in visceral awareness of its worst and unequivocal opposition to even the slightest of its indignities. Long before such ‘post-’ language became en vogue, Cornel West, one of the great American post-modern thinkers, wrote about the dangers of race as the sum of identity, in his seminal work Race Matters. West advocates the replacement of “racial reasoning” with a “moral reasoning” that engages beyond the arguments of the past, that obliterates the categories of left-right-center or conservative-liberal and that seems to be descriptive of Obama’s decentralized post-racial cadre.
Kent Bra on November 26, 2008, 10:23 AM
With all due respect, the Governor should do better research on the countries he refers to.
During this election period we’ve seen too many situations where northern-european countries have been used as negative exaples. For example, Vice president-elect Joe Biden was asked if America wouldn’t become a “socialist country like Sweden” under Obama.
So today I saw a clip from this video on the Colbert Report, where Norway, where I happen to live, is called a sanitized, homogenized and deodorized country.
Are we the new punching-bag for political punchlines all of a sudden? We’re a small nation with roughly 4.8 million inhabitants, 10% of which are immigrants. More than half of our population growth is due to immigration, with Pakistan, Somalia and Iraq being the biggest contributors. Every 8th person in our capital is a member of a minority.
Compared to many American cities that might not be very impressive, but keep in mind that we’ve never been a colonial power and slavery was extremely rare here.
I don’t mean to nitpick, and I know Mr Booker doesn’t have any obligation or power to “handle” foreign affairs, but I felt i had to say something about this tendency in american politics.
Being a small and relatively insignificant country, we’re still founding members of both the United Nations and NATO, and we’re traditional allies of the United States.
We’ve supplied troops and deployed special forces under American command during the Bosnia-conflict, the war in Afghanistan and the first gulf war.
We’re insignificant in the big scheme of things, but please do some research on the subject before bashing us on topics like this. Calling us a homogenized country while we’re taking in more than our share of Iraqi refugees does not go over well here. Even when it is said in a domestic context.
Erik M on November 27, 2008, 2:23 PM
I agree with Dantefan. Everything he says about Norway also goes for The Netherlands. Being a resident of the Netherlands, I was slightly offended. Copy pasted from wikipedia:
80.9% Dutch
2.4% Indonesian (Indo-Dutch, South Moluccan)
2.4% German
2.2% Turkish
2.0% Surinamese
1.9% Moroccan
0.8% Antillean and Aruban
6.0% other
Not as homogenous as Mr. Booker assumes my country is. Ofcourse The Netherlands does have a colonial past.
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