Amy Goodman on the White House

Amy Goodman has an article in CommonDreams this week. In it, she gives an interesting historical fact of the White House, future home of Barack Obama – it was built by slaves. At first, I thought Amy may have been caught up in the whole “this is evidence we live in a post-racial society” crap – but of course, Amy delivered.

The way the article is written is great – Goodman manages to tell a story, add interesting research and call on Obama to ban torture in only a page of captivating reading (and I have a hard time reading online, too!) Okay, enough with the Amy Goodman gushing though….

She interviewed Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor at Princeton, for the piece. Lacewell is quoted as saying:

“There are two African-American girls, little girl children, who are going to grow up with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as their home address. That's an astonishing difference for our country. It does not mean the end of racial inequality. It does not mean that most little black girls growing up with their residence on the south side of Chicago or in Harlem, or Latino boys and girls growing up at their addresses, that the world is all better for them. But it does mean that there is something possible here."

I think this quote does what the media glosses over: elucidates the fact that this DOES NOT MEAN THE END OF RACIAL INEQUALITY.

I’m sick of hearing that Barack Obama’s future presidency is “proof” that the different faces that make up our nation can get along with each other. I agree that it is proof that the nation has changed, but it would take a lot more to prove to me that we’re no longer a country deeply divided because of the color of our peoples’ skin.