This book critically examines Obama’s presidency and legacy, especially in regard to race, inequality, education, and political power. Orelus depicts an “interest convergence factor” that led many White liberals and the corporate media to help Obama get elected in 2008 and 2012. He assesses Obama’s political accomplishments, including parts of his domestic policies that support gay rights and equal pay for women. Special attention is given to Obama’s educational policies, like Race to the Top, and the effects of such policies on both the learning and academic outcome of students, particularly linguistically and culturally diverse students. In a race and power framework, Orelus relates domestic policies to the effects of Obama’s foreign policies on the lives of people in poorer countries, especially where innocent children and women have been killed by war and drone strikes authorized by Obama’s administration. The author invites readers to question and transcend the historical symbolism of Obama’s political victory in an effort to carefully examine and critique his actions as reflected through both his domestic and foreign policies.

Media and Power is sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS). This volume contributes phenomenological and epistemic knowledge of the intersection of media and various forms of power, addressing the relationships between media and gender, race, ethnicity, and national identity.

Group empathy across lines of difference is a major force for reducing conflict, promoting cooperation, and counteracting ethnonationalism.

Every academic discipline has an origin story complicit with white supremacy. Racial hierarchy and colonialism structured the very foundations of most disciplines’ research and teaching paradigms. In the early twentieth century, the academy faced rising opposition and correction, evident in the intervention of scholars including W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Carter G. Woodson, and others. By the mid-twentieth century, education itself became a center in the struggle for social justice. Scholars mounted insurgent efforts to discredit some of the most odious intellectual defenses of white supremacy in academia, but the disciplines and their keepers remained unwilling to interrogate many of the racist foundations of their fields, instead embracing a framework of racial colorblindness as their default position. This book challenges scholars and students to see race again. Examining the racial histories and colorblindness in fields as diverse as social psychology, the law, musicology, literary studies, sociology, and gender studies, Seeing Race Again documents the profoundly contradictory role of the academy in constructing, naturalizing, and reproducing racial hierarchy. It shows how colorblindness compromises the capacity of disciplines to effectively respond to the wide set of contemporary political, economic, and social crises marking public life today.

This book draws from interviews conducted with prominent social justice educators and activist intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, Henry Giroux, Antonia Darder, Molefi Asante, and Maxine Greene, to examine various forms of social inequities occurring in schools and society perpetrated by those in power. These educators and intellectuals use examples drawn from both personal and professional experiences and relevant literature to point out the manner in which multiple forms of oppression intersect, in both hidden and visible ways, to affect the lives of oppressed groups and disfranchised communities. This book seeks to shed light on various manifestations of social injustices aiming to inspire critical, radical thoughts for socio-political action leading to educational and social change.

“Hope” and “change” were the keywords of President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, and in his farewell address on January 10, 2017, he cited the evidence that he’d delivered—from reversing the Great Recession, rebooting the auto industry, and unleashing the longest stretch of job creation in the nation’s history to winning marriage equality and securing the right to health insurance for another 20 million citizens. At the same time, and with a view to the country’s divisive polarization, he made a plea for “the decency of our people” and “the sense of common purpose that we so badly need right now.” In hindsight, it is increasingly possible to understand whether and how Obama’s legacy matched his rhetoric as well as to evaluate from various angles what his presidency accomplished and what this has meant for US politics, public policy, and civic life going forward. In The Obama Legacy some of the leading observers and scholars of US politics take up this challenge. In twelve essays these writers examine Obama’s choices, operating style, and opportunities taken and missed as well as the institutional and political constraints on the president’s policy agenda. What were Obama’s personal characteristics as a leader? What were the policy aspirations, output, and strategy of his presidency? What was his role as a political and public leader to the various constituencies needed to generate presidential power? And how did his presidency interact with other political forces? Addressing these questions and others, the authors analyze Obama’s preferences, tactics, successes, and shortcomings with an eye toward balancing the personal and institutional factors that underlie each—all the while considering how resilient or fragile Obama’s legacy will be in the face of the Trump administration’s eager efforts to dismantle it.

The Biden administration may go down in history as the most disastrous presidency in American history. It did not, however, spring up out of nothing. The Biden era's America-Last, economically and socially destructive policies virtually all originated in the Obama administration. The Biden team, of course, is made up of numerous Obama holdovers, and there is widespread suspicion that the man who is really pulling the strings for Biden is none other than Barack Obama himself. Barack Obama's True Legacy details just how bad the Obama years really were for America and Americans, and shows how the country is now suffering from a resurgence of these sinister policies after the four-year respite of the Trump administration. The book is a collection of new, original non-published essays written by an organized group of prominent, conservative intellectuals on how Obama transformed America, documenting the suppressed details of how the ex-president was—and still is—a major national security threat to America. Barack Obama's True Legacy is a one-volume guide to how the Democrat Party went so drastically wrong, and why it is such a dangerous and catastrophic force in the White House and the country at large today. It all goes back to one man: Barack Hussein Obama.

“Fake news existed long before Donald Trump…. What is ironic is that fake news has indeed been the only news disseminated by the rulers of U.S. empire.”—From American Exceptionalism and American Innocence According to Robert Sirvent and Danny Haiphong, Americans have been exposed to fake news throughout our history—news that slavery is a thing of the past, that we don’t live on stolen land, that wars are fought to spread freedom and democracy, that a rising tide lifts all boats, that prisons keep us safe, and that the police serve and protect. Thus, the only “news” ever reported by various channels of U.S. empire is the news of American exceptionalism and American innocence. And, as this book will hopefully show, it’s all fake. Did the U.S. really “save the world” in World War II? Should black athletes stop protesting and show more gratitude for what America has done for them? Are wars fought to spread freedom and democracy? Or is this all fake news? American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we’re told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world, regardless of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, and the more than a century’s worth of imperialist war that the U.S. has wrought on the planet. Sirvent and Haiphong detail just what Captain America’s shield tells us about the pretensions of U.S. foreign policy, how Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates engage in humanitarian imperialism, and why the Broadway musical Hamilton is a monument to white supremacy.

When President Barack Hussein Obama left office January 20, 2017, he left a fascinating legacy. The Obama Presidency will remain an intriguing part of our nation’s political history, and we can now say that there were unexpected achievements and failures. His tenure was both historical and complex, and will inevitably be compared with his predecessors and successors. The chapters in this volume are a serious assessment of President Obama’s tenure written by a diverse team that includes political scientists, sociologists, historians, and economists. They provide critical insights into the man and his policies and, more importantly, are written in a manner that makes them available to laypersons, journalists, students, and scholars.

The past and future of Black history In this information-overloaded twenty-first century, it seems impossible to fully discern or explain how we know about the past. But two things are certain. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all think historically on a routine basis. And our perceptions of history, including African American history, have not necessarily been shaped by professional historians. In this wide-reaching and timely book, Pero Gaglo Dagbovie argues that public knowledge and understanding of black history, including its historical icons, has been shaped by institutions and individuals outside academic ivory towers. Drawing on a range of compelling examples, Dagbovie explores how, in the twenty-first century, African American history is regarded, depicted, and juggled by diverse and contesting interpreters—from museum curators to filmmakers, entertainers, politicians, journalists, and bloggers. Underscoring the ubiquitous nature of African-American history in contemporary American thought and culture, each chapter unpacks how black history has been represented and remembered primarily during the “Age of Obama,” the so-called era of “post-racial” American society. Reclaiming the Black Past is Dagbovie's contribution to expanding how we understand African American history during the new millennium.