Why Race Still Matters 50 years After the Enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Abstract

With the presidential election and re-election of Barack Obama and the increasing presence of successful black people in all spheres of life, one could be justified in seeing this as evidence that 50 years after the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, race is no longer a barrier to success for black people in contemporary America. Indeed, there are many who believe that America is now in a post-racial era where class is more relevant than race in determining the life chances of black people. To be sure, black people have made unprecedented strides in the 50 years since the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In higher education, a record of 4.5 million black people has a 4-year college degree. Moreover, from 1985 to 2005/6, the number of black people with a professional degree (e.g., medicine, law, dentistry, etc.) or master's degree doubled and quadrupled respectively. Furthermore, more than 100,000 living black people hold doctoral degrees, also a record-high number (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 2013). Equally impressive is the unprecedented number of blacks that have or do a hold a key presidential cabinet position. For example, since 1990, two black people have held the position of US Security of Defense, four have held the position of US Surgeon General, and Eric Holder currently holds the office of US Attorney General, the first black person to do so. Finally, the term black middle class has entered the lexicon of discourse to describe the sizeable number of educated black people who, by virtue of movement into a wider range of professions and higher income brackets than what was possible prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, are increasingly differentiated economically from the so-called black underclass (Harris 2010). Yet as tempting as it is to embrace the notion that these developments are evidence of a post-racial era, a black/white comparison across some of the most significant quality of life indicators suggest that the gains some black people have made has not vanquished American prejudice, injustice, or the racial disparities in access to resources. Rather, they have obfuscated them, making them less apparent but no less J Afr Am St (2014) 18:251–259 DOI 10.1007/s12111-013-9264-3