Rethinking Obama (Political Power and Social Theory, Vol 22)

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EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION I am honored to present Volume 22 of Political Power and Social Theory (PPST). This volume is a landmark, in that it is among the first volumes of PPST to be dedicated to a single topic. With the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election in sight, this special volume on the meaning of Barack Obama’s presidency from a critical social science perspective is especially timely. For the first part of the volume, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Louise Seamster have put together a diverse collection of essays on the politics of race in the age of Obama. For the second part (the Scholarly Controversy section familiar to PPST readers), Philip S. Gorski offers provocative reflections on Obama and civil religion in the United States, with critical commentary from Joseph Gerteis, Andrew R. Murphy, and Michael Young and Christopher Pieper. Soon enough, readers will be able to assess for themselves the significance of these essays and commentaries. Here I would like to thank Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Louise Seamster for putting together the special section and to Philip S. Gorski and the commentators for sharing their thoughts. Finally, many thanks to Stephanie Hull and the rest of the team at Emerald for bringing this volume to completion.

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POLITICAL POWER AND SOCIAL THEORY Series Editor: Julian Go Recent Volumes: Volume 1: 1980 Volume 2: 1981 Volume 3: 1982 Volume 4: 1984 Volume 5: 1985 Volume 6: 1987 Volume 7: 1989 Volume 8: 1994 Volume 9: 1995 Volume 10: 1996 Volume 11: 1997 Volume 12: 1998 Volume 13: 1999 Volume 14: 2000 Volume 15: 2002 Volume 16: 2004 Volume 17: 2005 Volume 18: 2006 Volume 19: 2008 Volume 20: 2009 Volume 21: 2010

POLITICAL POWER AND SOCIAL THEORY VOLUME 22

RETHINKING OBAMA EDITED BY

JULIAN GO Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2011 Copyright r 2011 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Editor or the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-85724-911-1 ISSN: 0198-8719 (Series)

Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Howard House, Environmental Management System has been certified by ISOQAR to ISO 14001:2004 standards Awarded in recognition of Emerald’s production department’s adherence to quality systems and processes when preparing scholarly journals for print

SENIOR EDITORIAL BOARD Ronald Aminzade University of Minnesota

Eiko Ikegami New School University Graduate Faculty

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Duke University

Howard Kimeldorf University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Michael Burawoy University of CaliforniaBerkeley

Florencia Mallon University of Wisconsin-Madison Jill Quadagno Florida State University

Nitsan Chorev Brown University John Coatsworth Columbia University

Ian Roxborough State University of New York-Stony Brook

Diane E. Davis Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michael Schwartz State University of New York-Stony Brook

Susan Eckstein Boston University

George Steinmetz University of Michigan

Peter Evans University of CaliforniaBerkeley

John D. Stephens University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Julian Go Boston University

Maurice Zeitlin University of California-Los Angeles

Nora Hamilton University of Southern California

Sharon Zukin City University of New York ix

STUDENT EDITORIAL BOARD Cara Bowman Zophia Edwards Kiri Gurd Adrienne Lemon Megan O’Leary Itai Vardi

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EDITORIAL STATEMENT Political Power and Social Theory is a peer-reviewed annual journal committed to advancing the interdisciplinary understanding of the linkages between political power, social relations, and historical development. The journal welcomes both empirical and theoretical work and is willing to consider papers of substantial length. Publication decisions are made by the editor in consultation with members of the editorial board and anonymous reviewers. For information on submissions, please see the journal website at www.bu.edu/sociology/ppst.

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Matt A. Barreto

Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Betsy L. Cooper

Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Joseph Gerteis

Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Benjamin Gonzalez

Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Philip S. Gorski

Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Cedric de Leon

Department of Sociology, Providence College, Providence, RI, USA

Andrew R. Murphy

Department of Political Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

Tamara K. Nopper

Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Christopher S. Parker

Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Christopher Pieper

Department of Sociology, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

Dylan Rodrı´guez

Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

Louise Seamster

Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA vii

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Christopher Towler

Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Michael P. Young

Department of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA

INTRODUCTION: EXAMINING, DEBATING, AND RANTING ABOUT THE OBAMA PHENOMENON Louise Seamster and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva ABSTRACT In this special section of Political Power and Social Theory, we present the work of scholars from various disciplines documenting and analyzing the Obama phenomenon. The work in this section, including both theoretical and empirical analysis, is an early step in the much-needed academic discussion on Obama and racial politics in the contemporary United States. We offer this compendium as a call-to-arms to progressives and leftists, encouraging the revival of radical critique of Obama’s discourse and policies instead of the fulsome praise or confused silence that has so far greeted Obama from the left.

The election of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States brought breathless excitement to the progressive community. Many wept with joy on November 4, 2008, when his election was confirmed. This excitement blunted progressives’ critical capacity, making them pudding-like; they suppressed anything but good, happy, ‘‘hopey changy’’1 stories and analyses about Obama. Throughout the campaign, the few voices who dared ask questions about his background, politics, policies, connections to Wall Street, and the Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 3–15 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022007

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like were practically silenced and were regarded as traitors, racists, people jealous of Obama’s success, pimps needing racism to continue to maintain their ‘‘business,’’ etc. For radical scholars and activists, this sudden passion over electoral politics and outcomes is unusual and disconcerting. The total investment of energy in the election and now re-election of Obama has translated to less attention paid to the urgent issues we face, including (but not limited to) high unemployment (especially for minority folks2); mass incarceration of people of color (Alexander, 2010); rising deportations3 and increasingly racist and restrictive immigration laws; failing education (and its privatization advocated by conservatives as well as by the Obama Administration4); attacks on unions in Republican-led (e.g., Florida, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan) as well as Democrat-led states (e.g., Massachusetts and Obama’s stand on teachers’ unions); a horrid health care system (the health care reform that passed will do little to control costs, the Achilles heel of the system; see Oberlander & White, 2009); a concerted attack on women (e.g., the state initiatives to restrict abortion and family planning); and continued, misguided American involvement in what are now four separate wars. Although many of these issues predate Obama’s ascent to the presidency, curiously (for us, expectedly) he has not done much to counter these troubling trends and, on some issues, one can argue he has done less than previous presidents. It is way past time for members of the progressive academic community to wake up and stop smelling the Obama hope roses. We must, as we have done historically, analyze the class, gender, race, and imperial nature of the politics of the administration in charge of the American state, regardless of the skin color of the occupant of the White House. In fact, as several of the authors in this issue argue (including the editors), Obama’s blackness has become in many ways ‘‘the best possible shell’’5 for the smooth operation of the American political regime. Accordingly, we have assembled a group of scholars in this special section of Political Power and Social Theory to examine, debate, and rant a bit about the Obama phenomenon – we believe that ranting is a much underappreciated form of resistance and a must for progressive politics. The scholars in this issue have different views on Obama, the meaning of his election, and his politics, but we included people who are seriously thinking and engaging on Obama-related matters rather than just supporting (or critiquing) Obama without much efficacy or intellectual vigor. We were (and still are) dismayed by how during and after the campaign, many renowned scholars of color at Princeton, Georgetown, Harvard, Columbia, Maryland, and other prestigious institutions offered ‘‘analysis’’ that was not much better than what we read from liberal writers

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in The New York Times or hear from MSNBC’s commentators every night (and, in fact, some are paid commentators for this TV station or seem to have a direct line to The New York Times). And much of the first generation of books on Obama consists largely of nationalist celebrations (‘‘We are so happy and proud of our first Black president’’) or books that state the obvious and easy point – that racism is alive and well. Lastly, we would be remiss if we do not acknowledge the fact that the ‘‘liberal-labor’’ coalition (Domhoff, 2010), and their representatives in the media have not done much better than minority scholars with visibility and the first generation of books on Obama. Therefore, this issue is but a first salvo on the long road to recovery from the Obama hope hangover (Bonilla-Silva, 2008). We may not have done all that needs to be done or said all that needs to be said in this issue, but as David Simon, producer of The Wire, stated in his farewell letter after the show ended, ‘‘Nothing happens unless the shit is stirred!’’ Like Simon, our goal with this issue is to provoke, challenge, annoy, and, hopefully, force a debate at a time when there is none. Before introducing the authors and articles in this issue, however, we provide a brief account of the Obama political landscape since the election. This, we believe, is necessary because the ‘Obama craze’ (Gonza´lez, 2008) has mystified recent history, and what happened yesterday is forgotten today.

