Mixed Race Studies

Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe

Routledge
2014-04-02
264 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-89743-3

Edited by:

Michael McEachrane

Foreword by:

Paul Gilroy, Professor of American and English Literature
King’s College, London

Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe challenges a view of Nordic societies as homogenously white, and as human rights champions that are so progressive that even the concept of race is deemed irrelevant to their societies. The book places African Diasporas, race and legacies of imperialism squarely in a Nordic context. How has a nation as peripheral as Iceland been shaped by an identity of being white? How do Black Norwegians challenge racially conscribed views of Norwegian nationhood? What does the history of jazz in Denmark say about the relation between its national identity and race? What is it like to be a mixed-race black Swedish woman? How have African Diasporans in Finland navigated issues of race and belonging? And what does the widespread denial of everyday racism in Nordic societies mean to Afro-Nordics?

Contents

• Foreword Paul Gilroy
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Michael McEachrane
• Part I: The Nation
  • 1. Imagining Blackness at the Margins: Race and Difference in Iceland Kristín Loftsdóttir
  • 2. “Struggling to Be Recognized as Belonging to the Fauna of Norway”: On Being Black Norwegian Women madeleine kennedy-macfoy
  • 3. The Midnight Sun Never Sets: An Email Conversation About Jazz, Race and National Identity in Denmark, Norway and Sweden Cecil Brown, Anne Dvinge, Petter Frost Fadnes, Johan Fornäs, Ole Izard Høyer, Marilyn Mazur, Michael McEachrane and John Tchicai
• Part II: Racism
  • 4. There’s a White Elephant in the Room: Equality and Race in (Northern) Europe Michael McEachrane
  • 5. Racism Is No Joke: A Swedish Minister and a Hottentot Venus Cake—An Email Conversation Beth Maina Ahlberg, Claudette Carr, Madubuko Diakité, Fatima El-Tayeb, Tobias Hübinette, Momodou Jallow, Victoria Kawesa, Michael McEachrane, Utz McKnight, Anders Neergaard, Shailja Patel, Kitimbwa Sabuni and Minna Salami
  • 6. Being and Becoming Mixed Race, Black, Swedish and a Nomadic Subject Anna Adeniji
  • 7. Bertrand Besigye’s Civilization Critique: An Aesthetics of Blackness in Norway Helena Karlsson
  • 8. Two Poems by Bertrand Besigye: (i) How A Black African Orders Black Coffee (To Barack Hussein Obama); (ii) You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down. Or Black Hail Over All of West Side (Translated by John Irons) Bertrand Besigye
• Part III: Diaspora
  • 9. Talking Back: Voices from the African Diaspora in Finland Anna Rastas
  • 10. Den Sorte: Nella Larsen and Denmark Martyn Bone
  • 11. A Horn of Africa in Northern Europe—An Email Conversation Abdalla Duh, Mohamed Husein Gaas, Abdalla Gasimelseed, Amel Gorani, Nauja Kleist, Anne Kubai, Michael McEachrane, Saifalyazal Omar, Tsegaye Tegenu and Marja Tiilikainen

The Global Obama: Crossroads of Leadership in the 21st Century

Routledge
2013-11-29
344 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-84872-625-3
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84872-626-0

Edited by:

Dinesh Sharma, Senior Fellow
Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Research
St. Francis College, New York

Uwe P. Gielen, Founder and Executive Director
Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Psychology
St. Francis College, New York

The Global Obama examines the president’s image in five continents and more than twenty countries. It is the first book to look at Barack Obama’s presidency and analyze how Obama and America are viewed by publics, governments and political commentators around world. The author of Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President (Top 10 Black History Book) scaled the globe to gather opinions—cultural, historical and political analyses—about Obama’s leadership style. Writers, journalists, psychologists, and social scientists present their views on Obama’s leadership, popularity, and many of the global challenges that still remain unsolved. As a progress report, this is the first book that tries to grasp ‘the Obama phenomenon’ in totality, as perceived by populations around the world with special focus on America’s leadership.

