Sometimes “nothing’s changed” is a snarky remark, sarcasm from a person that is uncomfortable with something they’ve just learned about the American past. They use the notion of “nothing’s changed” as a way to push back, reminding me through their comment that “hey, the president is black” or whatever proof they’d like to offer as evidence that the whole race thing is over. Most times they are upset.

No matter the intent, I think it is so important to think through this question about change. We have a duty to recognize what is materially different about the lives of African Americans today, and the myriad ways the movement gave birth to new rights and fresh opportunities for people of all walks of life. And we have a duty to recognize the ongoing inequalities that still make life harder, that prevent African Americans from fully realizing the opportunities that are available.

Let me explain this more simply. When a student asks me the change question, I always begin with the place where I am standing. I remind them that I teach at a university where my mother could not have legally attended as a student their age. In fact, every institution of higher learning I’ve attended barred African Americans in the 1950s when my mom was going to Howard. I remind them that when my mother attended Howard University in Washington D.C., our nation’s capital was segregated. My mom recalled waiting at the train station for a “Negro cab” to come by in order to take her to campus, while white cabs ignored her and her bags on the curb.

I tell these stories because it helps my students remember that segregation didn’t happen in some far off time. It happened in our recent past. This helps them see that so much has changed so quickly, and yet that past still lives with us. All this history reminds them that the world is fundamentally different. What is legally possible has changed so dramatically that we can marvel about the ongoing impact of  the efforts of people like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, Bob Moses, Septima Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers, Diane Nash, Martin Luther King, Jr. It is impossible to deny the many ways that the movement had an impact on circumstances of our daily lives.  I think about that change every time I vote in a state that legally disfranchised black voters. I don’t have to pass a literacy test, pay a poll tax, or risk my life to cast my vote. Change indeed.

However, I also remember that there are those who might want to roll back those changes. The array of new voter ID laws around the country reminds us of how easy it is to erect barriers that would disfranchise the poor and the elderly. And the recently defeated efforts to roll back substantive integration of public schools in Wake County, NC remind us that the battles many believe are so far in the past, have a way of re-emerging in new forms.

Every time I hear a politician race-bait, be it with discussions about the shortcomings of “blah” people, food stamps, dependency, or the sudden urgent need to put young black children to work, I sometimes think they want Americans to believe that nothing has changed. They want us to believe that we have no place at the table, that we shouldn’t be heard, that we shouldn’t take pride in the change struggle has given a new generation.

Its messy, incomplete, and requires ongoing effort and imagination, but things have changed.

There seems to be a strange phenomenon in the political climate of race today.

I first noticed it during the 2010 Supreme Court confirmation of Elena Kagan. The search for her liberal past seemed to center around the fact that Kagan had clerked for Supreme Court judge and civil rights veteran Thurgood Marshall. Working for Marshall, who served the lead attorney who argued the case of Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court, was taken as evidence, not of Kagan’s qualification, but as evidence of racial bias. In the political climate created by the culture of color blindness, the attempt to try and ignore that anyone has a race at all, suddenly anyone who worked on behalf of racial equality is now at fault.

An odd example of color blindness run amok came during President George W. Bush’s promotion of his memoir that same year. He cited the now infamous statement by rapper Kanye West that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” as the worst moment in his presidency. Besides from the strange fact that the horrors of September 11, 2001 or the trauma of death and destruction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina didn’t top his list, Bush’s pain makes sense in this new color –blind political world. West was the most hurtful because he mentioned race at all. West could not and did not ignore that the majority of people left behind during the hurricane and subsequent failure of the levees were African American. His outrage was racialized, that is like many African Americans, he felt that race did matter, that the incompetent reaction to the storm came because its victims were understood as black and poor, framed by the media as looters and criminals rather than flood victims.

