- CounterPunch.org - https://www.counterpunch.org -

The Selling of Post-Racial America

A  flare up of multiple sclerosis has made me quite disabled the past few months. Housebound, my mother and I have been taking the temperature of America as we approach Obama’s second term.

Obama.

Remermber him?

The messiah of hope and change.

Or is he that Muslim Mao Maoist communist  black fellow with the faked birth certificates whose infiltrating  a white domain and made it very very other.

Is he,  in fact, the antichrist?

Two notations from my disabled self.

My mother, Adelina Ortiz de Hill, spends much of her day rectifying  the falsifications of her Hispano ancestors.  She knows, at 82, it is her duty to those who will survive her.

To chill out we watch Dancing with the Stars and Cupcake Wars.

I admit I’m a bit astonished by the imbecility of Cupcake Wars but not nearly as astonished by the selling of post racial America.

We turn off the sound when commercials come on and behold the fresh, young, sexy white folk ecstatically consuming (whatever) with an array of darkies.

What’s intriguing to me is  that this exact commercial vernacular is the staple of South African TV that I watch with my tribal peers in Zimbabwe.  Same images of sparkly white folk happily consuming with the darkies.

This post Apartheid fantasy  of a color blind world – except Americanized.

And we know that its pure bullshit.

Anyone with friends in the various inner cities or helping a black friend find a life outside of prison knows the violent hypocrisy of this commercialized alternate reality.

White folk so much need to believe they arew members of the human race – so these commercials make commodity of Obamas “post-racial” America.

The shared sacrament across races and cultural divisions.

We all like to consume don’t we?

Michael Ortiz Hill is the author of seven published book, an RN and an initiate into Bantu tribal medicine in Zimbabwe.  He currently teaches from his most recent book, The Craft of Compassion at the Bedside of the Ill
(Hand to Hand Press,  2011)  and lives in Santa Fe, NM. More information on his work can be found at www.michaelortizhill.com .  Email is michaelortizhill@verizon.net.