Contents

• Part I: Obama as a Global Leader
  • 1. Obama’s Adventures in Globalization D. Sharma, U.P. Gielen
  • 2. President Obama and American Exceptionalism: Is the U.S. an Indispensable Nation in a Multipolar World? G.W. Streich, K Marrar
  • 3. Obama’s Leadership in the Era of Globalization: A Critical Examination R.S. Bhagat, A.S. McDevitt, M. Shin, B.N. Srivastava, D.L. Ford
  • 4. Barack Obama and Inclusive Leadership in Engaging Followership E. Hollander
• Part II: Africa
  • 5. Obama, Hillary, and Women’s Voices D. Sharma
  • 6. Afro-Optimism from Mahatma Gandhi to Barack Obama: A Tale of Two Prophecies A. Mazrui
  • 7. African Diasporas, Immigration, and the Obama Administration P. T. Zeleza, C. Veney
• Part III: The Americas
  • 8. Love as Distraction: Canadians, Obama, and African- Canadian Political Invisibility R. Walcott
  • 9. Changing Times and Economic Cycles: President Obama – the Southern Continent, Mexico, and the Caribbean E. Moncarz, R. Moncarz
• Part IV: Europe
  • 10. Is Obamamania over in Europe? A. Kalaitzidis
  • 11. Obama’s French Connection D. Morrison
  • 12. A Relationship of Hope and Misinterpretation: Germany and Obama T. Cieslik
• Part V: The Middle East and Israel
  • 13. Arab Images of Obama and the United States: An Egyptian R. Ahmed
  • 14. Obama, Iran, and the New Great Game in Eurasia P. Escobar
  • 15. Great Disappointments in the Arab World during Obama’s First Term M. Masad
• Part VI: Asia-Pacific Region
  • 16. Bent by History in Afghanistan A. Muñoz
  • 17. Between Popularity and Pragmatism: South Korea’s Perspectives on Obama’s First Term M. Maass
  • 18. The Chinese View of President Obama B. Shober
  • 19. Radical Manhood and Traditional Masculinity: Japanese Acknowledgements for Literary Obama E. Senaha
• Part VII: Conclusion
  • 20. A View from Israel: A Critical Commentary of Obama’s Leadership Style D. Efune
  • 21. A Commentary from South Africa: Commentary S. Cooper
  • 22. Obama’s Leadership Paradigm in India: A Personal Reflection S. Singh
  • 23.President Obama: A Commentary From Russia E. Osin
  • 24. America’s Asian Century: A Mirage or Reality? D. Sharma

Preface

This book began as a companion volume to Barack Obama in Hawai’i and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President (Sharma, 2012), which was rated as the Top 10 Black History Book for 2012 by the American Library Association. While researching and lecturing about the earlier book, which entailed travel throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia, there were varied and diverse perceptions about President Obama as a leader. However, the president frequently garnered higher approval ratings in most parts of the world than in the United States. What a paradox, we thought at the time. The first black president elected with great enthusiasm, loved by people around the world, yet struggling for approval for his policies at home—whether it be the healthcare initiative, the stimulus to bail out the economy, or his “leading from behind” on foreign policies.

We wanted to explore the stark contrast between Obama’s popularity abroad and his suboptimal ratings at home, which puzzled almost everyone we interviewed: Why the inverse correlation between the public image at home versus abroad? You can’t be a prophet in your own land, Obama suggested to the senior editor of India Today during his visit. Thus, the idea was hatched to publish an edited volume on “Ghe Global Obama.”

As Obama himself has said, his life story spans many continents, races, cultures, and histories. It is only appropriate that we try to grasp the total Obama and not try to box him into a preconceived theory, which may capture only a part of his persona. Clearly, part of Obamas worldwide appeal is due to his international biography and global roots, but we found there is invariably a chasm be- tween the soaring rhetoric and foreign policy due to various forces of history, culture, and political cycles. Yet, the search for great leaders who can speak to the totality of human experience is never- ending. Across the cultural divide from North-to-South and East-to-West, the romance of leadership continues.

