The Obama Effect: Multidisciplinary Renderings of the 2008 Campaign

Introduction

Introduction Catherine Squires, Heather Harris, and Kimberly Moffitt A wise Latina. “Birthers.” A Cambridge cop and a Harvard professor.The Tea Party.These figures interrupted the congratulatory postracial and postfeminist discourses trumpeted in the wake of the historic 2008 victory of Barack Hussein Obama, the forty-fourth president of the United States. The “backto -the-future” shock of Republican senators grilling (now-Justice) Sonia Sotomayor; the spectacle of angry crowds denying the validity of Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate; and renewed debates over (and denial of) racial profiling reveal a need to revisit and interrogate the assumptions of imminent change that erupted after election night. The Obama Effect interrogates multiple sites of discourse and citizen interaction revealed during the campaign to be crucial grounds for rethinking (or reinforcing) social identities and investments.The chapters call upon us to take a fresh look at identity formations of the past and present, to revisit texts and figures that continue to resonate in the Age of Obama (also known as the postsoul, postfeminist, post–civil rights era). The essays here chart discourses that were emergent in the 2008 campaign and continue to structure the contours of discussion as President Obama journeys through his first term, a term marked by historic economic woes at home and continued military entanglements abroad. In this time of great uncertainty, the authors in this book provide important questions and reflections to engage both the problems and promises of the election of Obama. Race and Gender: Plus ça Change? While many observers have disputed the jubilant claims that the election of the first president of African descent marked the “end of race,” the events of the summer of 2009 exposed that declaration as naïve and self-congratulatory. Likewise, assertions that Hillary Clinton’s run created multiple millions of cracks in the gender “glass ceiling” were exposed as unripe when angry protestors claimed that Obama’s health-care plan would increase abortions,and as Michelle Obama’s wardrobe remains under a high-powered microscope. xvii Introduction Many of the writers in this book anticipated the durability of long-standing rhetorical strategies and investments in dominant identities. Their analyses remind us that, although muted, frameworks for understanding race, gender, and sexuality that dominated the 1980s and 1990s remain readily available. We have already witnessed how easily pundits branded President Obama himself a racist in the wake of his remarks on the disputable arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in his own home. And, in a time of severe economic pressures, the past teaches us and the present reminds us how race and gender are still used to attack policies and publics. Today neo-Nazi Web sites warn members to hoard guns for fear Obama is paving the way for militant Black Power; draconian anti-immigrant and anti–ethnic studies laws have passed in Arizona. Assessing the Obama Effect: Looking Back to Look Forward Thechapterscollectedherebeganasconferencepapers,manyofwhichpredicted that, far from ushering in the end of racism or sexism, the 2008 campaign revealed fissures in our sense of national identity.Dina Gavrilos’s examination of popular media responses to Obama’s allegedly “postracial” persona reveals how this term disguises and reinforces hegemonic racial frameworks. Enid Logan provides insights into how gender/sexism and race/racism worked in campaign rhetoric and young voters’ reactions to Hillary Clinton and Obama. Amy Carrillo-Rowe’s exploration of mainstream discourses surrounding Obama’s relationships to family, friends, and foes underscores how heteronormativity interacts with race. Frank R. Cooper illuminates the strategic ways in which Obama’s more “feminine” style discourages associations with threatening black male stereotypes . Looking at First Lady Michelle Obama, Kimberly Moffitt recalls the ease with which mainstream media attempted to frame her as an angry black woman, reminding us that the same dynamics that undermined previous black women in national politics (such as Anita Hill and Lani Guinier) continue to inflect twenty-first century discussions of the first African-American woman to occupy the White House as a resident rather than as a domestic servant. Political Participation and Identity in the “Age of Obama”: Changing the Game? The resilience of conspiracy theories regarding the president’s birth is put into perspective by the essays that address how Obama’s “exotic” background grates against hegemonic norms of American identity.This presents a challenge and an opportunity: Obama’s identity has provoked backlash, but also opens the door for wider discussion and appreciation for alternative ways to imagine individual xviii...