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In January 2009, Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States. In the weeks and months following the election, as in those that preceded it, countless social observers from across the ideological spectrum commented upon the cultural, social, and political significance of “the Obama phenomenon.” This book provides a nuanced analysis framed by innovative theoretical insights to explore how Barack Obama's presidential candidacy both reflected and shaped the dynamics of race in the contemporary United States. Using the 2008 election as a case study of U.S. race relations, and based on a wealth of empirical data that includes an analysis of over 1,500 newspaper articles, blog postings, and other forms of public speech collected over a 3-year period, the book claims that while race played a central role in the 2008 election, it was in several respects different from the past. The book ultimately concludes that while the selection of an individual African American man as president does not mean that racism is dead in the contemporary United States, we must also think creatively and expansively about what the election does mean for the nation and for the evolving contours of race in the 21st century.

Barack Obama's campaign and electoral victory demonstrated the dynamic nature of American democracy. Beginning as a special issue of The Black Scholar, this probing collection illustrates the impact of “the Obama phenomenon” on the future of U.S. race relations through readings on Barack Obama's campaign as well as the idealism and pragmatism of the Obama administration. Some of the foremost scholars of African American politics and culture from an array of disciplines—including political science, theology, economics, history, journalism, sociology, cultural studies, and law—offer critical analyses of topics as diverse as Obama and the media, Obama's connection with the hip hop community, the public's perception of first lady Michelle Obama, voter behavior, and the history of racial issues in presidential campaigns since the 1960s.

This book explores the emergence of Filipino American theater and performance from the early 20th century to the present. It stresses the Filipino performing body's location as it conjoins colonial histories of the Philippines with U.S. race relations and discourses of globalization. Puro arte, translated from Spanish into English, simply means “pure art.” In Filipino, puro arte however performs a much more ironic function, gesturing rather to the labor of over-acting, histrionics, playfulness, and purely over-the-top dramatics. In this book, puro arte functions as an episteme, a way of approaching the Filipino/a performing body at key moments in U.S.–Philippine imperial relations, from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, early American plays about the Philippines, Filipino patrons in U.S. taxi dance halls to the phenomenon of Filipino/a actors in Miss Saigon. Using this varied archive, the book turns to performance as an object of study and as a way of understanding complex historical processes of racialization in relation to empire and colonialism.

Since its inception in 1928, the Pan-Pacific Women's Association (PPWA) has witnessed and contributed to enormous changes in world and Pacific history. This women's network established a series of conferences that promoted social reform and an internationalist outlook through cultural exchange. The association's vision was enormously attractive for the many women who joined, despite that as individuals and national representatives they remained deeply divided by colonial histories. This book tells this multifaceted story. Early chapters consider the first PPWA conferences and the decolonizing process undergone by the association. Following World War II, a new generation of nonwhite women from decolonized and settler colonial nations began to claim leadership roles in the Association, challenging the often Eurocentric assumptions of women's internationalism. In 1955 the first African American delegate brought to the fore questions about the relationship of U.S. race relations with the Pan-Pacific cultural internationalist project. The effects of Cold War geopolitics on the ideal of international cooperation in the era of decolonization were also considered. The book concludes with a discussion of the revival of “East meets West” as a basis for world cooperation endorsed by the United Nations in 1958 and the overall contributions of the PPWA to world culture politics. The book tells the stories of this extraordinary group of women and illuminates the challenges and rewards of their politics of antiracism—one that still resonates today.

The prevailing narrative of post-1945 southern politics, both among scholars and in the media, is that the rise of the Republican Party in the South can be attributed to the national Democratic Party alienating white voters in the region by passing comprehensive federal civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965. This “white backlash” narrative has also become a popular means of explaining the national political strength of the GOP since the end of the 1960s. In this book, the narrative is challenged as an inadequate explanation of modern southern and American politics. The book argues that rather than support for civil rights having undermined the Democratic Party in the South, it was a necessary and effective strategy that slowed Republican growth at the regional level for a generation. Out of conflicting attitudes toward race and civil rights between the major factions within the Georgia Democratic Party emerged a political strategy that stressed the need to minimize overt racial divisions in the state and instead focus voters' attention on economic growth and education. This strategy, known as progressive colorblindness, ultimately became the major driving force behind the creation of the post-Jim Crow “New South” politics of the 1970s and beyond.

Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union deplored the treatment of African Americans by the U.S. government as proof of hypocrisy in the American promises of freedom and equality. This probing history examines government attempts to manipulate international perceptions of U.S. race relations during the Cold War by sending African American athletes abroad on goodwill tours and in international competitions as cultural ambassadors and visible symbols of American values. The book follows the State Department's efforts from 1945 to 1968 to showcase prosperous African American athletes including Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, and the Harlem Globetrotters as the preeminent citizens of the African Diaspora rather than as victims of racial oppression. With athletes in baseball, track and field, and basketball, the government relied on figures whose fame carried the desired message to countries where English was little understood. However, eventually African American athletes began to provide counter-narratives to State Department claims of American exceptionalism, most notably with Tommie Smith and John Carlos's famous black power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.