The Brown & White

Although a huge step has been taken in the right direction, racism has not been eliminated since the election of Barack Obama, said Lehigh students and faculty during a discussion in the Multicultural Center on Feb. 4.

John McKnight, director of the Multicultural Affairs Office, said with Obama in the public eye, some people could start to expect African-Americans to follow an archetype of being Harvard-educated and looking or dressing in a certain way.

"I'm worried about what other areas or types of blackness might be excluded from that new picture," McKnight said. "We should be worrying more about what Obama is doing rather than what he is wearing."

McKnight said he is intrigued how ordinary comments that may seem complimentary can actually be taken as prejudiced or racist. If someone commented on how articulate Obama is, though it may be a genuine compliment, it seems to imply they would not have expected a black man to speak that well, he said.

"A person coming up to me in the supermarket to talk to me about the election is strange," McKnight said. "They are assuming I voted for Obama because I am black. Having people talking to each other that otherwise wouldn't have could be progress, but is still a little racist."

Freedom Aseto, a graduate assistant in the Multicultural Center, said he supports Obama but does not want to be classified by him.

"There are individuals that make up this country, and you don't have to be like someone because they are the same race as you," Aseto said.

McKnight said he hopes students will continue to think about the significance of race because the media portrays this time as the era in which racism has been conquered.

"I was surprised by people wanting to deemphasize race," McKnight said. "Race plays out on a day-to-day basis, but we sometimes forget that on college campuses."

Megan Pendleton, '10, said believing the U.S. is post-racial negates all the struggles black people have gone through up until this point.

"Unfortunately, people look to him as some savior or superhero, when in fact he is just an average person," she said. "Thinking that racism has been eliminated is ludicrous."

Although Obama has become president, not everything has changed, McKnight said.

"This is the same country that would have enslaved Obama's ancestors, would have denied him the right to even drink from a water fountain under Jim Crowe legislation in the South and definitely would have outlawed a relationship between his mother and father because of the inter-race nature of it," McKnight said. "This is the same country, the same soil, so to speak, where all of that would have made it impossible for Obama to be here."

McKnight said he does not want future generations of young African-Americans to be so far removed that they lose their history and heritage.

"Now that I'm going to be a dad, I'm thinking about how I make sure that my children understand there was a moment in time when you would have never even thought that it was a possibility to have an African-American president," he said.

McKnight said he thinks we will continue to see slow progress but hopes it will continue to pick up speed.