AMERICAN RACIAL POLITICS ‘‘FOR REAL’’ SINCE OBAMA WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT Political scientist Michael Dawson has pointed out that Obama’s election represented a moment of ‘‘middle-class black nationalism’’ (Dawson, 2008). For far too many blacks (and not just middle-class blacks), Obama’s election was sufficient evidence that ‘‘we have overcome.’’ Indeed, it is quite plausible that middle-class blacks will profit from Obama’s election: the symbolic capital of having a black president may help them prove that ‘‘we’re not all alike’’ to wary whites at the expense of most blacks for whom, as Dawson argues, ‘‘the ‘American Dream’ still largely remains an ‘American Nightmare’’’ (Dawson, 2008). To assure Obama’s success, the unspoken but clear strategy that Obama and his handlers have used is to avoid any talk about race and racism, even when racial issues emerge. For example, after the Obama administration forced Shirley Sherrod6 to resign following the circulation of a faked video purportedly showing her

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‘‘racism,’’ President Obama ‘‘called for a national discussion of race issues around kitchen tables and water coolers and in schools and church basements’’ (Montopoli, 2010). Besides the fact that race is already discussed around kitchen tables, water coolers, and church basements (Myers, 2003) albeit often in disguised terms (Bonilla-Silva, 2009), ‘‘calls’’ for discussions, dialogues, or conversations about race from liberal politicians are actually ways to deflect dealing with race issues at all! (Just announcing the need for these conversations uses all available breath for serious discussions and helps all parties return to the normalcy of politely not talking about how race matters.) This speech was also an attempt to distract from the fact that Shirley Sherrod was fired by Obama’s own administration, not by someone standing at a water cooler in Oklahoma. This could have been the moment for waking up and realizing Obama is not serious about dealing with racial matters. However, like with the Gates incident and the ensuing ‘‘beer summit,’’ Obama and his people were successful in sealing the racial crack and somehow convincing everybody that this was all a big misunderstanding forced on the Administration by a conservative blogger (see our analysis on this incident in our chapter in this issue). But Obama’s support is not limited to middle-class blacks. The symbolic importance of his election is evident among poor and working-class blacks as well. This accounts for the fact that black voter turnout increased almost 5 percent for the 2008 election (Lo´pez, 2009), finally reaching parity with white turnout. While less well-off blacks are not likely to benefit materially from Obama’s election, they shared the excitement over having the first black president and have become consumed by and symbolically invested in his success. In many ways, they seem willing to give him a pass on almost anything he does, and they somehow believe that his success is theirs, too. Presumably, they also expect Obama to enact policies that would improve conditions for blacks in the United States, but far too many are willing to rationalize his inactions in this area as the product of the mess President Bush left for him.7 As Keeyanga-Yamahtta Taylor points out, Obama’s actual track record over the past three years has not been good for poor and working-class blacks we can look at his 2010 budget, which included cuts to HUD and heating assistance that will hurt poor blacks more than any other community, the rising black unemployment, and the disproportionately high rates of foreclosure among poor and working-class blacks who were targeted by unscrupulous bankers and mortgage specialists in the past 10 years (Rivlin, 2010; Rugh & Massey, 2010; Taylor, 2011). As we send this issue to press, there are strong indications that Obama, through his emissary, VicePresident Biden, will again ‘‘compromise’’ with the Republicans on the budget

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and agree to Medicare and Medicaid cuts that will likely disproportionally affect poor folks of color (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005). While progressive and liberal whites8 support Obama for reasons other than blacks (perhaps including the ‘‘status’’ they earn by being able to claim their antiracism; Effron, Cameron, & Monin, 2009), their love for Obama seems unconditional. This love has blinded them too, as they see nothing wrong when Obama does Bush-like things. Just a few years ago, many of these whites spearheaded a vigorous anti-war movement and marched and agitated against the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as Obama has continued these interventions9 and added Libya and Pakistan to the imperial plate of entanglements, these same whites stopped showing up at protests (Heaney & Rojas, 2011) and developed tortuous political arguments to explain away Obama’s expansionist and militarist record (‘‘Obama needs to show Americans and the world that he can lead, be strong, and kill terrorists like Osama Bin Laden’’). Where was the (mostly white) left when Obama started bombing Libya or when he doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan? Where was the left in questioning the legality and wisdom of Bin Laden’s assassination (aside from Noam Chomsky (2011))? Domestically, where is the left’s response to Obama’s attack on public schools by hiring neoliberal, anti-union cronies like Arne Duncan and by continuing ‘‘No Child Left Behind’’ under its new name ‘‘Race to the Top’’? While we applaud the recent pro-union protests in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio, we lament that the left has not pressured Obama to take a stronger stand in support of working people. Instead of a reasoned and sustained critique, progressives have behaved like Obama boosters, only voicing concerns with what would happen if a Republican president got into the White House. (Have we seen this movie before?) While the minority masses and a large segment of the white community (see endnote 5) are still in Obama-doration, a number of voices from the left have begun to critique Obama and his policies. One of the most eloquent of these dissenting voices has been the civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, who recently appeared in Democracy Now to talk about his new documentary and Obama’s presidency. Belafonte lamented that there is no force, no energy, of popular voice, popular rebellion, popular upheaval, no champion for radical thought at the table of the discourse. And as a consequence, Barack Obama has nothing to listen to, except his detractors and those who help pave the way to his own personal comfort with power – power contained, power misdirected, power not fully engaged. (Belafonte, 2011)

Beyond Belafonte, there is more rumbling suggesting that support for Obama may not be as uncritical this time around. Latino leaders in particular have

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expressed ambivalence about 2012. Luis Gutierrez, Democratic Representative from Illinois, has announced that he may not support Obama unless the Administration comes through with progressive immigration reform (Rodrı´ guez, 2011). Oscar Chaco´n, executive director of the National Alliance for Latin American and Caribbean Communities, said in response to Obama’s recent El Paso speech on immigration that ‘‘we cannot help but to feel truly trapped between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the political choices available to Latino voters’’ (NALACC, 2011) – less than a ringing endorsement. Bruce Dixon, managing editor of the Black Agenda Report, documents how Latino activists and nonprofits are frustrated by soaring deportations, failure to pass the DREAM act, and the ‘‘Secure Communities’’ act, a measure that continues the expansion of local and state governments into the business of hunting and deporting undocumented people (Dixon, 2011). And ahead of Obama’s trip to Puerto Rico this June, activists are organizing a large protest demanding self-determination (NILP, 2011). Several black intellectuals and leaders have also voiced concern about Obama. Most famously, if also problematically, Cornel West has thrown his hat into the ring, telling Chris Hedges in a critique of Obama that ‘‘we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous with some of the worst things in the American empire’’ (Hedges, 2011). Furthermore, segments of the Hip Hop community, a community that was vital for Obama’s election, have also criticized Obama, and some artists have done so quite bluntly. During the 2008 campaign Immortal Technique and Davey D expressed their doubts that Obama could do much (Forman, 2010). Sean Combs, AKA P. Diddy (formerly Puff Daddy), said in an interview early in 2011 that although he still supports the president, he is disappointed with how little Obama has done for blacks. P. Diddy also said, ‘‘He (the president) owes us. I’d rather have a black president that was man enough to say that he was doing something for black people have one term than a president who played the politics game have two terms.’’10 Recently Lupe Fiasco tweeted after Osama’s assassination, ‘‘Osama Dead!?! Afghan Operation done now??? Now kill poverty, wack schools, and US imperialismy’’ (Fiasco, 2011). And in an interview with CBS News, ‘‘What’s Trending,’’ he went further and said that, ‘‘To me, the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America.’’ He then added, ‘‘For me, I’m trying to fight the terrorism that’s actually causing the other forms of terrorism. The root cause of terrorism is the stuff that the U.S. government allows to happen, the foreign policies that we have in place in different

