Electoral Politics and Party Identity

Some political theorists suggest that the principles and policies of the Democratic and Republican parties are becoming indistinguishable relative to the economic, social and political interests of African Americans. Consequently, the idea of a black independent party, which has roots in black nationalist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, has been revived. Do you think that the election of Obama as president has changed this perceived need or actual viability of an independent third political party?

Still on the Obama Watch

How can the mass media representations of the Obamas as a family, and of the President and First Lady as individuals, on television and in magazines, contribute to a more positive socialization of other African American women and men? Why are their images important and useful in comparison to the racial stereotypes that exist, as well as in relation to strict and separate social roles of male and female behavior?

The New York Times
March 26, 2009
Could It Really Be Him? Yeah, Probably
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
WASHINGTON
IT has been only two months since the Obamas moved into the White House, but here in the nation’s capital, some people are already asking: Have you bumped into your president and first lady yet?
This is no idle question. During the Bush years, Washington got used to a homebody president who preferred bringing friends into the Executive Mansion to venturing outside it. But these days, President Obama and his wife, Michelle, are popping up all over this city.
Like basketball? There was Mr. Obama sitting courtside recently alongside astonished fans at the Verizon Center as he cheered on the Chicago Bulls in a losing battle against the Washington Wizards.
Enjoy the performing arts? The Obamas have been to the Kennedy Center twice, once to see the Alvin Ailey dance troupe — with daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7 — and once for a musical tribute to Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
How about a tasty meal? The Obamas have enjoyed white-tablecloth dining at Equinox, Bobby Van’s Steakhouse, B. Smith’s and Georgia Brown’s, and street-corner casual at Ben’s Chili Bowl and Five Guys Burgers and Fries.
They have gone to parent-teacher conferences, school sporting events and visited working-class and gentrifying communities that have rarely served as stomping grounds for American presidents and first ladies — speaking to students at a charter school in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, and worshiping in a black church, among other activities. (The president and friends also tossed a basketball around at a city-run recreation center.)
“Everywhere you go, you’re wondering whether or not you’ll run into them,” said Washington’s mayor, Adrian M. Fenty, who has lunched with the president and first lady.
Political observers are still debating whether this out-and-about style simply reflects the personal inclinations of the Obamas or some political calculus (or both). But one thing is clear: No other modern president has reached out so widely to so many corners of the city, says Doris Kearns Goodwin, a presidential historian.
That is no surprise to friends of the first family. The Obamas, after all, are city people, former community organizers who have long felt at home in the urban landscape. Mr. Obama is the first president since Richard M. Nixon to be elected while living in a city neighborhood, in his case, Chicago’s racially and economically diverse Hyde Park. And the Obamas are now eager to explore the city beyond the White House walls.
“They want their lives not to be confined solely to the White House but rather to become a part of the urban, vibrant fabric of D.C.,” Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president and a close family friend, said in an interview.
Of course, the social schedule of the president and first lady is also a powerful political tool, a way to nurture political alliances and to cultivate political narratives. The Obamas can enjoy their time out on the town while, at the same time, reaping potential dividends by reinforcing their promise to bring change to Washington and honing an image of openness and accessibility, some Washington watchers say.
“Let’s face it: It’s very good for getting re-elected,” Letitia Baldrige, the White House social secretary to Jacqueline Kennedy, said of the Obamas’ socializing. “It’s a great bank of good will in which they’re making deposits every day.”
Political analysts say that the images of Mr. Obama hooting and hollering during a basketball game, eating a hot dog at Ben’s Chili Bowl and watching the ballet with his wife and daughters — pastimes routinely broadcast to a national audience — may humanize a politician who is sometimes viewed as too cerebral and distant.
Dee Dee Myers, a former press secretary for President Clinton, said the outings allow Mr. Obama to project “an accessible glamour” and to convey a message of hope during bleak economic times. (She said that even the gregarious Clintons never got out this much.)
“It’s very humanizing and very encouraging to people,” Ms. Myers said. “And it’s valuable for him politically.”
Some warn, however, that such a schedule can also carry political risks, particularly if it undermines the mystique of the presidency, the image of power and command that a president needs to enact an ambitious agenda. Americans love the idea of the common man in a position of political power. (Think Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”) But they can also lose some respect if a politician seems too familiar. (Think Jimmy Carter in his cardigan.)
“Every once in a while it’s great, but there’s a chance of overexposing yourself socially,” said Bradley A. Blakeman, a former aide to President George W. Bush. “People scratch their heads and say, “Doesn’t the president have other things to do, especially in a crisis?’ ”
It is certainly a shift from historical precedent. In the 19th century, Washington was mostly viewed as a humid, uninviting town that presidents escaped from when they could.
In modern times, said Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, the notion of presidential engagement with Washington has typically meant “going to parties in Georgetown or making friends on Capitol Hill, in other words, engaging with the permanent political establishment here.”
“This is really different,” said Mr. Beschloss of the Obamas forays into casual restaurants and working-class neighborhoods.
The Obamas know that it’s different. As the first African-American couple in the White House, they want to reach beyond the prosperous, predominantly white corridors of Washington.
“We were taught you have to get to know the community you’re in, and you have to be a part of that community,” Mrs. Obama said during a visit to Mary’s Center, a health clinic that serves a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. “D.C. is our community now, and it’s our home.”
THE president says he hopes to serve as a bridge in a town long divided between the haves and have-nots. “I want to see if we can bring those two Washingtons together,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on the ABC program “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
For ordinary people, the unexpected encounters with the new president and first lady are astonishing.
Joe Clark, a corporate lawyer who sat near the president at the basketball game, described the experience as “surreal.”
“I couldn’t believe that he was so accessible that I could literally shake his hand and heckle him about needing to suit up because his team was losing,” Mr. Clark said.
That is not to say that the Obamas can live anything close to a normal life here.
“There really is no going out in public and blending in anymore,” said Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary to Mr. Bush, describing the challenges facing any president. “That really is one of the burdens of the job. You go into the restaurant and everyone stands up and applauds. You always have to shake hands.”
“But when you’re sitting at the table, either out of fear of the Secret Service, respect for the office or old-fashioned decency, people usually leave you alone,” Mr. Fleischer said. “You still can have a nice meal with your friends.”
The Obamas are clearly scoping out varied restaurants and places to visit.
Mr. Fenty said it was the president who suggested lunching at Ben’s Chili Bowl, a well-known black-owned restaurant. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington’s delegate to Congress, said Mrs. Obama suggested lunch at B. Smith’s, also black-owned, a Southern-style restaurant near the Capitol.
Mrs. Obama and her staff also visited Miriam’s Kitchen, a soup kitchen, where the first lady bumped into Bill Richardson, a 46-year-old homeless man. Mr. Richardson was so stunned that he could barely stammer thank you as Mrs. Obama scooped a helping of mushroom risotto onto his plate this month.
“I was expecting some lunch, but this is the president’s wife; this is her right here,” said Mr. Richardson, who said he planned to get to a phone as soon as he could. “I’m going to be like, ‘Mom, you’re never going to guess who I’ve seen.’ ”