Barack Hussein Obama’s rise from his early life as a multiracial and multicultural outsider in a broken family—repeatedly changing composition and shifting residence between Hawai’i and Indonesia—to assuming the world’s most powerful executive position is as improbable as it is global in its trajectory and in its implications for the evolving twenty-first century. But whereas his life story has been the subject of several good biographies, his global position as a leader has not been assessed in a sustained manner. Obama’s global leadership qualities and position and how he is being perceived and judged around the world are the central and intertwined topics of this book.

Given that no one scholar, social thinker, or journalist has an expertise in all of the regions of the world we wanted to cover, we decided early on to develop the project as a collected volume, relying on a group of local scholars and observers connected with their communities. Our methodology is broadly social science based, yet also relying on the skills and knowledge of local journalists and reporters. The central theme of the book is Obama’s leadership style as it is perceived around the world. With the guidance of Anne Duffy, the acquisition editor, the series in leadership with Routledge Press became a natural home for this project.

While the book was conceived several years ago, we decided to wait for the reelection outcome to fully gather our views on Obama’s potential impact. His reelection clearly makes this project much more viable, although potentially in need of a follow-up in four years at the end of his second term. Thus, the questions raised in this book do not necessarily draw out a final conclusion but rather sug- gest working hypotheses and specific lines of inquiry to be followed up over time. These are issues we plan to revisit for future analysis. However, we have attempted to organize the debate in a concerted manner around the president’s leadership style, which no other book has as yet attempted. In this way, we hope to make a significant contribution to the field on leadership research and practice and to the emerging field of political leadership within the ever-expanding context of globalization…

Read the Preface here.

American Identity in the Age of Obama

Routledge
2013-11-28
250 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-72201-8

Edited by:

Amílcar Antonio Barreto, Associate Professor of Political Science
Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

Richard L. O’Bryant, Assistant Professor of Political Science; Director of the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute
Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

The election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States has opened a new chapter in the country’s long and often tortured history of inter-racial and inter-ethnic relations. Many relished in the inauguration of the country’s first African American president — an event foreseen by another White House aspirant, Senator Robert Kennedy, four decades earlier. What could have only been categorized as a dream in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education was now a reality. Some dared to contemplate a post-racial America. Still, soon after Obama’s election a small but persistent faction questioned his eligibility to hold office; they insisted that Obama was foreign-born. Following the Civil Rights battles of the 20th century hate speech, at least in public, is no longer as free flowing as it had been. Perhaps xenophobia, in a land of immigrants, is the new rhetorical device to assail what which is non-white and hence un-American. Furthermore, recent debates about immigration and racial profiling in Arizona along with the battle over rewriting of history and civics textbooks in Texas suggest that a post-racial America is a long way off.

What roles do race, ethnicity, ancestry, immigration status, locus of birth play in the public and private conversations that defy and reinforce existing conceptions of what it means to be American?

This book exposes the changing and persistent notions of American identity in the age of Obama. Amílcar Antonio Barreto, Richard L. O’Bryant, and an outstanding line up of contributors examine Obama’s election and reelection as watershed phenomena that will be exploited by the president’s supporters and detractors to engage in different forms of narrating the American national saga. Despite the potential for major changes in rhetorical mythmaking, they question whether American society has changed substantively.

Contents

• Introduction: The Age of Obama and American Identity; Amílcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. O’Bryant
• 1. Obama and Enduring Notions of American National Identity; Amílcar Antonio Barreto
• 2. Racial Identification in a Post Obama Era: Multiracialism, Identity Choice and Candidate Evaluation; Natalie Masuoka
• 3. The Son of a Black Man from Kenya and a White Woman from Kansas: Immigration and Racial Neoliberalism in the Age of Obama; Josue David Cisneros
• 4. Immigrant Resentment and American Identity in the Twenty-First Century; Deborah J. Schildkraut
• 5. Browning our way to Post-Race: Identity, Identification, and Securitization of Brown; Kumarini Silva
• 6. White Masculinities in the Age of Obama: Rebuilding or Reloading?; Steven D. Farough
• 7. “Exceptionally Distinctive: President Obama’s Complicated Articulation of American Exceptionalism; Joseph M. Valenzano and Jason A. Edwards
• 8. Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Leadership: Renewing America’s Image; Mark A. Menaldo
• 9. The First Black President?: Cross-Racial Perceptions of Barack Obama’s Race; David Wilson and Matthew Hunt