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countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it’s easy for us, because it’s really just some oil that we can really get on our own.’’11 Lastly, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, has said his union is not going all-out for Obama and for Democrats unless they change their tune, and is likely to spend its money and troops on local campaigns (Stein, 2011). Blacks, Latinos, and unions are the three pillars of Obama’s base – and yet all three groups are, halfhearted efforts aside,12 largely taken for granted13 as Obama continues to court white voters in swing states (as Cedric de Leon addresses in his article in this issue). But what would happen if all these votes could not be counted on to prop up Obama’s chances? In that case, pundits, analysts, and campaign managers might remember that blacks, Latinos, and poor and working-class people matter, that their needs matter, and that they will not be satisfied with a symbolic vote. We could then push representative liberal democracy to its limits by electing politicians that could actually represent our interests.

THE CONTRIBUTIONS IN THIS SECTION We begin with two theoretical pieces by Dylan Rodrı´ guez and Tamara Nopper focusing on the long and deep historical racial context behind Obama’s election and contemporary racial discourse. They are followed by contributions from Cedric de Leon and from Matt Barreto, Elizabeth Cooper, Ben Gonza´lez, and Chris Parker examining Obama’s connection to New Deal-era Democratic politics and the rise of the Tea Party, respectively. We conclude with our own contribution. In his essay, ‘‘White Reconstruction and Slavery’s Present Tense,’’ Dylan Rodrı´ guez provides a counterpoint to the current multicultural, ‘‘we have overcome’’ discourse by arguing that ‘‘our historical moment – and the Obama national-racial telos – cannot be politically severed from the substructure of racist/antiblack, genocidal and proto-genocidal violence that is formed in the crucible of racial chattel slavery’’ (p. 14). Rodrı´ guez suggests Obama’s election must be understood as a continuation, rather than a break, of the violent racial regime beginning in slavery. He highlights and contrasts the centrality of racial violence in contemporary America (e.g., the prison complex, the labor market, discrimination, etc.) (Jung, Costa-Vargas, & Bonilla-Silva, 2011) to the timid, feel-good invocations of racial progress by Obama and advocates a radical abolitionism that recognizes racial violence in the present tense so that we can ‘‘(finally) escape the historical gravity of the genocidally antiblack peculiar institution’’ (Rodrı´ guez, p. 10).

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While Rodrı´ guez sees continuity with a white supremacist past in Obama’s election, Tamara Nopper reminds us that the differences also matter in her essay on ‘‘Barack Obama’s community organizing as new Black politics.’’ Nopper evaluates the meaning of Obama’s past as a community organizer, arguing that Obama represents the ‘‘new Black politics,’’ a generation of politicians of color who have no connection to the Civil Rights movement and tend to shun issues of race (see also our contribution in this issue). She argues that many commentators point to Obama’s time as a community organizer to suggest that Obama does have deeper ties to the grassroots and to progressive politics. However, Nopper contends that Obama uses this experience in his books and speeches to actually indicate the ineffectiveness of this model and to advocate his ‘‘post-racial’’ brand of politics. This move has allowed him to, on the one hand, express gratitude to old guard Civil Rights activists and politicians for the job they did while, on the other hand, suggest the need for a ‘‘Joshua generation’’ (Obama, 2007) of new leaders to achieve progress in a different way and style. Cedric de Leon also debates the continuity-or-change argument in his contribution titled ‘‘The More Things Change.’’ De Leon challenges the argument that Obama’s election represented a change in party politics and suggests his election recapitulates events from the New Deal era. The Democratic Party introduced ‘‘New Deal’’ legislation that gave whites multiple structural advantages, but relied, like the Obama campaign, on incorporating blacks with offers of minimal civil rights reforms. De Leon points out that while the literature on whiteness and colorblind racism explains race in the modern era, this research has heretofore neglected the role of party politics in shaping racial hegemony. He also urges analysts of colorblindness to look at the long history (dating back to the 1930s) shaping the post-racial politics of today. Lastly, he examines the election returns in Virginia and North Carolina to show that, like in the past, the Democrats of today profited enormously from an increase in the white suburban vote along with a greatly increased black turnout. He concludes that whites are still likely to get much more than non-whites out of this political deal. While it is important to evaluate the contradictions and tensions inherent in the present liberal party politics, with their semblance of colorblindness, Barreto and his coauthors remind us that we should not neglect the popularity of old-fashioned racism in many circles in the United States. To this end, Barreto, Cooper, Gonza´lez, and Parker explore the role of the Tea Party in their article, ‘‘What Motivates the Tea Party?’’ Relying on Hofstadter’s (1964) theory of the ‘‘paranoid style’’ in conservative politics, they classify the Tea Party as a pseudo-conservative movement motivated

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by anti-immigrant, anti-black, and anti-gay sentiment. They examine this claim with content analysis of issues and themes covered on various Tea Party websites along with a survey of attitudes among Tea Party supporters. We close this special section with an article by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (with the assistance of Louise Seamster) titled ‘‘The Sweet Enchantment of Color Blindness in Black Face: Explaining the ‘Miracle,’ Debating the Politics, and Suggesting a Way for Hope to be ‘For Real’ in America.’’ In this contribution he reiterates the claim – a claim he has been making since 2008 – that the so-called miracle of Obama’s election is actually part and parcel of the post-Civil Rights racial regime that has been in place for arguably forty years (he calls it ‘‘the new racism’’). He also examines the politics and policies that Obama advocated and has now carried out as president and, as he predicted during the election cycle, finds they are mostly center-right. Bonilla-Silva concludes his essay by forcefully articulating the need for the progressive community to moor their political practices in social movement rather than in electoral politics, as they have done since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

STEPPING UP TO THE TABLE: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Taken together, the chapters in this section develop the thesis that Obama’s presidency represents continuity with the racial past rather than a meaningful break epitomized by the empty slogan of ‘‘change we can believe in.’’ At the same time, however, the situation today is not exactly the same as in previous phases of white supremacy and racialized capitalism. Racism – or, more properly, racial domination – has transformed itself to survive the end of de jure in-your-face white supremacy, and it is now much more frequently of the ‘‘now you see it, now you don’t’’ (Smith, 1996) variety (Bonilla-Silva, 2001). To accurately identify the way this new political regime functions and develop the politics needed to challenge it, we need to pay close attention to the differences that have emerged [e.g., the new brand of colorblind minority politicians coming from both right and left, the post-racial version of colorblind ideology, the rise of a neo-mulatto group (Horton & Sykes, 2004) and its potential separation from the black community altogether, the meaning of imperialism in black face, etc.]. The issues raised in these chapters are an early stage in the larger debate about what the Obama presidency means, how we should interpret the

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present moment, and the always-pressing political question of what is to be done. We need to secularize all Obama-related matters and discussions so that we can analyze his policies and politics critically as we have done with all other presidents. The argument that any criticism of Obama from the left helps the racist, hysterical, birther Tea Party Republican right is nonsense and has helped silence dissenting voices (see our contribution in this issue). We also reject the argument that such criticism will undermine his reelection chances, and that, therefore, we must refrain from critique. Obama needs to be pushed to the left if his Administration is going to deliver more than just hope. We can turn again to Belafonte’s recent interview for a wise answer on this matter. When asked whether criticism of the president might undermine his chances, Belafonte responded, ‘‘I think we will not only undermine him, but undermine the hopes of this nation, if we don’t criticize him y Nothing will happen but good for Barack Obama and the United States of America, and indeed the world, if everybody stepped to the table and said, ‘This is the course we must be on’’’ (Belafonte, 2011). We second Belafonte’s call for a return to lively political engagement. Only if we maintain a critical eye and become active in movement politics will we at last produce ‘‘change we can believe in’’ for real.

