The Post-Racial Delusion

Tayvon Martin is simply the most vivid example of the things that actually define race relations in this country.

Jamelle Bouie, Nation

Writing in the New Yorker<>, Jelani Cobb says that the shooting death of Tayvon Martin was a powerful reminder that the United States is—and has been—far from the post-racial paradise that we’d like to imagine:

"…the shooting death of Trayvon Martin…did not so much raise questions as it confirmed suspicions: that we remain stratified or at best striated by race, that “innocent” is a relative term, that black male lives can end under capricious circumstances, and that justice is in the eye of the beholder—ideas that are as cynical as they are applicable. At this juncture, events in Sanford, Florida, suggest the benefit of the doubt in the shooting of a black teen-ager extends even to unauthorized, untrained, weapon-toting private citizens who pursue unarmed pedestrians."

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