The Construction and Rearticulation of Race in a Post-Racial America

n my view, The Negro Problem in 2008 is part law, part politics, part oppression, part internalized oppression and part ideology. As America becomes more polarized into red states and blues states, into liberals and conservatives, into right, left, and even further into black and white, racism has become even more pronounced if not more difficult to identify. The Negro Problem¿ of 2008 is helped along willingly by blacks whose sense of inferiority and internalized oppression so blind them that they too deal in oppressive and denigrating images for profits. Working hand in hand with the white executives who profit from those images and the white liberals who justify this denigration, they too add grist to the mill of oppression and exclusion. Members of the American media have moved from reporting the news to advancing their opinions and discussing race in a roundabout way, which they claim is race neutral, but which is in fact race conscious. How has their unfettered power defined the coverage of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary? What role does rap music, with its revival of the most vile and base stereotypes of black men from slavery and the Jim Crow era and its attendant culture of debauchery, play in stoking racial subordination and domination? Does the fact that so many rap artists are black provide them with the veritable black pass to lyrically and virtually debase and defile black women and themselves that whites, by virtue of their whiteness, are denied?

Christopher J. Metzler, PhD is Associate Dean of Human Resources for theMasters of Professional Studies at Georgetown University in Washington,D.C. Prior to joining Georgetown University, he was on the faculty atCornell University's ILR School where he directed the EEO and DiversityStudies program. At Cornell, he created the nation's firstcertification program for diversity professionals and established TheChief Diversity Officers' Roundtable. He is also the author of The Competencies of the Chief Diversity Officers(2008), the first comprehensive analysis of CDO competencies to date.He was also an adjunct Associate Professor at CUNY (The City Universityof New York) where he taught Civil Rights among other courses. Prior toentering higher education, he headed the strategic issues and researchpractice at an international consulting firm and provided advice tomultinational corporations and governments on human rights, humancapital, equality, corporate social responsibility, discrimination anddiversity. He lectures globally on diversity, global employmentpractices, human resources and comparative employment systems.