{"id":26103,"date":"2012-10-19T20:59:48","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T20:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=26103"},"modified":"2012-10-19T20:59:48","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T20:59:48","slug":"racializing-obama-the-enigma-of-post-black-politics-and-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=26103","title":{"rendered":"Racializing Obama: The Enigma of Post-Black Politics and Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Racializing Obama: The Enigma of Post-Black Politics and Leadership<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society<\/a>
\nVolume 11, Issue 1<\/a>, 2009
\npages 1-15
\nDOI: 10.1080\/10999940902733202<\/a><\/p>\n

Manning Marable<\/a> (1950-2011)<\/strong>, Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies
\nColumbia University<\/p>\n

In the 1990s, a new race-neutral, \u201cpost-black\u201d leadership of African Americans emerged who favored political pragmatism and centrist public policies. Barack Obama<\/a>, Newark Mayor Corey Booker<\/a>, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick<\/a> were representative of this group. During his successful 2008 presidential campaign, Obama minimized the issue of race, presenting a race-neutral politics that reached out to white Republicans and independents. Yet despite his post-racial orientation, critics repeatedly attempted to \u201cracialize Obama,\u201d questioning his racial authenticity, religious affiliations, and Americanism. Despite extremist attacks, Obama successfully won the election by building an unprecedented coalition of blacks, Latinos, Jews, Asian Americans, women, and youth. The question remains whether the pragmatic, centrist Obama will commit his government to oppose all forms of racial inequality and oppression.<\/em><\/p>\n

The historical significance of the election of Illinois Senator Barack Obama<\/a> as president of the United States was recognized literally by the entire world. For a nation that had, only a half century earlier, refused to enforce the voting rights and constitutional liberties of people of African descent, to elevate a black American as its chief executive, was a stunning reversal of history. On the night of his electoral victory, spontaneous crowds of joyful celebrants rushed into streets, parks, and public establishments, in thousands of venues across the country. In Harlem<\/a>, over ten thousand people surrounded the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building, cheering and crying in disbelief. To many, the impressive margin of Obama\u2019s popular vote victory suggested the possibility that the United States had entered at long last an age of post-racial politics, in which leadership and major public policy debates would not be distorted by factors of race and ethnicity…<\/p>\n

…Obama undoubtedly took most of these factors into account\u2014the possibility of a \u201cBradley\/Wilder effect<\/a>\u201d on whites\u2019 support of black candidates, African-American grievances surrounding the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, the recent debacle of the Katrina Crisis<\/a>, and the rise of the postracial politics of a new generation of black leaders\u2014to construct his own image and political narrative essential for a presidential campaign. Early on in their deliberation process, the Obama pre-campaign group recognized that most white Americans would never vote for a black presidential candidate. However, they were convinced that most whites would embrace, and vote for, a remarkable, qualified presidential candidate who happened to be black. \u201cRace\u201d could be muted into an adjective, a qualifier of minimal consequence. So ethnically, Obama did not deny the reality of his African heritage; it was blended into the multicultural narrative of his uniquely \u201cAmerican story,\u201d which also featured white grandparents from Kansas<\/a>, a white mother who studied anthropology in Hawaii<\/a>, and an Indonesian stepfather. Unlike black conservatives, Obama openly acknowledged his personal debt to the sacrifices made by martyrs and activists of the Civil Rights Movement<\/a>. Yet he also spoke frequently about the need to move beyond the divisions of the sixties, to seek common ground, and a post-partisan politics of hope and reconciliation. As the Obama campaign took shape in late 2006\u2013early 2007, the basic strategic line about \u201crace,\u201d therefore, was to deny its enduring presence or relevance to contemporary politics. Volunteers often chanted, in Hari Krishna<\/a>\u2013fashion, \u201cRace Doesn\u2019t Matter! Race Doesn\u2019t Matter!,\u201d as if to ward off the evil spirits of America\u2019s troubled past…<\/p>\n

Read the entire essay here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Racializing Obama: The Enigma of Post-Black Politics and Leadership Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society Volume 11, Issue 1, 2009 pages 1-15 DOI: 10.1080\/10999940902733202 Manning Marable (1950-2011), Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies Columbia University In the 1990s, a new race-neutral, \u201cpost-black\u201d leadership of African Americans emerged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,20],"tags":[12549],"class_list":["post-26103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-manning-marable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26103","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=26103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}