{"id":21986,"date":"2012-03-27T04:01:54","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T04:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=21986"},"modified":"2012-03-27T04:02:05","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T04:02:05","slug":"21986","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=21986","title":{"rendered":"The Race of a More Perfect Union: James Baldwin, Segregated Memory and the Presidential Race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1353\/tae.2012.0010\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>The Race of a More Perfect Union: James Baldwin, Segregated Memory and the Presidential Race<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/journals\/theory_and_event\/toc\/tae.15.1.html\" target=\"_blank\">Theory &amp; Event<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/journals\/theory_and_event\/toc\/tae.15.1.html\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 15, Issue 1<\/a> (March 2012)<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1353\/tae.2012.0010\" target=\"_blank\">10.1353\/tae.2012.0010<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/site.pjbrendese.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>P.J. Brendese<\/strong><\/a>, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science<br \/>\n<em>Haverford College<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The 2008 U.S. presidential race dramatized the connection between America\u2019s segregated memory and its segregated polity. This essay makes the case that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Baldwin\" target=\"_blank\">James Baldwin<\/a> offers valuable insight into the legacy of segregated memory in contemporary racial politics in general, and the presidential race in particular. To do so, I provide a brief historical overview of segregated memory since the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Civil_War\" target=\"_blank\">Civil War<\/a>, and offer an analysis of Baldwin\u2019s account of the conscious and unconscious dimensions of memory and the impact of myth-histories on African Americans and whites. This is followed by an exposition of Baldwin\u2019s approach to de-segregating memory, as well as the tensions and correspondences between his contributions to addressing mnemonic divides and those of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a> in his \u201cMore Perfect Union\u201d speech on race. The essay closes by outlining the political relevance of the theoretical tensions between Baldwin and Obama in an era alleged to have been made \u201cpost-racial\u201d by the first black president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Race of a More Perfect Union: James Baldwin, Segregated Memory and the Presidential Race Theory &amp; Event Volume 15, Issue 1 (March 2012) DOI: 10.1353\/tae.2012.0010 P.J. Brendese, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Haverford College The 2008 U.S. presidential race dramatized the connection between America\u2019s segregated memory and its segregated polity. This essay makes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,1196,6,26,20],"tags":[1239,10202,10201],"class_list":["post-21986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-literary-criticism","category-new-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-james-baldwin","tag-p-j-brendese","tag-theory-event"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}