NOTES 1. This was an expression used by Sarah Palin in the first Tea Party national convention in Nashville, Tennessee in 2010. Although using this phrase may seem sacrilegious to some, we must admit the effectiveness and wittiness of her pun. 2. As we were finishing this Introduction, the Obama Administration suffered a blow in their economic expectations as the May 2011 employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the economy just added 54,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate was 9.1 percent. The media, however, failed to point out that the rate was 8 percent for whites, but 16.2 and 11.9 for blacks and Latinos, respectively. Data from the BLS News Release, ‘‘The Employment Situation – May 2011,’’ released Friday, June 3, 2011. Information accessed from http://www.bls.gov/ on Monday, June 6, 2011. 3. As we point out in our article, Obama is outdoing Bush in this area as deportations have increased to close to 400,000 per year. 4. See Patrick Martin, ‘‘Obama education plan boosts privatization, victimizes teachers,’’ March 31, 2010, at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/rtttm31.shtml. 5. This is a fragment of a quote from V. I. Lenin. The entire quote is, ‘‘A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell y it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic

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republic can shake it.’’ See Essential Works of Lenin, edited by Henry M. Christman (NY: Dover Publications, 1987). 6. This was the black woman working for the Department of Agriculture in Georgia fired who was after a partial video of speech she delivered was leaked by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart. Reports at the time this incident happened suggested that Obama was concerned about how Glenn Beck would use the Sherrod matter to label Obama as a reverse racist. Had Obama, a constitutional lawyer, given Sherrod her constitutional rights (‘‘innocent until proven guilty’’), he would have looked like a genius, as the video was proven within twenty-four hours to be a con job. But this incident, along with many others, indicates the fear Obama and his people have about anything that may bring him close to ‘‘race matters.’’ 7. There is no systematic data we are aware of on this matter, but the word in the streets, hair salons and barber shops, and what we hear from civil rights activists suggests this is the case. Bonilla-Silva talks almost daily with poor blacks in a variety of venues (cafeterias, supermarkets, malls, etc.) and almost unanimously they express support for Obama even though he brings up problematic issues in his policies, actions, and public pronouncements. 8. This is the 43 percent or so who supported him in 2008 and seem likely to do so again in 2012. 9. We should not accept, as MSNBC crowingly did, Obama’s September 2010 announcement of an Iraq withdrawal, when there is still a reserve force of 50,000 troops and at least as many contractors in the country, in addition to the United States’s installation of the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad. 10. Excerpted from The Source, a Hip Hop magazine, by The Huffington Post. ‘‘Diddy On Obama: Calls Out President, Asks To ‘Do Better’ For Black People.’’ Piece posted on January, 31, 2001, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2011/01/31/diddy-on-obama-calls-out-president-asks-to-do-better-for-black-people_ n_816473.html. 11. This interview can be found all over the internet. We used the excerpt by Houston Williams, ‘‘Lupe Fiasco Calls Obama ‘The Biggest Terrorist’,’’ AllHipHop (available at http://www.allhiphop.com/stories/news/archive/2011/06/08/22784262.aspx). 12. While, as we have said, Obama has avoided the subject of race whenever possible, his campaign recognizes they need support from blacks in 2012, leading to some awkward scenes in which Obama’s campaign has performed the equivalent of telling African Americans that he ‘‘really meant to call, but he was just so busy.’’ In honor of the 2012 election, the Obama administration has suspended its usual practice of ignoring African Americans by creating a website and hiring a ‘‘liaison’’ to attest to the administration’s alleged benefits to blacks. (Taylor, 2011). And despite his somewhat strained relationship with the organization, Obama spoke at a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner in September 2010, asking members to ‘‘go back to your neighborhoods, to go back to your workplaces, to go to churches and go to the barbershops and go to the beauty shops, and tell them we’ve got more work to do’’ (Williams, 2011). 13. Of course, Republicans aren’t taking these voters for granted – this is why they are mounting legislation in multiple states to restrict voter rights, through ID requirements, shortened registration and voting periods, and other cheap tactics that disproportionately affect young people, the poor, and minorities.

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REFERENCES Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York, NY: The New Press. Belafonte, H. (2011, May 16). Interview with Amy Goodman. Democracy Now. Retrieved from http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/16/sing_your_song_harry_belafonte_on. Accessed on June 2, 2011. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2001). White supremacy and racism in the post-civil rights era. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publisher. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2008). The 2008 Elections and the future of anti-racism in 21st century America or how we got drunk with Obama’s hope liquor and failed to see reality. Lecture delivered at the Association of Humanist Sociologists’ Meeting, November 7. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2009). Racism without racists. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Chomsky, N. (2011, May 6). My reaction to Osama Bin Laden’s death. Guernica. Retrieved from http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652/noam_chomsky_my_reaction_to_os/. Accessed on June 4, 2011. Dawson, M. (2008, February 27). He’s black and we’re proud. The Root. Retrieved http:// www.theroot.com/views/he-s-black-and-we-re-proud. Accessed on June 2, 2011. Dixon, B. (2011, May 11). The black president and the brown vote. Black Agenda Report. Retrieved http://blackagendareport.com/content/black-president-and-brown-vote. Accessed on May 31, 2011. Domhoff, W. (2010). Who rules America? Challenges to corporate and class dominance. New York, NJ: Prentice Hall. Effron, D. A., Cameron, J., & Monin, B. (2009). Endorsing Obama licenses favoring whites. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 590–593. Fiasco, L. (2011, May 2). Quotes from Twitter feed. Retrieved from http://www.atlnight spots.com/2011/osama-bin-laden-is-dead-nicki-minajlupe-fiasco-chuck-d-skillz-react. Accessed on June 8, 2011. Forman, M. (2010). Conscious hip-hop, change, and the Obama era. American Studies Journal, 54. Retrieved from http://asjournal.zusas.uni-halle.de/179.html. Accessed on July 14, 2011. Gonza´lez, M. (2008, February 29). Count me out: The Obama craze. Counterpunch. Retrieved from http://www.counterpunch.org/gonzalez02292008.html. Accessed on June 2, 2011. Heaney, M. T., & Rojas, F. (2011). The Partisan dynamics of contention: Demobilization of the antiwar movement in the United States, 2007–2009. Mobilization: An International Journal, 16(1), 41–54. Hedges, C. (2011, May 16). The Obama deception: Why Cornel West went ballistic. TruthDig. Retrieved from http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_obama_deception_why_ cornel_west_went_ballistic_20110516/. Accessed on May 31, 2011. Hofstadter, R. (1964). The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine (November), 77–86. Horton, H. D., & Sykes, L. L. (2004). Toward a critical demography of neo-mulattoes: Structural change and diversity within the black population. In: C. Herring, V. Keith & H. D. Horton (Eds.), Skin deep: How race and complexion matter in the ‘‘Color-Blind’’ era (pp. 159–173). Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press.