Latina/o Healing Practices: Mestizo and Indigenous Perspectives

Routledge
2008-05-19
360 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-95420-4

Edited by:

Brian McNeill, Professor and director of training for the Counseling Psychology Program
Washington State University

Joseph M. Cervantes, Professor in the Department of Counseling
California State University, Fullerton

This edited volume focuses on the role of traditional or indigenous healers, as well as the application of traditional healing practices in contemporary counseling and therapeutic modalities with Latina/o people. The book offers a broad coverage of important topics, such as traditional healer’s views of mental/psychological health and well-being, the use of traditional healing techniques in contemporary psychotherapy, and herbal remedies in psychiatric practice. It also discusses common factors across traditional healing methods and contemporary psychotherapies, the importance of spirituality in counseling and everyday life, the application of indigenous healing practices with Latina/o undergraduates, indigenous techniques in working with perpetrators of domestic violence, and religious healing systems and biomedical models. The book is an important reference for anyone working within the general field of mental health practice and those seeking to understand culturally relevant practice with Latina/o populations.

Contents

• An Appreciation of Dr. Michael W. Smith (1960-2006) Lorraine Garcia-Teague
• Contributors
• Introduction: Counselors and Curanderas/os—Parallels in the Healing Process Brian W. McNeill and Joseph M. Cervantes
• Part One: Mestiza/o and Indigenous Perspectives
  • Chapter 1: What Is Indigenous About Being Indigenous? The Mestiza/o Experience Joseph M. Cervantes
  • Chapter 2: Latina/o Folk Saints and Marian Devotions: Popular Religiosity and Healing Fernando A. Ortiz and Kenneth G. Davis
  • Chapter 3: Santeria and the Healing Process in Cuba and the United States Brian W. McNeill, Eileen Esquivel, Arlene Carkasco, and Rosalilia Mendoza
• Part Two: Indigenous and Mestiza/o Healing Practices
  • Chapter 4: The Use of Psychotropic Herbal and Natural Medicines in Latina/o and Mestiza/o Populations German Ascani and Michael W. Smith
  • Chapter 5: Brazil’s Ultimate Healing Resource: The Power of Spirit Sandra Nuñez
  • Chapter 6: La Limpia de San Lazaro as Individual and Collective Cleansing Rite Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 7: Resé un Ave María y Encendí una Velita: The Use of Spirituality and Religion as a Means of Coping with Educational Experiences for Latina/o College Students Jeanett Castellanos and Alberta M. Gloria
• Part Three: Contemporary Aspects of Mestiza/o and Indigenous Healing Practices: Reclamation and Integration
  • Chapter 8: Los Espiritus Siguen Hablando: Chicana Spiritualities Lara Medina
  • Chapter 9: Religious Healing and Biomedicine in Comparative Context Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 10: Curanderismo: Religious and Spiritual Worldviews and Indigenous Healing Traditions Fernando A. Ortiz, Kenneth G. Davis, and Brian W. McNeill
• Part Four: Epilogue
  • Epilogue: Summary and Future Research and Practice Agendas Joseph M. Cervantes and Brian W. McNeill
• Index

Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone

Routledge
2005-06-23
160 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-94607-0
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-94608-7

Margaret L. Hunter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Mills College, Oakland, California

Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone tackles the hidden yet painful issue of colorism in the African American and Mexican American communities. Beginning with a historical discussion of slavery and colonization in the Americas, the book quickly moves forward to a contemporary analysis of how skin tone continues to plague people of color today. This is the first book to explore this well-known, yet rarely discussed phenomenon.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Colorstruck
• Chapter 2: The Color of Slavery and Conquest
• Chapter 3: Learning, Earning, and Marrying More
• Chapter 4: Black and Brown Bodies Under the Knife
• Chapter 5: The Beauty Queue: Advantages of Light Skin
• Chapter 6: The Blacker the Berry: Ethnic Legitimacy and Skin Tone
• Chapter 7: Color and the Changing Racial Landscape
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization

Routledge
2002-09-06
272 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-92879-3
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-92878-6

Serge Gruzinski, Research Director
National Scientific Research Center (CNRS, Paris)

Mestizo: a person of mixed blood; specifically, a person of mixed European and American Indian ancestry.