My Mother Said She Never Liked that Name for a Girl Anyway

Chapter Seven of your Anderson and Stewart textbook ends with two very important paragraphs: "The tragedy that disproportionately befell African Americans in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina should serve as a wake-up call to people of African descent around the world. A survival and development strategy based on faith that governments and other charitable groups will provide resources and protection on an equitable basis is suicidal. The sequence of events in Louisiana brought into sharp relief the current inability of concerned Blacks to take independent action to save the imperiled and exposed the lackadaisical response of federal officials to the growing suffering and loss of life. Perhaps this cataclysm will be the genesis of a sustained effort to initiate and develop a comprehensive and systematic approach to Black political and economic community development.
"The events surrounding Hurricane Katrina point to the need for Black organizations and communities to develop independent local self-help community-based plans and procedures for various types of emergencies. The development of such plans should involve the widest possible collaboration with individuals and groups, including churches, resident boards of housing projects, neighborhood associations, parent-teacher organizations, and neighborhood school officials. The technology and information management capabilities necessary to maintain local plans in a national electronic clearinghouse that can be updated annually should be developed. In addition, self-help fundraising efforts initiated to assist Katrina's victims should be continued indefinitely to create a national disaster relief fund that could be accessed by individuals and groups victimized by future disasters. Specific attention should be focused on ensuring that property owners are not further victimized by unscrupulous land grab efforts by speculators and opportunists (292)."
How do you see the authors' remedies for recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans? Can they be made a realistic part of our nation's overall economic recovery in the coming decades? How are the means of helping New Orleans (and all our cities) connected to the authors' interpretations of the importance of black employment, the elimination of racial economic disparities in wealth and income, and the historical role of black capitalism and black entrepreneurship continuing in the future?

