Mixed Race Studies

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