Serge Gruzinski, the renowned historian of Latin America, offers a brilliant, original critique of colonization and globalization in The Mestizo Mind. Looking at the fifteenth-century colonization of Latin America, Gruzinski documents the mélange that resulted: colonized mating with colonizers; Indians joining the Catholic Church and colonial government; and Amerindian visualizations of Jesus and Perseus. These physical and cultural encounters created a new culture, a new individual, and a phenomenon we now call globalization. Revealing globalization’s early origins, Gruzinski then fast forwards to the contemporary mélange seen in the films of Peter Greenaway and Wong Kar-Wai to argue that over 500 years of intermingling has produced the mestizo mind, a state of mixed thinking that we all possess.

A masterful alchemy of history, anthropology, philosophy and visual analysis, The Mestizo Mind definitively conceptualizes the clash of civilizations in the style of Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak and Anne McClintock.

Mixing Up the Game: Social and Historical Contours of Black Mixed Heritage Players in British Football

Mark Christian, Professor & Chair of African & African American Studies
Lehman College, City University of New York

pages 131-144

in the volume Race, Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues
Routledge
2011-03-29
288 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-88205-7

Edited by:

Daniel Burdsey, Senior Lecturer of Sociology
Chelsea School of Sport
University of Brighton

INTRODUCTION

As the world comes to terms with the reality that the most powerful man on earth, President Barack Obama, is of African-American (mixed heritage) background, it is evident that multiracial heritage has become a popular subject matter. Yet much of this interest stems from the fact that history has been made in terms of a person of colour holding court in the most powerful office in the world. That stated, the social world of mixed heritage persons continues to be one of mixed fortunes. In relation to football, however, there is little doubt that the emergence of players of mixed heritage is palpable in the English Premier League and England team set-up.

This chapter primarily focuses on the socio-historical experiences of black mixed heritage’ footballers within the context of British society. What qualifies me to write on such a subject as black mixed heritage footballers in the UK context? In the world of social science, my social background and academic training would probably be deemed “organically connected” to the phenomena under scrutiny. Indeed having been raised in the city of Liverpool in the 1970s and 1980s, I am acutely aware of both British football and institutional racism. Moreover, my black British heritage and intellectual interests have intersected with my love for the beautiful game and the experience of black British players in general.

Additionally, I played for over a decade in the amateur football scene in Liverpool during the 1980s in predominantly black mixed heritage teams based in Toxteth/Liverpool 8, winning league titles and cups on a regular basis. During the 1980s, both of the city’s professional clubs, Everton and Liverpool, had very successful teams, yet it was rare to see a black face on the pitch or on the terraces. Racialised relations were rather poor, and it was difficult for local blacks in the city to go beyond the boundaries of Toxteth/Liverpool 8, where the majority resided, without incurring physical threats to one’s life. Moreover, the city council also had an appalling record of discrimination in employment against its local black population (Gifford et al. 1989).

Most importantly, beyond the structures of institutional racism in Liverpool, I know what it is like to be called a “black bastard” while playing a game of football. Indeed, racism was rife in amateur football on the pitch and in the professional game on the terraces. I recall John Barnes making his England debut in 1983, and later the chants of the England supporters: “there ain’t no black in the Union Jack, Johnnie Barnes, Johnnie Barnes”—a chant that would lead the academic Paul Gilroy (1987) to coin the phrase for his bestseller There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack…

…HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF BRITISH MIXED-NESS

Britain has a long history of amnesia in what could be deemed a “racialised mongrelisation” memory loss. After all, it is a state that has historically “mixed” with many cultural groups. To be sure, since the earliest times of British history, peoples with varied ethnic backgrounds, beliefs, languages and cultures have settled in Britain; from the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages (5000 BC-100 BC) to the Roman Britain era (55 BC-410 AD). Briefly, the Picts, Celts, Romans, Saxons, Angles, Danes, Jutes, Vikings and Normans are key historical cultural groups that led to the “normative” white ethnic category now described homogenously as “white” and singular in authoritative government census surveys…

Read the entire chapter (by permission of the author) here.