I Am Definitely an Obama Girl

Examining some of the many news stories recently about the Obamas as the First Family, share with me and the class some observations about how their example both challenges and reinforces our ideas of family and black family life. How can we view them as inspiring us all to be better husbands and wives, (grand)mothers and fathers, (grand)daughters and sons? How can we also use the Obamas as a model for the responsibilities that all families have, no matter what their size or financial condition, to contribute positively to the neighborhoods where they live, and to truly help and relate to others, whether they are of a different religion, speak a different language, or even live in a different neighborhood?

Thinking More about African American Society and Culture

What examples does our Intro text present of social and cultural institutions that have helped African Americans survive and succeed despite the prevalence of racism? What roles have the black church, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and black Greek organizations played in creating distinctive and positive cultural traditions for black people? What responsibilities do the leadership and members of these various organizations have for also moving these supportive traditions beyond negative practices of class prejudice, sexism and homophobia?

Considering African American and American Culture

In your Intro to African American Studies text, the authors summarize a number of sociological theories relating to black family life. In your blogs, identify and summarize these theories, and consider how all of them can be described by the concept of institutional decimation (120). That is, show me how the language used to characterize black families as deficient and dysfunctional itself shapes the way we think about what a family is. Why is it that our definition of family as only including a nuclear household--a heterosexual couple who have children and all live under one roof, without any other blood relations, no grandparents or other extended family, no defined role for neighbors or others not related by blood who may also have a role in child-rearing--is so narrow, and so potentially damaging, not just in terms of racial hierarchies, but also sexual and class hierarchies? What are some of the social, economic and political conditions in contemporary society as described in your textbook that illustrate how the structures created to support the nuclear family model for whites work against that same model being realized and maintained for blacks?

Making Privilege and Power Visible

Hill Collins examines a concept which she labels the sexual politics of black womanhood. By this term, she means that there is a history and a process through which Black women's sexuality has been interpreted and represented, which for the most part, has been done in terms of the privilege of other social groups to mis-name and mis-represent images of black women. Because of the hierarchy of social roles or social power that white men have as males and as whites who structure the dominant culture, that white women have as part of a white dominant culture, even though they are also subjugated as women, and that black men have as males, even though they are also subjugated because of race, and that heterosexuals have because to be straight is to be considered "normal," black women as a group have not had the power to name themselves, to create images and language for understanding their sexuality on their own terms. On your blogs, I want you to begin to apply some of Hill Collins' key terminology to an analysis of the pop culture representations that YOU see in your daily lives. Referring to the sterotypes that Hill Collins examines in Chapter Four, (mammies, matriarchs, the welfare mother, the Black lady/middle-class professional, the hoochie) what examples can you find of how American society mis-represents black women's bodies and sexual identities? Feel free to add pictures or links to whatever you find on the web, and describe in your posts what the stereotypes are as you see them, and consider their impact on all of us who view them. This is not the end of the conversation that we need to have about sexuality, power and stereotypes, but a starting point for making ourselves aware of the problems with images that we see everyday.

Is Barack Obama an African American?

