After Obama

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Healthcare Reform ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Black America ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Black President ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

This book engages the reader in a wide-ranging assessment of the legacy of Barack Obama—the “first Black president”—relative to Black politics. It uses its vantage point of being written during Donald Trump’s presidency to understand what Black politics has and has not inherited from the Obama administration. It is comprehensive in the number of constituencies and policy topics it covers. Its co-editors frame its chapters by explaining how both “inverted linked fate” and an “inclusionary dilemma” shaped the Obama presidency and legacy for Black politics. Nearly twenty prominent or emerging political scientists provide this book’s interior chapters, using quantitative and qualitative methods to draw conclusions. The first group of scholars examines the Obama administration’s impact upon the attitudes and perceived group interests of various Black constituencies, including voters, partisans, civil rights leaders, lobbyists, women, church leaders and members, and LGBTQ persons. The second group examines Obama’s impact upon Black policy interests, including civil rights, criminal justice reform, antipoverty, women’s welfare, healthcare reform, housing, immigration, and foreign affairs. In the conclusion, the co-editors consider what may confront the “next Black president” and the “next Black America.”

Oversight

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Minta
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Congressional Oversight ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Minority Interests ◽  
Black And Latino

This book answers the question of whether black and Latino legislators better represent minority interests in Congress than white legislators, and it is the first book on the subject to focus on congressional oversight rather than roll-call voting. The book demonstrates that minority lawmakers provide qualitatively better representation of black and Latino interests than their white counterparts. They are more likely to intervene in decision making by federal agencies by testifying in support of minority interests at congressional oversight hearings. Minority legislators write more letters urging agency officials to enforce civil rights policies, and spend significant time and effort advocating for solutions to problems that affect all racial and ethnic groups, such as poverty, inadequate health care, fair housing, and community development. This book argues that minority members of Congress act on behalf of broad minority interests—inside and outside their districts—because of a shared bond of experience and a sense of linked fate. It shows how the presence of black and Latino legislators in the committee room increases the chances that minority perspectives and concerns will be addressed in committee deliberations, and also how minority lawmakers are effective at countering negative stereotypes about minorities in policy debates on issues like affirmative action and affordable housing.

Movin’ on Up—and Out

2019 ◽  
pp. 94-118
Author(s):  
Courtney R. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black People ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black America ◽  
Visual Politics ◽  
Plantation Slavery ◽  
Popular Images ◽  
Post Civil Rights

This chapter discusses the visual culture of 1970s Black America, focusing especially on popular culture artifacts such as film, television, and comics, to make sense of the idea of movement in the postsegregationist United States. It attends to the representation of black people in various locations—from the inner city to the suburbs to a historical memory of the plantation slavery, the middle passage, and an African motherland—in visual forms, including Afrocentrist iconography, photography, and fine art. By attending to popular images, an important if not fuller picture of Black visual politics during the post-civil rights era becomes apparent.

Their Rhetoric Is That of Revolution

2019 ◽  
pp. 200-236
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
National Guard ◽  
Student Activism ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Predominantly Black ◽  
Black America ◽  
Local Law Enforcement

This chapter discusses Greensboro, North Carolina as the unofficial headquarters for the Black Power Movement in the south and the role that North Carolina A&T State University played in facilitating that development. Since the dawn of the turbulent 60s, A&T had been a force for change and an epicenter for student activism. With the dawning of the Black Power Movement, A&T students completely embraced the rhetoric of the era and followed it up with action. Those activists’ energies fed other Black Power initiatives across the state and soon led to the creation of a new national organization, as well as a powerful local organization that embodied the shifting agenda of the civil rights movement to address abject poverty throughout Black America. Those energies also attracted the attention of local law enforcement and the National Guard, which invaded the campus in May of 1969, shot and killed a student, and terrorized the predominantly black side of Greensboro. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the shifting landscape of HBCUs during the early 70s and the external and internal pressures that arrested the development of Black Power organizations during the decade.

The Obama Coalition

2020 ◽  
pp. 143-164
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Black President ◽  
Over Time

While the tensions between white hope and black despair were a dynamic that characterized politics in the Long Sixties, their structure is recursive. That is, the (positive and negative racial) feelings that undergird racial liberalism did not stop emerging and receding after law and order campaigns destroyed civil rights and Black Power organizing in the mid-70s. Nowhere is this clearer than in the entrance and disappearance of the so-called “Obama coalition” in 2008 to elect Barack Obama as the first biracial/black president in U.S. history. In considering how hope continues to be inextricably linked to rage, contempt, and despair, this brief conclusion considers hope as an ironic discourse of liberalism, particularly as it is racialized. The birth of Afro- pessimism as a coterminous discourse with what we now call the “post-racial” Obama coalition is important because it demonstrates how black feelings in the Long Sixties continue to shape national political discourse, demonstrating how affective politics are iterative as well as how they change over time.

Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941.