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Jung, M.-K., Costa-Vargas, J., & Bonilla-Silva, E. (2011). The state of white supremacy: Racism, governance, and the United States. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2005). A profile of African-American, Latino, and whites with Medicare: Implications for outreach efforts for the new drug benefit. Washington, DC: The Henry Kaiser Family Foundation. Lo´pez, M. H. (2009). Dissecting the 2008 electorate – Most diverse in U.S. history. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1209/racial-ethnic-voterspresidential-election. Accessed on June 4, 2011. Montopoli, B. (2010, July 29). Obama: Shirley Sherrod deserved better. CBS News. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20012072-503544.html. Accessed on May 31, 2011. Myers, K. (2003). White fright: Reproducing white supremacy through casual discourse. In: A. Doane & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White out: The continuing significance of racism. New York, NY: Routledge. National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities. (2011, May 10). President Obama, actions speak louder than words. NALACC Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.nalacc.org/index.php?id¼107&no_cache¼1&L¼1. Accessed on June 4, 2011. National Institute for Latino Policy. (2011, June 6). Social and political organizations to present president Obama on this visit to Puerto Rico with demands. Press Release from the June 14th Coordinating Committee. Obama, B. (2007, March 4). Speech delivered at Selma voting rights march commemoration. A.M.E. Church. Retrieved from http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007/03/obamas_ selma_speech_text_as_de.html. Accessed on July 14, 2011. Oberlander, J., & White, J. (2009). Systemwide cost control – The missing link in health care reform. New England Journal of Medicine, 361, 1131–1133. Rivlin, G. (2010). Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. – How the working poor became big business. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. Rodrı´ guez, B. (2011, April 16). Gutierrez: Support for Obama depends on reform. Associated Press. Retrieved from http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/04/16/gutierrez-support-forobama-depends-on-immigration-reform/. Accessed on June 2, 2011. Rugh, J. S., & Massey, D. (2010). Racial segregation and the American foreclosure crisis. American Sociological Review, 75(5), 629–651. Smith, R. A. (1996). Racism in the post civil rights era: Now you see it, now you don’t. New York, NY: State University of New York Press. Stein, S. (2011, May 20). Richard Trumka threatens to abandon democrats in 2012 unless they fight harder for labor. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www. huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/20/richard-trumka-democrats_n_864518.html. Accessed on June 2, 2011. Taylor, K.-Y. (2011, May 19). What has Obama done for African Americans? The Socialist Worker. Retrieved from http://socialistworker.org/2011/05/19/obama-and-the-blackvote. Accessed on May 31, 2011. Williams, J. (2011, May 10). President Obama, congressional black caucus on solid ground? Politico.com. Retrieved from http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54617.html. Accessed on June 4, 2011.

THE BLACK PRESIDENTIAL NON-SLAVE: GENOCIDE AND THE PRESENT TENSE OF RACIAL SLAVERY Dylan Rodrı´ guez ABSTRACT A devastating racial logic remains at play in the moment of a ‘‘post-civil rights’’ Black presidency. Barack Obama’s ascent has amplified a national mythology of racial progress in the US multiculturalist age. This mythology has fundamentally undermined both the credibility and critical traction of existing scholarly-activist languages of racism, antiracism, white supremacy, and institutionalized racial dominance. Thus, the discourse of national-racial vindication that animates Obama’s ascendance can and must be radically opposed with creative historical narrations. These narrations must attempt to explain how and why systems of racial dominance and state-condoned, state-sanctioned racist violence remain central to the shaping of our present tense. The chapter approaches this problematic by examining how the historical social logics of racial chattel slavery cannot be historically compartmentalized and temporally isolated into a discrete ‘‘past,’’ because they are genocidal in their structuring and are thus central to the constitution of our existing social and cultural systems. The apparatus of the North American racial Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 17–50 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022008

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chattel institution must be theorized in its present tense articulations because its logics of power, domination, and violence have never really left us. The essay offers a schematic elaboration of this reconceptualization of racial genocide focusing on how the slavery’s abolition in the latter-19th century provides the political, cultural, and legal basis for slavery’s ‘‘reform’’ into the apparatuses of policing, criminalization, widespread and state-sanctioned antiblack bodily violence, and ultimately massive imprisonment. This examination allows for an elaboration of how slavery’s genocidal social logics permeate the present tense social formation, particularly at the site of massive racial criminalization and imprisonment. Keywords: Barack Obama; genocide; racism; white supremacy; postcivil rights; slavery

INTRODUCTION: RETELLING THE RACIAL PRESENT TENSE A devastating racial logic remains at play in the moment of a ‘‘post-civil rights’’ Black presidency. By now we should be able to agree on at least one political-intellectual premise in our continual assessment of Barack Obama’s significance as a national executive, global (Black/multiracial) political figure, and iconic symbol of liberal American optimism: the way in which his ascent amplifies and affirms the national mythology of racial progress1 in the US multiculturalist age has fundamentally undermined both the common sense credibility and critical political traction of existing scholarly-activist languages of racism, antiracism, white supremacy, and institutionalized racial dominance. If the work of building a robust public conversation around the systemic, historically rooted structures of state and state-sanctioned racism seemed extraordinarily difficult before 2008, it now seems virtually impossible in the shadow of the desegregated Oval Office. The central argument of what follows is this: the discourse of nationalracial vindication that animates Obama’s ascendance can and must be radically opposed with creative socio-historical narrations. These narrations must attempt to explain how and why systems of racial dominance and statecondoned, state-sanctioned racist violence remain central to the shaping of our present tense. I approach this problematic by examining how the particular social logics of racial chattel slavery cannot be historically

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compartmentalized and temporally isolated into a discrete ‘‘past,’’ because they are genocidal in their structuring and are thus central to the constitution of our existing social and cultural systems. In part because slavery is often not explicitly framed, analyzed, and theorized as a unique chapter among the multiple global stories of racial genocide, I contend that the apparatus of the North American racial chattel institution must be theorized in its present tense articulations because its logics of power, domination, and violence have never really left us.2 While this core argument requires significantly more elaboration than I am allowed here, my intent is to offer the initial outlines of a descriptive, historical, and theoretical framework that clarifies the political stakes and contexts of thinking radically, racially, and historically in the current moment. This essay is organized into five short sections, which present some preliminary components of such a framing. The first section of this chapter departs from Obama’s renowned 2008 ‘‘A More Perfect Union’’ speech by revisiting the national-racial turning point that this patriotic oration glorifies and mystifies: the seemingly magical racial transformation of a white supremacist and antiblack slave nation through the (white) moral-political assertion of (Black) emancipation and (Black male) citizenship. I briefly examine how two key elements within the racial narrative of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy unwittingly demonstrate the persistent historical present tense of racial slavery, to the extent that slavery is understood in its totality as a cultural discourse, material institution, and idiom of power and dominance.3 The second section of this essay departs from this political condition by urgently arguing for a re-telling of the national-racial story in the aftermath of November 2008. Here, I take as my point of departure the call issued by C. L. R. James almost a century ago to view the work of historical narrative as an urgent, potentially radical political labor in the aftermath – and in anticipation – of revolutionary (Black liberationist and anticolonialist) insurgencies. The third section proceeds toward the construction of such a narrative by outlining a working conception of slavery’s historical present tense. Anchoring this notion of slavery as a central component of our current social condition is a re-opened analytic of racial genocide. I situate this preliminary analysis within a genealogy of radical thought, ranging from the Civil Rights Congress’ We Charge Genocide (1951) to Joa˜o Costa Vargas’ Never Meant to Survive (2008). This body of work facilitates a significantly more comprehensive understanding of how the lived historical realities of slavery-as-genocide both exceed the empiricist/quantitative descriptions of genocide common to many social scientific studies (often characterized by a fixation on numerical calculations of premature mortality,