Race in Contemporary Medicine

Routledge
2007
208 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-41365-7

Edited by:

Sander L. Gilman

With the first patent being granted to “BiDil,” a combined medication that is deemed to be most effective for a specific “race,” African-Americans for a specific form of heart failure, the on-going debate about the effect of the older category of race has been renewed. What role should “race” play in the discussion of genetic alleles and populations today? The new genetics has seemed to make “race” both a category that is seen useful if not necessary, as The New York Times noted recently: “Race-based prescribing makes sense only as a temporary measure.” (Editorial, “Toward the First Racial Medicine,” November 13, 2004) Should one think about “race” as a transitional category that is of some use while we continue to explore the actual genetic makeup and relationships in populations? Or is such a transitional solution poisoning the actual research and practice.

Does “race” present both epidemiological and a historical problem for the society in which it is raised as well as for medical research and practice? Who defines “race”? The self-defined group, the government, the research funder, the researcher? What does one do with what are deemed “race” specific diseases such as “Jewish genetic diseases” that are so defined because they are often concentrated in a group but are also found beyond the group? Are we comfortable designating “Jews” or “African-Americans” as “races” given their genetic diversity? The book answers these questions from a bio-medical and social perspective.

This book was previously published as a special issue of Patterns of Prejudice.

Contents

• Introduction: On Race and Medicine in Historical Perspective. Sander L. Gilman (Emory)
• Reflections on Race and the Biologization of Difference. Katya Gibel Azoulay (Grinnell)
• Against Racial Medicine. Joseph L. Graves, Jr. (North Carolina A&T State University) & Michael R. Rose (University of California, Irvine)
• Blood and Stories: How Genomics is Rewriting Race, Medicine and Human History. Patricia Wald (Duke)
• “Why are Genetic and Medical Researchers Accepting a Category Created by Slaveholders?” A Social History of the Reification of “Race” James Downs (Princeton)
• Eugenics and the Racial Genome: Politics at the Molecular Level. Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell (University of Illinois – Chicago)
• The Risky Gene: Epidemiology and the Evolution of Race. Philip Alcabes (Hunter College School of Health Sciences)
• Folk Taxonomy, Prejudice and the Human Genome: Using Heritable Disease as a Jewish Ethnic Marker. Judith S. Neulander (Case Western Reserve University)
• The price of science without moral constraints: German and American medicine before DNA and Today. Robert E. Pollack (Columbia)
• Deadly Medicine Today: The Impossible Denials of Racial Medicine. C. Richard King (Washington State University)
• Biobanks of a “Racial Kind”: Mining for Difference in the New Genetics. Sandra Soo-Jin Lee (Stanford)

African Americans and the Presidency: The Road to the White House

Routledge
2009-11-25
256 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-80392-2
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-80391-5
eBook ISBN: 978-0-203-86433-3

Edited by:

Bruce A. Glasrud, Professor Emeritus of History
California State University, East Bay

Cary D. Wintz, Distinguished Professor of History and Geography
Texas Southern University

African Americans and the Presidency explores the long history of African American candidates for President and Vice President, examining the impact of each candidate on the American public, as well as the contribution they all made toward advancing racial equality in America. Each chapter takes the story one step further in time, through original essays written by top experts, giving depth to these inspiring candidates, some of whom are familiar to everyone, and some whose stories may be new.

Presented with illustrations and a detailed timeline, African Americans and the Presidency provides anyone interested in African American history and politics with a unique perspective on the path carved by the predecessors of Barack Obama, and the meaning their efforts had for the United States.

