Black Masculinity in the Obama Era provides an in-depth examination of the current state of black males and identifies the impact of living in the Obama era. In the era of the first black president, Barack H. Obama, this book gauges the status of black masculinity and provokes discourse to discover whether his election and presence has had an influential impact on black male achievement. A purposeful sample of black males was asked, what does it mean to be a black male in the 21st century? Throughout the interviews with black males, we learn that the 'Obama Effect' has not had the intended impact on black male achievement and black males continue to be plagued by structural and cultural forces that have historically burdened their plight and level of achievement.

Neo-race Realities in the Obama Era expands the discourse about Barack Obama's two terms as president by reflecting upon the impact of neo-racism during his tenure. Continually in conversation with Étienne Balibar's conceptualization of neo-racism as being racism without race, the contributors examine how identities become the target of neo-racist discriminatory practices and policies in the United States. Individual chapters explore how President Obama's multiple and intersecting identities beyond the racial binaries of Black and White were perceived, as well as how his presence impacted certain marginalized groups in our society as a result of his administration's policies. Evidencing the hegemonic complexity of neo-racism in the United States, the contributors illustrate how the mythic post-race society that many wished for on election night in 2008 was deferred, in order to return to the uncomfortable comfort zone of the way America used to be.

Black Masculinity in the Obama Era provides an in-depth examination of the current state of black males and identifies the impact of living in the Obama era. In the era of the first black president, Barack H. Obama, this book gauges the status of black masculinity and provokes discourse to discover whether his election and presence has had an influential impact on black male achievement. A purposeful sample of black males was asked, what does it mean to be a black male in the 21st century? Throughout the interviews with black males, we learn that the 'Obama Effect' has not had the intended impact on black male achievement and black males continue to be plagued by structural and cultural forces that have historically burdened their plight and level of achievement.

Dating back to the blackface minstrel performances of Bert Williams and the trickster figure of Uncle Julius in Charles Chesnutt’s Conjure Tales, black humorists have negotiated American racial ideologies as they reclaimed the ability to represent themselves in the changing landscape of the early 20th century. Marginalized communities routinely use humor, specifically satire, to subvert the political, social, and cultural realities of race and racism in America. Through contemporary examples in popular culture and politics, including the work of Kendrick Lamar, Key and Peele and the presidency of Barack Obama and many others, in Played Out: The Race Man in 21st Century Satire author Brandon J. Manning examines how Black satirists create vulnerability to highlight the inner emotional lives of Black men. In focusing on vulnerability these satirists attend to America’s most basic assumptions about Black men. Contemporary Black satire is a highly visible and celebrated site of black masculine self-expression. Black satirists leverage this visibility to trouble discourses on race and gender in the Post-Civil Rights era. More specifically, contemporary Black satire uses laughter to decenter Black men from the socio-political tradition of the Race Man.

The Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies provides scholars and students of American Studies with theoretical and applied essays that help to define Transnational American Studies as a discipline and practice. In more than 30 essays, the volume offers a history of the concept of the "transnational" and takes readers from the Barbary frontier to Guam, from Mexico's border crossings to the intifada's contested zones. Together, the essays develop new ways for Americanists to read events, images, sound, literature, identity, film, politics, or performance transnationally through the work of diverse figures, such as Confucius, Edward Said, Pauline Hopkins, Poe, Faulkner, Michael Jackson, Onoto Watanna, and others. This timely volume also addresses presidential politics and interpictorial US history from Lincoln in Africa, to Obama and Mandela, to Trump. The essays, written by prominent global Americanists, as well as the emerging scholars shaping the field, seek to provide foundational resources as well as experimental and forward-leaning approaches to Transnational American Studies.

This book offers a critical survey of film and media representations of black masculinity in the early twenty-first-century United States, between President George W. Bush’s 2001 announcement of the War on Terror and President Barack Obama’s 2009 acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. It argues that images of black masculine authority have become increasingly important to the legitimization of contemporary policing and its leading role in the maintenance of an antiblack social order forged by racial slavery and segregation. It examines a constellation of film and television productions—from Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day to John Lee Hancock’s The Blind Side to Barry Jenkin's Moonlight—to illuminate the contradictory dynamics at work in attempts to reconcile the promotion of black male patriarchal empowerment and the preservation of gendered antiblackness within political and popular culture.

This book provides critical insights into the many, often overlooked, challenges and societal issues that face contemporary black men, focusing in particular on the ways in which governing societal expectations result in internal and external constraints on black male identity formation, sexuality and black ’masculine’ expression. Presenting new interview and auto-ethnographic data, and drawing on an array of theoretical approaches methodologies, Hyper Sexual, Hyper Masculine? explores the formation of gendered and sexual identity in the lives of black men, shedding light on the manner in which these are affected by class and social structure. It examines the intersecting oppressions of race, gender and class, while acknowledging and discussing the extent to which black men’s social lives differ as a result of their varying degrees of cumulative disadvantage. A wide-ranging and empirically grounded exploration of the intersecting roles of race, masculinity, and sexuality on the lives of black men, this volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, social stratification and intersectionality.

Examines the complicated political legacy of our first black president Written during the presidency of Donald Trump, After Obama examines the impact President Barack Obama and his administration have continued to have upon African American politics. In this comprehensive volume, Todd C. Shaw, Robert A. Brown, and Joseph P. McCormick II bring together more than a dozen scholars to explore his complex legacy, including his successes, failures, and contradictions. Contributors focus on a wide range of topics, including how President Obama affected aspects of African American politics, how his public policies influenced the quality of Black citizenship and life, and what future administrations can learn from his experiences. They also examine the present-day significance of Donald Trump in relation to African American politics. A timely and thorough work, After Obama provides the first examination of the Obama administration in its entirety, and the lasting impact it has had on African American politics.

This volume comprehensively addresses racial trauma from a clinical lens, equipping mental health professionals across all disciplines to be culturally responsive when serving Black men. Written using a transdisciplinary approach, Yamonte Cooper presents a Unified Theory of Racism (UTR), Integrated Model of Racial Trauma (IMRT), Transgenerational Trauma Points (TTP), Plantation Politics, Black Male Negation (BMN), and Race-Based Shame (RBS) to fill a critical and urgent void in the mental health field and emerging scholarship on racial trauma. Chapters begin with specific definitions of racism before exploring specific challenges that Black men face, such as racial discrimination and health, trauma, criminalization, economic deprivation, anti-Black misandry, and culturally-specific stressors, emotions, such as shame and anger, and coping mechanisms that these men utilize. After articulating the racial trauma of Black men in a comprehensive manner, the book provides insight into what responsive care looks like as well as clinical interventions that can inform treatment approaches. This book is invaluable reading for all established and training mental health clinicians that work with Black men, such as psychologists, marriage and family therapists, social workers, counselors, and psychiatrists.

To many, the world appears to be in a state of dangerous change. News and fictional media alike report that these are dark times, and narratives of social resistance imbue many facets of Western culture. The new essays making up this collection examine different events and themes of the 2010s that readily acknowledge the struggling state of things. Crucially, these essays look to the resistance and political activism of communities that seek to make long-reaching and institutional changes in the world through a diverse group of media texts. They scrutinize how a society relates to injustices and how individuals enact a desire for change. The authors analyze a broad range of works such as texts as Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock, Black Panther, The Death of Stalin, Get Out, Jessica Jones, Hamilton, The Shape of Water, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. By digging into these and other works, as well as historic events, the contributors explicate the soul-deep necessity of pushing back against injustice, whether personal or cultural.