Post-Racial? Not Yet.

• Author: McKissack, Fred, Jr.
• Position: In the Mix - Viewpoint essay

Moments after CNN declared Barack Obama the next President of the United States, I called my parents. I could tell my father was beaming. Through Obama he could see the future for his grandsons and their peers--a collective sense of inclusion that has eluded the race for so long.

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My mother cried when she recited the litany of things they'd lived through: Emmett Till, four little girls in Birmingham, Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, Bloody Sunday, JFK, MLK, RFK, Chicago in '68, Detroit, Watts, Newark, and Katrina. Then, as folks would say, the spirit hit her.

"Yes, we can," she yelled. "Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes-we-can."

It was an unforgettable moment.

But after a night's sleep, I couldn't help but think that now we're going to hear, as we did after Obama's triumph in the Iowa caucuses, the absurd talk about post-racial America.

Exactly how can we be in post-racial America when nearly 40 percent of black children under the age of five live at or below the poverty line?

How are we in post-racial America when the level of school segregation for Hispanics is the highest in forty years and segregation of African Americans is back to levels not seen since the late 1960s?

How are we in post-racial America when the gaps in wealth, income, education, and health care have widened over the last eight years?

In 2006, 20.3 percent of African Americans were not covered by health insurance, compared with only 10.8 percent of whites. For Hispanics, a whopping 34.1 percent were not covered.

In 2007, the unemployment rate for blacks was twice as high as that for whites.

We are all Americans, but the pain of poverty is disproportionately cracking the backs of minorities.

There are those who insist that the gap in wealth, income, health care, and...