Contents

• Introduction: The African American Quest for the Presidency / Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D. Wintz
• 1. Beginning the Trek—Douglass, Bruce, Black Conventions, Independent Political Parties / Bruce A. Glasrud
• 2. The Communist Party of the United States and African American Political Candidates / David Cullen and Kyle G. Wilkison
• 3. Charlotta A. Bass—Win Or Lose, We Win / Carolyn Wedin
• 4. Shirley Chisholm—A Catalyst for Change / Maxine D. Jones
• 5. The Socialist Workers Party and African Americans / Dwonna Naomi Goldstone
• 6. Civil Rights Activists and the Reach for Political Power / Jean Van Delinder
• 7. Jesse Jackson—Run, Jesse, Run! / James M. Smallwood
• 8. Lenora Branch Fulani—Challenging the Rules of the Game / Omar H. Ali
• 9. Race Activists and Fringe Parties with a Message / Charles Orson Cook
• 10. Black Politicians—Paving the Way / Hanes Walton, Jr., Josephine A. V. Allen, Sherman C. Puckett, and Donald R. Deskins, Jr.
• 11. Colin Powell—The Candidate Who wasn’t / Cary D. Wintz
• 12. Barack Hussein Obama—An Inspiration of Hope, an Agent for Change / Paul Finkelman
• Blacks and the Presidency: A Selected Bibliography

Introduction: The African American Quest for the Presidency

Forty years ago (1968), the African American political scene began to change dramatically, the culmination of Supreme Court decisions such as Smith vs. Allwright, Baker vs. Carr, and Terry vs. Adams; amendments to the United States Constitution including the fourteenth, fifteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-fourth; federal legislation, especially the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965); and determined black leaders and voters. African Americans as never before voted and contended for national office. Some white liberals abetted and encouraged the metamorphoses. All was not well, however. Civil rights leader and black activist Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while leading a reform effort in Memphis, Tennessee. Two months later, while completing a primary election victory in California, Democratic senator Robert F. Kennedy, a white proponent of black rights, was assassinated. Perhaps propelled by these losses on the national scene, African American men and women participated in the national political process as delegates and voters, both vital steps, and also as nominees and candidates.

A few years before, while serving as Attorney General of the United States for his brother, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy asserted that the United States could have a black president within forty years. As Kennedy phrased it, “in the next forty years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has.” From the perspective of 2008 Kennedy’s prescience is remarkable. Forty years after the assassinations of King and Kennedy, an African American, Senator Barack Obama, was the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidency. By mid-September most polls suggested that he was the front-runner to be elected president of the United States, and in November Obama was elected the forty-fourth president of the United States. President Obama was not the first African American to seriously pursue the presidency. In fact, more than forty black men and women candidates paved the way for a black president; Obama stands on the shoulders of those other black leaders and politicians…

Read the entire Introduction here.

Yes We Can? White Racial Framing and the Obama Presidency, 2nd Edition

Routledge
292 pages
2012-12-17
Pages: 296
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-64536-2
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-64538-6

Adia Harvey Wingfield, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Georgia State University

Joe Feagin, Ella C. McFadden Professor of Sociology
Texas A & M University

The first edition of this book offered one of the first social science analyses of Barack Obama’s historic electoral campaigns and early presidency. In this second edition the authors extend that analysis to Obama’s service in the presidency and to his second campaign to hold that presidency. Elaborating on the concept of the white racial frame, Harvey Wingfield and Feagin assess in detail the ways white racial framing was deployed by the principal characters in the electoral campaigns and during Obama’s presidency. With much relevant data, this book counters many commonsense assumptions about U.S. racial matters, politics, and institutions, particularly the notion that Obama’s presidency ushered in a major post-racial era. Readers will find this fully revised and updated book distinctively valuable because it relies on sound social science analysis to assess numerous events and aspects of this historic campaign.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1. White Racial Framing and Barack Obama’s First Campaign
• Chapter 2. “Too Black?” Or “Not Black Enough?”
• Chapter 3. From Susan B. Anthony to Hillary Clinton
• Chapter 4. The Cool Black Man vs. The Fist-Bumping Socialist
• Chapter 5. The Dr. Jeremiah Wright Controversy
• Chapter 6. The 2008 Primaries and Voters of Color
• Chapter 7. November 4, 2008 : A Dramatic Day in U.S. History
• Chapter 8. “Post-Racial” America?
• Chapter 9. President Obama’s 2009-2013 Term and the 2011-2012 Primaries
• Chapter 10. The 2012 National Election
• Endnotes
• Index