Ultimately, a post-race perspective enables educators to distinguish between hope and optimism. Whereas color-blindness is usually associated with a white mindset or lived experience, post-race is a theory of color, which does not mean that scholars of color are always its author. A bright student of mine once suggested that ‘hope is white’.8 By this she meant that whites exhibit an abundance of hope concerning racial progress when compared to a rather pessimistic black prognosis of the same problem. I took it to mean that even hope is racial and subject to its rationality. It struck me as insightful and I would like to end this essay with a commentary on hope and optimism. I would refine the insight this way: while whites are optimistic about race they are not hopeful, whereas people of color are precisely the opposite, hopeful but pessimistic. When it comes to race progress, whites show much optimism because small increments of improvement are taken as signs of white tolerance. It produces the psychological advantage of focusing on ‘how far we have come’ instead of the more loaded ‘how far we still have to go’. For if whites compare present inequalities with past cruelties, not only do black lives look that much better but white tolerance looks that much greater. Whereas Gramsci (1971) once distinguished between the ‘pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will’, whites show an optimism of the intellect and pessimism of the will. In short, we cannot equate white optimism with real hope, which takes a certain will that whites have shown themselves to lack. They are prone to exaggerate racial progress because focusing on the continuing significance of racism indicts their collective inability to end the problem once and for all. They feel good without necessarily having to make good. For all the optimism they express toward racial progress, they lack hope in its actional sense. For whites, hope is abstract. This is hardly post-racial. In contrast, if people of color have represented anything in the history of race relations, it is hope. It is one of the few ‘advantages’ that people of color have over whites. Hope is built into the experience of people of color as an ontological part of their being (see Freire, 1993). How else does one explain their ability to withstand centuries of racial oppression? It is premised on the hope that it will one day end despite the fact that they are disappointed by whites’ ability to converge racial progress with their own interests (Bell, 1992). Time and time again, people of color cling on to hope as the force that prevents them from despair and resignation. It is historical and allows them to see setbacks as opportunities for defiance. In fact, they project hope onto whites more than they sometimes deserve, a surplus hopefulness that whites underappreciate because they would rather emphasize people of color’s animosity over their grace. We have seen Barack Obama’s campaign was built on the audacity of hope and Reverend Jesse Jackson’s battlecry was ‘keep hope alive’. Even Derrick Bell’s apparent bleakness is contradicted by his early endorsement of Obama for president, as evidenced by his public support of him many months preceding Obama’s victory over his then favored opponent, Senator Clinton.9 Hope is what propelled Bell to support change. As Obama accepts his Nobel Peace Prize, we recognize that it was made possible by his going to war with a unilateral decision-making process turned into a science by eight years under the Bush regime. As a concrete possibility, peace will be approached by people of color through a critical, honest appraisal of racialization. Their hope attenuates the otherwise realistic pessimism they feel about race relations, which may keep them bitter. A language of hope is concrete for people of color because it is not just a projected ideal but a way to exist in the present. It is a dream, not a fantasy. It is not an abstract feeling but a concrete emotion, or better yet, an emotional praxis (Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2008).
while whites are optimistic about race they are not hopeful, whereas people of color are precisely the opposite, hopeful but pessimistic we cannot equate white optimism with real hope, which takes a certain will that whites have shown themselves to lack For all the optimism they express toward racial progress, they lack hope in its actional sense In contrast, if people of color have represented anything in the history of race relations, it is hope It is one of the few ‘advantages’ that people of color have over whites. Hope is built into the experience of people of color as an ontological part of their being How else does one explain their ability to withstand centuries of racial oppression? It is premised on the hope that it will one day end despite the fact that they are disappointed by whites’ ability to converge racial progress with their own interests Time and time again, people of color cling on to hope as the force that prevents them from despair and resignation. It is historical and allows them to see setbacks as opportunities for defiance A language of hope is concrete for people of color because it is not just a projected ideal but a way to exist in the present It is a dream, not a fantasy. It is not an abstract feeling but a concrete emotion, or better yet, an emotional praxis