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‘OBAMA STUDIES’ IN ITS INFANCY

Books on Obama, Race, and the 2008 Presidential Election1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2010

Michael P. Jeffries
Michael P. Jeffries*
Affiliation:
Department of American Studies, Wellesley College
*
Professor Michael P. Jeffries, Department of American Studies (Pendleton Hall), Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481. E-mail: mjeffrie@wellesley.edu
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Extract

At the conclusion of Barack Obama's State of the Union address on January 27, 2010, MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews lavished praise on the president, infamously gushing, “It's interesting: he is post-racial, by appearances. I forgot he was Black tonight for an hour.” According to many, this is the greatest of all Obama's super-powers; the ability to sweet-talk the public into a euphoric political hallucination, transporting followers into a world where he is cleansed of the stain of Blackness and the citizenry lives in racial harmony. If this is true, White voters, including Matthews, forgot Obama was Black long before the State the Union. By many accounts, this post-racial amnesia, rather than the nuts and bolts of voter mobilization, fundraising, message-crafting, or opponents' mistakes, ultimately resulted in Obama's victory in the 2008 election.

Type
State of the Discourse
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Fall 2010 , pp. 403 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2010

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Footnotes

1

The author thanks Lawrence D. Bobo and the editorial staff at the Du Bois Review for their suggestions and feedback during the preparation of this essay.

References

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