How Will We Live in a “Post-Racial” Society?

I’ve become quite puzzled lately by the increasingly frequent uses, in speech and in print of the term “post-racial society.” Our President has even, I think, used that phrase. I am not sure,   but it seems as if the connotations here are overriding the denotative values.  If one is seeking honest and reasoned discourse,  then here is a problem:  if someone objects to the term or believes that achievement of such a state could not be possible,  he or she, even if well-intentioned, is likely to be cast aside and ignored.

If such a possibility as a “post-racial society” is to be entertained or as seriously considered as much as a “Post-It Note,” we will need more rational approaches and a heightened sense of proper decorum in our discussion forums.

I think most of those who use the term intend to signify a society in which prejudice and discrimination are in effect eradicated, and thus no one will be treated unfairly or criminally because of their ethnic characteristics:  in particular, facial color and features. Maybe even dress,  and sometimes these days,  maybe even tattoos.

But I get puzzled because the term “racial” is and should be most commonly and effectively used neutrally:  to signify that the world’s population (or perhaps more narrowly the population of a nation, or a particular city or community) can be divided into specific subcultures with visible or tangible features that will identify their members by certain specific features.

If the speaker or writer wants to speak about a future time when all the members of a particular population entity have intermarried and bred to such an extent that they all share the same identifying features and abilities,  then I would prefer that “post-racist” or even “post-racialist” (the latter being sometimes labelled as “Chiefly British”)  be used.   Who can oppose or would oppose such a Utopian vision?

If our country would become “post-racial” in the sense that I usually understand it,  then I would expect that all Americans would be able both to jump as high and to swim as well as those with similar athletic abilities, thus leveling out these contemporary, stereotypical characteristics.

As early as the first half of the last century,  an anthropologist, anatomist, and humanist  was pressing hard the thesis that “race” was a nonsensical term.  See especially Ashley Montagu’s 1942 study,  “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth:  The Fallacy of Race.”  As a student of Alfred Korzybski,  Ruth Benedict, and Franz Boas,  Montagu (1905-1999) was also a well-trained and skillful semanticist. In our present culture many more job applicants are resisting the filling in of the application form’s query about one’s “race.”   Tiger Woods (did he need a new job, and some feel he soon could) might write in “Cablinasian,”  another has written “100-yard dash,”  still another “homo sapiens”   and so on.

So,  I hope some of the readers of this blog will help me (1) to understand what is intended just now of the term “post-racial” society,  (2) to estimate whether it can be arrived at via new laws or the studied interpretation of existing laws, such as the “Bill of Rights,”  and (3)  to help me understand why such a society would be desirable to all citizens in our republic or democracy.

RJR