1992 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 569
Author(s):  
Dominic J. Capeci ◽  
Steven F. Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Politics

Sidney Poitier

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Knight
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Great Success ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Academy Award ◽  
Black President ◽  
Violent Action

Sidney Poitier (b. 1927) was the first African American to be, inarguably, a movie star and, beyond that, an “institution” of Hollywood film and American culture. Poitier’s stature is such that in his autobiography Barack Obama recalls his mother holding Poitier up as a model (alongside Martin Luther King Jr.); that in 2008 the New York Times’s film critics felt Poitier’s acting helped Americans prepare to elect a black president; and that Quentin Tarantino sought his advice before making Django Unchained (2012), his controversial, violent action film about an ex-slave turned bounty hunter. Poitier was the first African American to win a major Academy Award (Best Actor, 1963; awarded 1964) and the first African American box-office top earner (1967–1968). His many other honors include an honorary Academy Award (2002) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009). That Poitier would achieve such renown was improbable. Poitier’s first Hollywood role was in a social problem film, No Way Out (1950), which featured a brutal interracial melee and a jaundiced view of American race and class relations. But Poitier’s character—a young, aspiring, and dignified doctor—served to provide a glimmer of hope. Poitier’s portrayal made it clear that though his character was angry and had suffered from white prejudice, he would rise above past injustices and work toward a better future. With many variations, this is a character type Poitier repeated over the next two decades in films such as The Defiant Ones (1958), Lilies of the Field (1963), In the Heat of the Night (1967), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). These roles proved influential and led to great success but also to criticism of Poitier as an overly safe and de-sexualized “ebony saint.” In the 1970s Poitier increasingly turned to directing and producing. Never lauded for his style, he nonetheless made some influential and successful movies, including the black western Buck and the Preacher (1972), a trio of comedies that spoofed “blaxploitation” films, and Stir Crazy (1980), a breakthrough film for Richard Pryor and the first movie directed by an African American to earn more than 100 million dollars. After the 1980s, Poitier continued to act, often in character roles or in roles portraying civil rights icons—for example, Nelson Mandela. Since 2000 Poitier has turned his attention to penning popular, introspective autobiographies.

BARACK IS THE NEW BLACK

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Thompson Ford
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Community ◽  
American History ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Political Strategies ◽  
White Racism ◽  
2008 Presidential Election ◽  
Black Politicians

AbstractBarack Obama's political strategies during the 2008 presidential election were those of a cohort of younger, new Black politicians, who have rewritten the playbook by which Blacks can win election. Their success suggests that White racism is no longer the insuperable barrier to Black success that it has been for all of American history and that the old style of Black politics, which relied heavily on racial bloc voting and influence peddling within the Black community, may be obsolete. However, Obama's strategy of not appealing to narrow racial solidarities but instead of drawing broad support from voters of all races cast a shadow of doubt on Obama's racial loyalties. It remains unclear whether the Obama phenomenon will mark the renewal of civil rights or the repudiation of its historical commitment to the most disadvantaged.

Playing Politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy

First Monday ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Bogost
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Healthcare Reform ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Procedural Rhetoric ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The World ◽  
New Perspective

Videogames have dominated popular culture for some time, but only in 2004 did they make a significant break into the world of politics, advocacy, and activism. This paper provides an overview of a variety of types of games used for political speech, from endorsed party messages to activist dissent. After explaining the state of the field, I discuss approaches to design and measure success for such artifacts. While some political opinion is black and white, most issues occupy grey areas, heavily influenced by other public policy issues. Can healthcare reform really be separated from taxation, national budgeting, tort reform, and social security reform? Far from neatly isolated problems, policy issues are complex systems that recombine and interrelate with one another. In particular, I will interrogate how videogames afford a new perspective on political issues, since they are especially effective at representing complex systems. Central to the process of creating and understanding such games is an understanding of “procedural rhetoric” — the way that a videogame embodies ideology in its computational structure. By understanding how games express rhetoric in their rules, we not only gain a critical vantage point on videogame artifacts, but also we can begin to consider how to design games whose primary purpose is to editorialize, teach, and make political statements.

Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Black Art ◽  
And Gender

Through its analysis of film, drama, fiction, visual culture, poetry, and other cultural -artifacts, Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights offers a fresh examination of how the historical paradox by which unprecedented civil rights gains coexist with novel impediments to collectivist black liberation projects. At the beginning of the 1970s, the ethos animating the juridical achievements of the civil rights movement began to wane, and the rise of neoliberalism, a powerful conservative backlash, the co-optation of “race-blind” rhetoric, and the pathologization and criminalization of poverty helped to retrench black inequality in the post-civil rights era. This book uncovers the intricate ways that black cultural production kept imagining how black people could achieve their dreams for freedom, despite abject social and political conditions. While black writers, artists, historians, and critics have taken renewed interest in the historical roots of black un-freedom, Black Cultural Production insists that the 1970s anchors the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates that animate contemporary debates in African American studies. Black cultural production and producers help us think about how black people might achieve freedom by centralizing the roles black art and artists have had in expanding notions of freedom, democracy, equity, and gender equality. Black cultural production continues to engage in social critique and transformation and remains an important site for the (re)making of black politics.

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