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94 Foreign Aff. 9 (2015)
Racial Inequality after Racism: How Institutions Hold Back African Americans

handle is hein.journals/fora94 and id is 287 raw text is: hold six years ago. For many of Obama's R acial Inequality supporters, his election represented a milestone in U.S. history, marking the -A-fter R acism dawn of a postracial society-a new era in which skin color would no longer stand How Institutions Hold Back as a barrier to opportunity or achievement. Obama himself embraced this imagery, African Americans insisting that there's not a black America and white America and Latino America Fredrick C. Harris and Robert and Asian America; there's the United C. Lieberman States of America. Although he ac- knowledged the country's history of racial division and conflict, he clearly envisioned a future in which racial distinctions would ast summer, the killings of two fade into insignificance, and he promoted unarmed African American men- himself as an avatar of that future. Eric Garner in Staten Island, New Such lofty rhetoric already seems York, and Michael Brown in Ferguson, 7dated. But even as recent protests over Missouri-by white police officers race affirmed racial inequality as a reignited the national conversation about defining feature of American life, it also racial inequality in the United States. In offered a reminder of just how much the both cases, grand juries declined to racial landscape in the United States has indict the officers involved. The rulings changed since the mid-twentieth century. provoked a wave of protest marches, Analyzing U.S. race relations in 1944, rallies, and road blockades across the the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal country, as demonstrators of all skin identified what he called an American colors proclaimed to the nation and to dilemma: the wide gap between the the world that black lives matter. American ideals of liberty and equality The upheaval has stood in stark and the actual conditions of African contrast to the promise of a transforma- American life. In Myrdal's view, racism tion in race relations that President was the root cause of the problem. Barack Obama's inauguration appeared to Myrdal found that white Americans' support for segregation sprang from a FREDRICK C. HARRIS is Professor of Political widespread belief in black inferiority Science and Director of the Center on African and that blacks' disadvantaged status American Politics and Society at Columbia tended to reinforce this sentiment. University. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. For Americans to resolve this clash ROBERT C. LIEBERMAN is Provost and between ideals and reality, Myrdal Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and argued, something had to give: either Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins whites' racial attitudes had to change, University. allowing for fairer treatment of blacks, or They are the co-editors of Beyond Discrimina- the circumstances of African American tion: Racial Inequality in a Postracist Era (Russell Sage Foundation, 2013), and this essay draws life had to improve, triggering a change on their contribution to that volume, in attitudes. March/April 2015 9

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