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physiological suffering, and generational loss) and challenge discrete temporal periodizations of genocide which attempt to delineate the discrete beginning and endpoints of its historical processes and social effects.4 This genealogy of radical analysis also suggests that the particular antiblack racial genocide of North American chattel slavery does not simply ‘‘end,’’ but is wrapped into a historical continuity that sustains slavery’s structural and institutional violence into the current social condition. The essay’s fourth and fifth sections offer a schematic elaboration of this reconceptualization of racial genocide. I focus in the fourth section on how the abolition of slavery in the latter-19th century provides the political, cultural, and legal basis for slavery’s ‘‘reform’’ into the apparatuses of policing, criminalization, widespread and state-sanctioned antiblack bodily violence, and ultimately massive imprisonment. This narration examines how the apparent reformist windfall of slavery’s abolition actually rewrites and exacerbates the fundamental (juridical, physiological, ontological) violence of the abolished institution, and permanently codes the logics of antiblack genocide into post-emancipation US statecraft. I proceed in the fifth section by suggesting that the racial story of slavery’s present tense is perhaps best told through a re-narration of the systemic logics of the contemporary (post-1970s) US prison regime. Departing from an existing body of scholarship, I argue for an understanding of the US prison regime’s institutional genealogy that centers its historical continuities with slavery’s genocidal social logics. I conclude the essay with a meditation on the Obama ascendancy as a landmark of the post-1960s era of ‘‘White Reconstruction,’’ a notion that de-centers (but does not dispense with) the more commonly asserted notion of a ‘‘post-civil rights’’ period. The racial spectacle that marks the patriotic cessation of the historical white monopoly on the office of the US Presidency represents a certain state of emergency for existing analytics of race, racism, and white supremacy. What might it mean to think, theorize, and organize radical politicalintellectual work around the terms of ‘‘white supremacy’’ and ‘‘racism’’ at a time when institutionalized white monopolies have apparently dissipated (even if only through piecemeal diversity initiatives), and the social legacies of US racial genocides (slavery, land conquest, colonialism) are commonly understood as artifacts of a distant, unaccessible, and largely irrelevant past? What might it mean to consider the current moment as a time when the changing social logics of a historically genocidal and proto-genocidal racist nation have enabled a piecemeal repopulation of the ideological and political apparatuses of national white supremacy with the minds, spirits, and bodies of its onetime slaves, savages, and racial colonial subjects?

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ASSESSING THE RACIAL STORY: BLACK PRESIDENT AS (BLACK) NON-SLAVE The rise of Barack Obama and the climate of hollow unfulfillment that has followed his administration’s unsurprising adherence to the protocols and logics of the racial/racist state indicate that the aftermath of his ascent is not best described as a disappointment or political ‘‘betrayal.’’5 Rather, it is a spectacular symptom of a reconfigured racial political problem: how are we to make sense of the enduring historical structures (as well as the empirical evidence) of widespread racial subjection within a state and social formation that generally articulates itself as multiculturalist in orientation, desegregated in form, and post-racist in institutional spirit? (Keep in mind that even the racist right-wing reactions to the alleged multiculturalist hegemony are themselves often grounded in the relatively easily accepted premise that the United States is no longer a racist – or even a racial – society; this assumption matters, if only because it was utterly unfeasible until recently.) We can address a small but significant component of this urgent political dilemma by addressing it as a challenge of both theory and narrative. We do not have substantial enough frameworks through which to explain (theorize) and radically engage the structures of racial dominance that have succeeded the period of American Jim Crow apartheid and persisted – or even proliferated – through Obama’s presidential ascent. Nor do we have adequate methods for telling the (racial) story of what has happened since the 1960s as the social textures and institutionalizations of racist violence/ subordination have seemingly transformed or, at least, dramatically changed in the ‘‘post-civil rights’’ period. Given the complexity of these challenges and the Obama ascendancy’s centrality to them, it is worth asking: What national relation to the long historical legacies of racial chattel slavery is narrated through and by Obama, and toward what ends? How is Obama’s vexed existence as a Black social subject narrated as if it is outside the long national genealogies of antiblack subjection, and thus resituated within a ‘‘multiculturalist’’ revision of the long, durable story of national white supremacy? How does the racial story of Barack Obama actually indicate racial slavery’s fugitive presence in our midst? Candidate Obama’s March 2008 ‘‘A More Perfect Union’’ speech, arguably the defining cultural moment of his presidential campaign, provides an accessible entry into examining the apparent shifts in the discursive and rhetorical structures of race and white supremacy in the current moment. As the signature moment in the campaign in which Obama directly addressed ‘‘race’’ as a complex political and historical relation of power, this oration

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brought unprecedented popular legitimacy to a 21st century vision of multiculturalist, nationalist optimism. Lifting its title from the opening sentence of the US Constitution, Obama’s address was coined as a political denunciation of (and personal disassociation from) the widely respected Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons in the prophetic tradition of Black Liberation Theology were widely framed by the national media, and eventually by Obama himself, as demagogic, race-baiting iterations of Black paranoia.6 Crucial to our discussion is that Obama’s speech rested on an ahistorical caricaturing of the legacies of racial chattel slavery: he narrated the liberal myth of slavery’s demise through the notion of a striving, though inevitably imperfect Christian nationhood. The document [the nation’s founders] produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. (Obama, 2008) (emphasis added)

Following the logic of this biblical rhetoric, to enslave is tantamount to being and becoming fully human: the slave owning white society collectively bears Adam’s culpability of original sin, the necessary burden for eventually inhabiting the Christian humility of humanness before God. This white supremacist humanness is universalized throughout the speech, but is especially conspicuous in Obama’s re-narration of the Constitution’s juridical normalization of a slave institution that spawned epochal genocidal racist violence. Stunningly – given his substantial pedagogical engagement with the emerging scholarly field of critical race theory during his 12 years as a University of Chicago Law School professor7 – Obama obliterates any historical understanding of the Constitution as a fundamentally antiblack, anti-indigenous national document. Rather, he mystifies this founding American text – which legally formed, validated, and protected the institution of racial chattel slavery – as if it were an immanently abolitionist one. Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. (Obama, 2008)

Of course, the narrative arc of this liberal mythology is nothing new, and the story is entirely routine in bypassing the centrality of slavery and land conquest to the Constitution’s formulation of citizenship, property rights, commerce, domestic militias, and taxation (infamously, ‘‘Taxes shall

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be y determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.’’). The more relevant issue for our discussion is: Why was this speech issued as it was, by the person who orated it? On the one hand, it seems easy to delineate how ‘‘A More Perfect Union’’ attempts to erase the indelible: it reduces the social and economic system that rested on the chattel subjection of Africans to a compartmentalized and ultimately reconcilable event in the American white racial destiny. This evisceration of slavery’s long historical impact on the nation has been crucial to the very feasibility of the American national-racial narrative in its hegemonic forms. On the other hand, according to Obama’s narrative, the protracted and arduous process of slavery’s abolition is itself a universal ‘‘American’’ history, and should be told as a non-racial story: And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time. (Obama, 2008)

Slavery’s lasting legacies of social, economic, and cultural violence thus disappear in the redemptive allegory of a righteously antiracist American body politic. This teleology of racial progress allows for a compartmentalization of genocidal slavery’s temporality, spatiality, and sociological effect: it is a bygone period of American history, rather than a fundamental social architecture and discursive matrix guiding the formation of American racial power relations during and beyond the plantation era. While Obama later catalogues some of the ‘‘inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow’’ – Black/ white ‘‘achievement gaps’’ in schooling, occupational discrimination, ‘‘the wealth and income gap between Black and white,’’ etc. – his purpose in doing so is to contextualize and resoundingly disavow the racial resentment of ‘‘Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation.’’ For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years y . That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. (Obama, 2008)

