{"id":37195,"date":"2014-08-28T19:21:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T19:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37195"},"modified":"2014-08-28T19:21:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T19:21:21","slug":"paint-the-white-house-black-barack-obama-and-the-meaning-of-race-in-america-haltinner-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37195","title":{"rendered":"Paint the White House black: Barack Obama and the meaning of race in America [Haltinner Review]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paint the White House black: Barack Obama and the meaning of race in America [Haltinner Review]<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Ethnic and Racial Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 37, Issue 10, 2014<\/a>
\nSpecial Issue: Ethnic and Racial Studies Review
\npages 1938-1941
\nDOI: 10.1080\/01419870.2013.871314<\/a><\/p>\n

Kristin Haltinner<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
\nUniversity of Idaho<\/em><\/p>\n

Paint the White House black: Barack Obama and the meaning of race in America<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, by Michael P. Jeffries, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2013, 210 pp., $22.95 (soft cover), ISBN 978-08-047-8096-4<\/p>\n

In his song \u2018Paint the White House Black\u2019 (1993), after which Jeffries\u2019<\/a> book is named, George Clinton<\/a> raps:<\/p>\n

Colors don\u2019t clash, people just do<\/em><\/p>\n

Color me happy next to you<\/em><\/p>\n

Aww, just like it should, there goes the Neighborhood<\/em><\/p>\n

That is what they\u2019d have us believe<\/em><\/p>\n

Paint the White House black, brown<\/em><\/p>\n

Paint the White House…<\/em><\/p>\n

Paint the White House black, brown<\/em><\/p>\n

Paint the White House, black…<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like Clinton, Jeffries calls on all people to interrogate the \u2018metalanguage<\/a>\u2019 of race (15). In his song, George Clinton highlights the hypocrisy of Bill Clinton\u2019s<\/a> presidency, expresses the need for race- and class-critical politics and calls for black or brown representation in the White House. In contrast, Jeffries\u2019 book argues that having a president of colour does little to challenge institutional racism or the \u2018language\u2019 of race and that Americans must explore how race functions as a dynamic and powerful force in society.<\/p>\n

Jeffries\u2019 book begins with the paradox of Obama\u2019s<\/a> presidency: the question of whether race relations have improved or disintegrated since 2008. Rather than falling into the tempting trap of simply providing resolution to this dichotomy, Jeffries implores readers to investigate the underlying processes that contribute to current racial discourse and the birth of the question itself.<\/p>\n

To do this, Jeffries expands previous understandings of race and racial formation by calling on scholars and citizens to explore \u2018race in action\u2019 (3), that is, to use the case study of Obama to examine the creation of racial meanings and knowledge. Jeffries builds on the work of Hall and Higginbotham to launch his analysis, arguing first that \u2018race operates as a language\u2019 in that it creates and hides deeper implications and significance while concurrently holding distinct, context-dependent meanings (7) and, second, that race defines and produces other socially constructed categories such as class or gender. Jeffries argues that the best way to examine current racial knowledge and its operation is through engaging with theories of intersectionality <\/a>to \u2018search for and highlight all the social forces that give cultural events racial meaning\u2019 (14).<\/p>\n

The book consists of four substantive chapters that provide evidence and analysis for Jeffries\u2019 claims. Chapter two engages with intersectionality to examine how current racial knowledge is simultaneously constructed by and produces the concept of nation. Jeffries successfully argues that much of the vitriol targeted at Obama is due to the continued connection between Americanism, whiteness and the \u2018politics of inheritance\u2019 (15). Obama struggles with this in his memoir where he describes both wanting to be, like his father, an honourable black man \u2013 one who chases the American dream, but also witness to and halted by broader social inequality and black marginalization. Jeffries uses Obama\u2019s experiences to argue for a novel construction of national identity built on a new collective culture that challenges supremacy in all forms and encourages connections between \u2018ethnoracial communities\u2019 (45).<\/p>\n

Chapter three explores the politics of multiracial identity and the social objectification of multiracial bodies as symbols of a post-racial society. Jeffries uses the experience of multiracial young adults to demonstrate how race operates as a \u2018metalanguage\u2019 by either hiding its relation to other social forces or racializing phenomena that may not be racially based. Through these interviews, the malleable nature of race and multiraciality is identified and white supremacy accurately cited as the lynchpin of racism. Multiracial identity is, in turn, presented as one possible weapon in the war to fight racial oppression. Continuing his critique of post-racial ideology, in chapter four Jeffries more deeply discusses the ways in which multiracial people are falsely used as evidence of a post-racial America or \u2018the end of black politics\u2019 (16). Through an intersectional analysis, Jeffries demonstrates how class informs and defeats this assumption: recognizing the persistent operation of a \u2018black counterpublic\u2019 and the ways in which black political institutions have been undermined (93). He ultimately calls on citizens to demand change to the institutions that create inadequate leadership and host political power, rather than solely critiquing leaders of colour…<\/p>\n

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

Paint the White House black: Barack Obama and the meaning of race in America [Haltinner Review] Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 37, Issue 10, 2014 Special Issue: Ethnic and Racial Studies Review pages 1938-1941 DOI: 10.1080\/01419870.2013.871314 Kristin Haltinner, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology University of Idaho Paint the White House black: Barack Obama and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,5,26,394,20],"tags":[461,17815,10500,10499],"class_list":["post-37195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-book-reviews","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-ethnic-and-racial-studies","tag-kristin-haltinner","tag-michael-jeffries","tag-michael-p-jeffries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37195","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=37195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}