I'm Not Post-Racial

After my wedding, I was back out on the campaign trail, meeting voters in rooms where the crowds were once again all black or all white. I used to have one type of reaction to those kinds of racial divisions: a negative one. They seemed unnecessarily narrow or part of a larger problem. But my own wedding experience, and the way it showed me how clearly divided my own life is, made me more sensitive to the divisions I saw among voters.

In Harrisburg, Pa., I hung out at American Legion Post 733 -- which is predominantly black -- and, less than 10 miles away, the mostly white American Legion Post 420. Many of the men at both posts had worked together at the nearly shuttered Bethlehem Steel mill, standing side by side on the line but living separate lives. It was strange to see how similarly they dressed, most in black Army caps and sports tees. Most of them were Democrats, at the time divided between Obama and Clinton. Other than the color of their skin, they seemed to have everything in common. Yet their posts had never come together.

From the outside, I didn't have much in common with either group. But somehow I wound up with a lifestyle that closely resembled theirs in a certain respect: It is rooted in my own community, more than I ever thought it would be.

I grew up in Alief, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Houston that attracted first a large concentration of African Americans, then Asian Americans and immigrants from the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. At my 12th birthday party in the spring of 1991, my sister and I ended up being the only black children present because my friends in homeroom were white or of Mexican, Indian or Egyptian heritage.

Later, in the high school lunchroom, I found myself, like most in my generation, largely sucked into the old divisions of race at the "black table." During that time, I wore a popular T-shirt that said, "It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand it." My sense of racial awareness began to solidify.

My high school was big and diverse, and I questioned the racial make-up of our classrooms. There were 4,000 students and 787 in my graduating class, but I was one of only two black kids in the AP honors courses. I thought the racial disparity had to be more of a systemic problem than some issue endemic to blacks.

Looking back, I realize that during high school I unconsciously developed a feeling of racial vulnerability, defensiveness and sometimes anger. It was those feelings that caused me to seek out people who I felt would understand. I didn't shut myself off from others, but I did draw closer to African Americans, who could empathize.

During my four years at the University of Texas, I was more open and developed friendships with folks from lots of backgrounds at the student newspaper, in women's groups and on campus leadership panels. But at the end of the day, my social life was rarely integrated. I joined a historically black sorority and chose to spend most of my social time with other African Americans.

In his speeches, Obama has never defined the kind of unity he seeks. It was commentators who dubbed his campaign a post-racial one and who have now declared that we live in a post-racial America. As Obama puts together his Cabinet, blogs and message boards are going crazy with discussions of whether he should be expected to appoint a team that's more racially diverse than were those of his recent predecessors. Others argue that his "post-racial" campaign should not succumb to such quotas.

What the president-elect said about race eight months ago in a speech in Philadelphia, which he called "A More Perfect Union," was much more complex than any cliched notion of unity. He described the country as being at a racial stalemate. "Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle," Obama said.

Cassandra Butts, a senior Obama adviser who is African American, told the Wall Street Journal in the closing days of the campaign that she doesn't consider Obama "a post-racial" politician. "When people say that, they seem to suggest that we are beyond the issue of race, that issues of race don't matter," she said. "I don't think that is necessarily the case. I don't think Barack considers himself post-racial in that way. He will tell you he thinks race does matter."

I agree. For me, the goal has never been negating race through colorblindness -- to do so would take a healthy discussion of existing racial disparities off the table. My aim is not for us to be post-racial but to embrace our cultural heritages while refusing to be confined by them.

I've barely recovered from the epic campaign that led to President-elect Obama, so it's a bit early to be thinking about how cold it will be in Iowa come December 2011 or what the crowds might look like. It's safe to assume that Obama's coalition will somehow be altered by the power of the presidency. Perhaps by the time 2011 arrives, the country will have become less racially stratified.

I hope that by then, we will find that an auditorium of white Iowans cheering on a black, Asian or Latino presidential candidate is commonplace. I also hope that in that auditorium, race and ethnicity will remain valued aspects of our identities, not forgotten or homogenized for the sake of some vague notion of post-racialism.

williamsk@washpost.com

Krissah Williams Thompson is a Washington Post staff writer.