Your Anderson and Stewart text opens Chapter Three with a generous and insightful quote from historian Robert Harris: "Afro-American historiography, with its own conceptual and methodological concerns, is now poised to illuminate the Afro-American past in a manner that will broaden and deepen our knowledge of black people in this country. The writing of Afro-American history is no longer undertaken principally to revise the work of wrongheaded White historians, to discern divine providence, to show black participation in the nation's growth and development, to prove the inevitability of black equality, or to demonstrate the inexorable progress made by Afro-Americans. It is conducted as a distinct area of inquiry, within the discipline of history, with black people as its primary focus to reveal their thought and activities over time and place (43)." How do you see this idea of black people's thought and activities as the focus of black history in parallel with the discussion of self-naming and racial identification that begins in Chapter One? Is there some kind of relationship between the contemporary debates over categories of racial identification, and the historical legacy that defines people of African descent/black Americans/African Americans as a group? And how does this problem of self-naming look differently when we consider someone with a background and a personal history like our President's? What does African American history mean for African American studies?

The HistoryMakers

"Black feminist thought and practice respond to a fundamental contradiction of U.S. society. On the one hand, democratic promises of individual freedom, equality under the law, and social justice are made to all American citizens. Yet on the other hand, the reality of differential group treatment based on race, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship persists. Groups organized around race, class, and gender in and of themselves are not inherently a problem. However, when African-Americans, poor people, women, and other groups discriminated against see little hope for group-based advancement, this situation constitutes social injustice." Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (2000), page 23

In fact, the group identity, and the awareness of shared history, leads to discussion and organization around shared solutions; by contrast, the rhetoric of color blindness has the negative effect of making the social inequalities themselves invisible, if we are unable to talk about the ways in which different treatment affects groups differently. What we seek in recognizing this history of racial and gender discrimination is understanding of the ways in which both forms are entrenched in American society, and interlocking in their effects. The problems themselves cannot simply disappear, or be wished away, without some difficult examination, without some challenging confrontations with the status quo.

In examining the HistoryMakers database, you will hear many stories of the ways in which black women and men experience a different reality, but you will also hear stories about how these individuals came to commit themselves to changing this reality. What are some of those transformative situations and encounters that the subjects talk about in their interviews? You should continue your research in the database by finding and analyzing some of these stories.

What is the White Mainstream?

What does it mean to identify certain cultural norms and values as white (and middle class)? When do values stop being white (and/or middle class and/or Western) and start becoming human?

Tell Me More

What do you hope to learn from this class, and how might this new knowledge apply to your (prospective) major and/or professional life?

Beginning Considerations--Starting the Blog, Starting the Course

Now that you have finished reading Chapters 1 and 2 in Anderson and Stewart, and Chapter 1 in Hill-Collins, take some time to reflect on their significance. What does reading this material make you want to know more about? List three facts presented in these chapters that surprised you, and list 3 questions about the assigned chapters that I and your classmates can respond to further.

Introductions, For Real, Y'all

Tell me: your major, your place of birth, your class standing. Identify and describe your campus or larger community memberships, and your future goals (Are the two connected in some way?)

Introducing Yourselves

Once you have created your gmail account and your blog, you should make sure that you send me a link to the blog. I need this to communicate to your classmates where they can find your blog and subscribe to it as readers and commenters.

On my blog, I will post directions for each of the posts you should be writing, so be sure to check it regularly by becoming a follower. I will expect one blog posting for each day the class is scheduled to meet, whether or not we actually meet on any given day; you are encouraged to post as much and as often as you would like! With your blog, you want to provide me with some assurance that you are keeping up with your reading assignments, and making some effort to do some preliminary analysis in the form of a question or meaningful comment. You should take advantage of the structure of daily writing to begin to really wrestle with the content of the course, the meanings of the readings, and to prepare yourself to contribute constructively to the class discussion.

Take some time to complete your profile so that I and your classmates can get to know each other better. Also make sure that you follow your classmates' blogs by following the links I will provide you and subscribe to each one so that you can read and comment on them regularly. Think of these linked blogs as an ongoing electronic discussion that supplements and compliments what we do in the classroom; your blogs can help you think more concretely about the assigned reading materials, and you can begin to productively shape your assignments by asking the kinds of questions that lead to research topics and engaging presentations in your podcasts.

Finally, be sure to send me your individual gmail addresses if you have not already done so; I need to add you to my contacts to make sure no one gets left out of the communication loop