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Borrowing an ideological line from the Black neoconservative litany, Obama’s dismissal of Black ‘‘anger’’ via Jeremiah Wright is guided by a disciplinary admonishment: Black resentment is a misplaced reaction to a social condition that is significantly recreated by a) the Black cultural pathology of what right-wing Black pundit John McWhorter (2001) calls Black American ‘‘self-sabotage’’ (for Obama, ‘‘our own complicity in our condition’’), and b) the particular self-defeating tendencies of Black ‘‘anger and bitterness,’’ which obstruct the formation of those unspecified (multicultural/multiracial) ‘‘alliances’’ required for progressive social change. It is here that Obama tentatively invokes the irreparable historical violence of antiblack racial slavery so that it may be distanced, contained, and erased. Against their own political intentions, rhetorical gestures like these indicate the fugitive presence of slavery’s structuring national-racial violence in the present tense: there is something irrepressible about slavery’s persistent impact on the social imagination of the post-1865 US, and rhetorics of patriotism (across the political spectrum) must constantly confront this vexing presence. We will examine this problem more closely in the following section. For now, it should be emphasized that the vision (and for many, the fear) of a Black president calls forth the possibility of a national racial salvation that can (finally) escape the absolute historical gravity of the genocidally antiblack peculiar institution. It is in the context of such a national racial redemption that Obama represents a subtle though historically significant political breakthrough: he has turned American patriotic racial humanism into a global (Nobel Prize winning) charge rather than an oxymoron. The speech enunciated this ideological position through the metaphor of a salvable racial injury, healed through an insistent post-racial nationalism: But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. (Obama, 2008)

The philosophical precedents of Obama’s ludic American racial humanism are worth briefly addressing, if only because such a reflection can help establish the grounds for a sustained critical response. Black theorist and writer Sylvia Wynter powerfully reminds us that the epochal philosophical project of Western liberal humanism has relied on the mapping of absolute irrationality onto the Black, colonized, and native positions ‘‘all over the

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world.’’ Wynter thus summarizes the racial schema that orders the liberal humanist intellectual movement: [I]t is the intellectuals of the bourgeoisie, from Adam Smith and Malthus to Darwin and Ricardo, that y spearhead the second intellectual revolution of humanism, this time a bioeconomic or liberal humanism y . So we are now moving from rational/irrational to evolved/non-evolved, selected/dysselected. And here we come to the crux of the matter. This code is going to be mapped upon the extra-humanly determined difference of somatotypes between what DuBois calls the ‘‘lighter and the darker races’’, or the colour line. So this will be enacted as a code, not only as between white and Black in the apartheid systems of the US and of South Africa, but also in the colonizer/colonized or the settler/native dichotomous relation all over the world. All over the world. (Wynter & Scott, 2000, pp. 182–183) (emphasis in the original)

If we follow Wynter’s mapping of Western liberal humanism’s irreducible commitment to the epistemic and social violence of racial binary opposition – and its particular tethering of white civilizational supremacy to genocidal antiblackness – we can better understand why Obama’s furtive liberal racial humanism is so oxymoronic: it presumes the Black’s capacity for inhabiting rationality and evolved/modern human subjectivity, while ignoring how the white liberal humanist racial schema preemptively (and permanently) posits the Black as the ‘‘non-evolved’’ and ‘‘dysselected’’ figure of history. Obama’s rhetoric seems to magically resolve this fatal humanist contradiction by situating the Black presidential figure as the conduit for sanitizing the historical toxicities of national white supremacy and its singular productions of systemic antiblack violence. But how does Obama accomplish this magical feat, if he in fact remains a figure of racial blackness in spite of – or perhaps because of – his elite political status? What makes him so successful in sterilizing the absolute, permanent, and irresolvable (Black) resentment/anger and (white) national anxiety/guilt that surrounds the stubborn presence of slavery’s logics of social domination? It is here that we might visit on a second narrative structure that has guided Obama’s political trajectory since the time of his emergence as a viable presidential candidate. There is an under-theorized, though not unnoticed, aspect of the Obama ascendency that constitutes a necessary dimension of his cross-racial attractiveness as a national symbol. His racial persona is significantly defined by the fact that he is not a descendant of slaves. On the contrary, he has famously acknowledged (and his presidential campaign has strangely valorized) his slave-owning maternal ancestry.8 Said one Obama spokesperson in 2007, ‘‘It is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president of the

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United States’’ (Swarns, 2007). Another Obama representative posited that the candidate’s Southern slaveholding ancestry was ‘‘representative of America’’ (Fornek, 2007). In fact, available evidence suggests that Obama may be descended from slave traders on the paternal side of his family tree as well (Hinckley & Soole, 2007; Obama, 2004).9 Furthermore, it has frequently been Obama himself who has inferred the broader political relevance of his family tree’s differential proximities to New World slavery: I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a Black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one. (Obama, 2008)

I address these genealogical matters not to attribute a vulgar essentialist significance to one’s familial (and social) heritage, but rather to bring attention to the political meanings of attempts to (self)narrate such a decisive rupturing of the globally naturalized connection between modern constructions of racial blackness and the social condition/abject status of racial chattel slavery (Barrett, 1999, forthcoming). I would suggest that it is precisely this discourse of disruption – Obama’s embodiment of a symbolic severance of blackness from slavery – that unintentionally confirms the binding historical presence of racial slavery as a logic of social power that permeates the everyday intercourses of the nation, from electoral discourse and public policy debate to policing strategies and warfare protocols. In attempting to undo the long historical conflation between blackness and slavery, the Obama ascendancy is also rewriting the script of white supremacist nation-building, compartmentalizing the genocidal legacies of slavery and fortifying a liberal mythology of post-civil rights AfricanAmerican progress and political empowerment. It is exactly such a narrative that facilitates and enhances the structures of institutionalized state-organized and state-condoned (antiblack) racist subjection in the ‘‘multicultural’’ age. What is important here is not the seemingly self-explanatory and simple fact that Obama is not descended from slaves. Rather, it is the notion of his exceptional relationship to the historical structure of slavery that must be addressed: this ‘‘exceptional Blackness’’ allows Obama to bear the weight of detoxifying the long legacies of genocidal slavery: Obama represents the magical figure of the Black American non-slave. Yet we must be careful to

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admit: while acknowledging the idiosyncrasies of his own family tree, Obama consistently identifies himself with American blackness, affirms an African American identity, and recognizes that his ‘‘biracial’’ parentage (Black African father, white mother) does not grant him amnesty or even significant distance from the complex lived realities of Black social existence. He does all of this, however, within a narrative structure that pronounces a purposeful, strategic alienation from the Black slave’s social existence. A still-assembling global common sense suggests – through the person of Obama – that the essential violences of ‘‘race’’ are deteriorating if not altogether disappeared: November 5, 2008, editorial headlines from Vancouver and Glasgow read, ‘‘Americans Move a Step Closer to PostRacial Society’’ and ‘‘The Nation that Stops a Race y Until Now,’’ while in Sydney, a February 2007 feature article asked, ‘‘Can this Man Unite America?’’10 The US print, radio, television, and Internet media discourse in this rhetorical and ideological vein is so saturated it should require no further mention here. Against this discourse, I continue by elaborating another primary contention: that our historical moment – and the Obama nationalracial telos – cannot be politically severed from the substructure of racist/ antiblack, genocidal and proto-genocidal violence that is formed in the crucible of racial chattel slavery, and perpetuated through its logics of social power as they shape the distended post-emancipation (post-1865) and postcivil rights (post-1965) periods.

