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Continuity or Change
Mark Ledwidge
Fearing that publicly raising racial issues will undermine the president in the eyes of white voters, African Americans appear to have struck an implicit pact with Obama. Even as we watch him go out of his way to lift up other marginalized groups (such as gay Americans) and call for policies that help everyone, we've accepted his silence on issues of particular interest to us. In exchange, we get to feel symbolic pride at having a black president and family in the White House.
Fredrick Harris
This chapter will provide critical insight and analysis pertaining to the impact of race on the Obama presidency and American political culture, while making broader claims regarding the racial dimensions of American power. It maintains that the failure to accredit racial power with a central role in shaping American history has created a conceptual blind spot that has encouraged an idealized and distorted view of American history1 and the American creed. The chapter will also discuss the pluralist, statist, and elitist theories of American power and introduce a racial theory of American power that should be used in conjunction with the aforementioned theories. The chapter also questions the degree of change that Obama's stewardship has ushered in and evaluates whether Obama can be considered an African American president. Last, it both debunks and invalidates the assumptions that Obama's 2008 election represented the beginning of a post-racial phase of American history. Overall, the chapter will demonstrate that Euro-Americans created a racialized polity that has defined African Americans' domestic status and bequeathed to them sociopolitical and economic disadvantages that still persist today.2 Conversely, given that Obama has defined himself as an African American,3 it is important that we conduct an analysis of the racial status of the African American community in conjunction with the Obama presidency.
White Supremacy
The controversy concerning the existence of legacies of white supremacy has been compounded by mainstream historians (predominately Euro-American) and American intellectuals and academics who have promoted a benign, libertarian, depiction of America. In short, according to Vitalis, “white supremacy is not generally discussed either as an historical identity of the American state or an ideological commitment on which the ‘interdiscipline’ of international relations is founded.”4 In addition, social and political scientists have neglected to construct an accurate theoretical model of American society that foregrounds the racial dimensions of American power,5 such that “political science theorists” (such as Dunleavy and O'Leary's Theories of the State: politics of liberal democracy; Birch's Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy; and Marsh and Stoker's Theory and Methods in Political Science) omit substantive coverage of racial theories, in their analysis of American history and American political culture … which is problematic, since contemporary sociologists Omi and Winant have demonstrated the importance of racial issues.6 Even the excellent work of C. Wright Mills fails to account for the racial dimensions of the power elite and although William Domhoff does a better job there is still room for additional research.
Theories of American Power
Most theories of American power have accorded the pluralist, statist, Marxist, and elitist models varying degrees of legitimacy. In regards to pluralism, most pluralists argue that power in the United States is diffuse and that organized groups have the potential to organize to meet their interests. It is assumed that the dispersal of sociopolitical and economic power prevents the concentration of power in any singular group.
Pluralism
Pluralism suggests that America's separation of powers and the federal system, which allows for states' rights, prevents the concentration of power in the American political system. However, the pluralist argument does not adequately account for African Americans' historical exclusion from the political system or the denial of their right to vote. Of course, the denial of the vote obviously precluded African Americans' ability to elect an African American president until the late 20th and early 21st century. Unfortunately, pluralism generally ignores the existence of racial power in America and the manner in which Euro-Americans were able to stifle African Americans' ability to compete by institutionalizing racial conventions that justified their marginalization.
Statism
This argues that the state is not inherently benevolent and neither does it provide equal protection for all social groups.7 Given the American state's historic commitment to the protection and privileging of Euro-American interests, one would expect statists to account for the state's tendency to neglect the interests of the non-white population.8 In addition, Euro-Americans' predominance within the state apparatus has also facilitated the adoption of policies aligned with white interests. Again, the conceptual frameworks of statism neglect to mention that in actuality the state and American politics are contested arenas and despite the “state's role in the strategic realignment of the color-line statists must also highlight the state's role in perpetuating the color-line in both foreign and domestic politics.”9
Marxism
Marxism maintains that economics is the core facet of sociopolitical relations. Marxism suggests that class conflict, not race, is the central feature of American power. Marxists contend that capitalism is based on the exploi-tation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie.10 While exceptionalists argue against the existence of a rigid class structure in America, there is scope to argue in terms of class differentiation especially when one accounts for the huge discrepancies in terms of wealth that exist in the United States.11
Marxism does confer a relative degree of autonomy to the state but it also suggests that the state is beholden to the interests of the ruling class.12 Marx also suggests that economic dominance is augmented via the ruling class's production of ideas and culture, which is predicated on “producing ideas that reinforce the status quo.”13 Marxism's insistence on the existence of a concentration of power in a particular class and the ruling class's ability to promote and pursue ideological hegemony is important; since African Americans are in some regards analogous to a subordinate class. Nonetheless African Americans' racial identity often supersedes their class status.14 Marxism's shortcoming pertaining to its depiction of American power is its failure to indicate how Euro-American racism has fashioned a sociopolitical context where white privilege and Euro-American dominance ...