Current presidential candidate Ron Paul insists that King is one of his favorite historical figures. However Paul criticizes the major legal achievement of King’s civil rights efforts, insisting that the 1964 Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional because it forces privately-owned businesses to serve all customers regardless of race. Meanwhile Paul frames himself as a champion of civil rights.

This color blind campaign pushes the idea that anyone who can pretend that race doesn’t exist can claim the mantle of the movement. Anyone can claim that they were supporters of civil rights, as long as they support the catch –phrases of “freedom and liberty.” Any understanding that the civil rights movement was a long struggle to contest disfranchisement, racial violence, and Jim Crow segregation through the passage of laws that would protect the citizenship rights of African Americans is gone. Civil rights is now understood to be a movement to get everyone to pretend that they don’t notice race or the continuing effects of racial discrimination.

Martin Luther King’s original call to have his children judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” was and is an admirable idea. No one wants perceptions of racial inferiority to shape our country. But King was not insisting that Americans deny that race exists at all, particularly as we face the particular difficulties of race in the twenty-first century. As the country faces down a long-term recession, discussions about how to assist the poor, support the unemployed, and buoy struggling schools require honest conversation. We must remember that coded language and attempts to hide the impact race has on economic outcomes today, does a disservice in a time when marginal communities of color must be assisted. We will need our sight in order to fulfill King’s vision.

The big fuss this week is over the new book released today about the President and first lady called The Obamas by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor. An excerpt of the book appeared in the Sunday New York Times and immediately everyone began to put their own spin on the meaning of the book.

Before I read the excerpt, I saw that Salon writer Joan Walsh had tweeted:

Walsh went on to warn that the spin about the meaning of the book would probably reflect earlier efforts to demonize Michelle Obama as mannish, or a closeted, angry black nationalist.

Other folks on the internet have framed the story as depicting a first lady Michelle Obama as a particularly meddling and bossy, driving off staff members, and dictating the direction of the West Wing by ‘leading from behind.’

So when I read the excerpt I was surprised that the portrait I saw didn’t read as hyper-progressive, bossy, or overbearing. I really just saw what I always thought Michelle Obama to be: a determined, professional woman with thoughtful opinions about her family and the shape of her husband’s political career. It wasn’t shocking to me. It didn’t suggest that the book was full of the unexpected, just a story of the life of a first family that has done a good job keeping details behind closed doors.

The bit of the story presented in the excerpt also was in line with what I know to be true of most first ladies of the past century. Since Eleanor Roosevelt, we know that most first ladies are political wives, choosing the degree to which they will engage in explicitly political projects. Many folks had wished that Michelle had been more like Hillary Clinton as first lady, out front on questions of policy and politics. As much as I love the Eleanor Roosevelt approach to how to be a first lady, Michelle Obama has blazed her own trail. As the first first lady who is an African American, she has chosen a less explicitly political path, working with the families of veterans and taking on childhood obesity. By doing so she’s made it harder for her critics on the right to demonize her. Not that they haven’t tried, but the broad nature of her work makes them look ridiculous.

So I’m pretty sure most folks on the right and left will use this book to see what they already believe to be true about the first family. But I for one am not surprised.

Kelley’s work as a scholar and teacher is grounded in the notion that confronting the history of race in America is essential to an understanding of our contemporary politics.  Her scholarship, which has been published in scholarly journals and edited volumes, centers on the history of African American resistance to segregation. Also Professor Kelley writes and presents work on African American women’s history, urban history, legal history, and southern history. She teaches courses on African American history, Civil Rights, black popular culture, oral history, and Katrina and the history of New Orleans.

Active inside the academy and out, Kelley’s work was featured on WUNC’s The State of Things, and has provided expert commentary for the New York Times, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Grio.com, Democracy Now, and Blogher.com. She has written several blogs for Salon.com and her blog Unabated Protest is featured on the UNC Press blog site.

Professor Kelley received her B.A. from the University of Virginia in History and African and African American Studies, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Duke University. She is a proud resident of Durham, North Carolina where she lives with her husband and daughter.