Between Barack and a Hard Place

This week I listened to an interview from Tim Wise about his book called "Between Barack and a Hard Place". His book discusses the relationship between Barack Obama and racism in this country. i really enjoyed this interview, and heard a lot of interesting facts and commentary. Wise talks about a post racial America. We are more racially acceptable to blacks and to other races than we were fifty years ago, although we still have a long way to go. Wise categories fifty years ago as being racism 1.0. The old southern and racial slurs and nonacceptance that many white male people had against blacks. There are still people who are discriminatory to blacks, but significantly less than back fifty years ago. Racism 2.0 is a different type of discrimination. Part of the reason that Obama became president was because he was very educated. He went to Harvard and speaks so intelligently. People need to stop thinking that every black person is as educated as Obama was. Wise talks about how George W. Bush was not as educated as past Presidents, and he was still able to get elected for two terms. In the future, it will be interesting to find out if another black person runs for president, if they have mediocre college experience. Wise calls this "breaking the glass celling", which is a term used for women and equality.   Wise also talks about the importance that even though we have a black president, we are not done. We have come a long way from fifty years ago, and since Brown vs. Board of Education. Today, we saw that states and counties are trying to suppress the minority vote by creating harsh voter id laws as well as stopping early voting. Wise also says that it is important that if we start talking to the targeted, we will get a better sense of what what is going on, as well as trying to solve these problems. This reminds me of one of the first activities we did this semester, SCWAMP. He gives an example of talking to the disabled to find out if there is discrimination, and not knowing because of being able bodied. As I was watching the election last night, I couldn't help but think that by President Obama being re elected, that this is a push to further accept minorities, like we do whites in this country. I found this article talking about protests happening after Obama was re elected from the University of Mississippi. This school has has been in the news lately because it has been a very racial school because it was founded during the civil war, when the south separated it self from the rest of the country.
Our education system's history is on the back of racism in this country. When Brown vs. Board of Education won it's case, it was clear that racism was not over yet. We have a long way to go yet. In the article " Separate and Unequal" by Bob Herbert, he talks about racism and education in this country. We are segregated more due to poverty and school systems now, then ever before."Ninety-five percent of education reform is about trying to make separate schools for rich and poor work, but there is very little evidence that you can have success when you pack all the low-income students into one particular school".  We see this with many urban school settings today. In providence, there is a large number of poverty and all of these children are put in these school systems, no matter what. I see this with my service learning classroom. Most of the kids come from this one neighborhood, however there is many different learners in that classroom.I think as the country moves forward in these next four years under President Obama, we can try to improve the racial inequality, so that we are more unified.