THE TIME-LAPSING LOGICS OF (ANTIBLACK) RACIAL GENOCIDE The watershed of November 4, 2008, has composed another chapter in a national-racial story that incessantly postpones confrontation with the fugitive presence of slavery in our midst. Against this multiculturalist racial/ post-racial optimism, I wish to consider a different set of political and narrative premises for conceptualizing our historical present tense: most importantly, that the intertwined social logics of racial chattel slavery, white supremacy, and multiple racial genocides constitute institutional and political legacies that cannot be easily contained within time-limited frameworks. Few have phrased the problem with more clarity than Native Hawaiian radical intellectual Haunani Kay Trask: But can we, as Native peoples, resist the planned New World Order by ourselves? Probably not. The state of the world gives us little hope. Native resistance can be and has

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DYLAN RODRI´GUEZ been crushed. As indigenous nations die out, our peoples reach a point of irreparable harm. We cannot sustain our numbers, our cultures, our stewardship of the earth. Even while they plan our demise, First World countries and those aspiring to that status memorialize our passing. (Trask, 1999, pp. 61–62)

Elaborating Trask, we might ask how the institutional, cultural, and epistemological inheritances of racial genocide perpetually leap into our midst, and compel a reckoning that is not easily accomplished through prevailing political languages and activist forms. If we are to respect Trask’s radical disruption of the presumed time of genocide as past tense, we must understand that hers is both a narrative and theoretical statement: the ‘‘story’’ of racial genocide, from this indigenous anti-colonialist perspective, is a telling of how the world’s structures of genocidal terror and violence form a stranglehold on a ‘‘future’’ which does not exist for the Native. To confront this deracinated ‘‘future time,’’ literally a reckoning with one’s destiny of non-existence, is to render absurd the multiculturalist, nationalist pretensions of the Obama telos. Centering an antiblack genocide temporality, the late Manning Marable reflects in 1983 on a nation-building process in which ‘‘Blacks have been brutally oppressed, unquestionably, since 1619.’’ Addressing a post-civil rights state whose capacities were being redirected and administered toward a social planning that ‘‘could inevitably involve the complete obliteration of the entire Black reserve army of labor and sections of the Black working class,’’ (Marable, 1983, pp. 251–252) he invigorates a radical epistemology of racial genocide in reference to the contemporary United States: The genocidal logic of the situation could demand, in the not too distant future, the rejection of the ghetto’s right to survival in the new capitalist order. Without gas chambers or pogroms, the dark ghetto’s economic and social institutions might be destroyed, and many of its residents would simply cease to exist. (Marable, 1983, p. 253) (emphasis in original)

Following Trask’s narrative opening and Marable’s analytical-temporal focal point, we can begin to appreciate how racial genocides constitute multiple, continuous histories of the present. These thinkers’ epistemic centering of ‘‘planned demise,’’ ‘‘obliteration,’’ and ‘‘ceasing to exist’’ delineates a state of emergency that cannot be soothed or solved with piecemeal social reforms, stopgap economic incentives, or populist significations of racial diversity and multicultural nationalism. To absorb the gravity of these genocide-centered positions is to more fully appreciate why the aforementioned story of the Black presidential non-slave must be refuted:

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because if its mythology is allowed to exist, then the present and future times of genocides are not only naturalized, they also become imperceptible. My purpose here is to move toward another way of telling the story of our historical present that keeps intimacy with (rather than rejecting or fleeing from) the profound, politicized despair that accompanies it11 (Ngo, 2005). I am not interested in a point-by-point refutation of the naı¨ ve-to-insidious allegations of the onset of a ‘‘postracial/postracist America.’’ Rather, I am invested in foregrounding and refining the theoretical tools of radical, historical narrative creativity. How might the retelling of racial genocide’s multiple ‘‘stories’’ facilitate the expansion of radical explanatory frameworks and analytical methods for addressing the contemporary condition, and displace the racial story of a post-civil rights Black presidency? I am inspired in this instance by the durable political-intellectual model of C. L. R. James. As a historian of Black insurrection and revolution, James understood that the theoretical fluency and analytical clarity catalyzed by such narrative creativity might help generate a scholarly-activist practice of telling and retelling social stories that inhabit, rather than mystify, this genocidal present tense. James, whose 1938 study of the Haitian slave revolution unapologetically anticipates the coming era of anticolonialist uprising and transformation, asserts the centrality of historical narrative structure to the scholarly marking/making of (Black) revolutionary subjects – without a way to retell the story of the master, against the master’s power and toward the master’s demise, the Black New World (colonial) slave was perpetually stuck in the language, vernacular, and imagination of her/his own dehumanization. Following James, the purpose of such a narrative structure is to form a critical apprehension of the specific conditions and political ‘‘necessities’’ defining a historical moment, while attempting ‘‘[t]o portray the limits of those necessities and the realisation, complete or partial, of all possibilities’’ (James, 1989, p. x). In my view, James’s encouragement opens the historical imagination toward a radical narrative creativity that might allow us to tell and retell the present tense stories of institutionalized dehumanization (Gordon, 1996, pp. 305–306) and systemic racist subjection. What might it mean to narrate the historical present against the presidential figure of the Black non-slave, and to radically, unapologetically refute the idea of an America vindicated of the worst of its racial ‘‘past?’’ If the very idea of America is to be narratively steeped in a permanent indictment of the racial damage on which it is based – an implication that is not only ethically necessary, but which may be productive of creative and radical political possibilities – then a useful narrative starting point is one that views ‘‘the necessities of [our political-intellectual]

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environment’’ (James, 1989, p. x) as being centrally defined by the permanent and time-lapsing marks of white supremacist and racist social logics, particularly and especially those formed by the antiblack genocide of racial chattel slavery and its complex historical aftermath. Plainly, this is to tell a ‘‘non-fictional’’ theoretical story through the language of a historical tale, one that invites a form of political and cultural discourse that exceeds the constraints of academic disciplines and becomes, in a sense, an antidisciplinary and potentially ‘‘popular’’ vernacular of social truth.12

REVISITING ‘‘GENOCIDE’’ I place emphasis on the genocidal structuring of the New World racial enslavement regime not because its primary objective was the wholesale physical elimination of a population, but rather because it was central to a civilizational project that undertook the absolute displacement or eradication of different indigenous ways of life, from Africa to the Americas. There is an unbreakable historical, institutional, and conceptual linkage between the ideological invention of racial blackness as the physiological marker of the slave and the zero point of the emergent modern racial order, and the political economies of this racial marking within changing modes of economic production (Patterson, 1982; Robinson, 1983; Wynter, 2003). Here, it is crucial to understand that the epistemes and social matrices of racial blackness are continuously and primarily structured by the racial chattel relation, rather than the labor, migrant, colonial, or citizen relation: thus, the social relations constituted by this coercive – and historically pervasive – tethering of blackness to chattel status form the conditions within which the structural foundations of the modern civilized order (from civil society to the nation-state) have emerged and flourished.13 In other words, it is the forceful, historically consistent, militarized and institutionalized conflation of Black social existence with the social status of property – and the peculiar subjection of Black bodies to regimes of physiological vulnerability and disintegration such as the slave plantation, lynching, apartheid, and racial criminalization – that constitutes the primary historical logics of antiblack genocide. Different historical formations of antiblack racist violence flow from this primary relation, which constantly reiterates and improvises on the biopolitical dimensions of slavery.14 Black political subjectivities, freedom struggles, and liberation discourses have formed their own, organic sets of concerns, sensibilities, agendas, and analytics within this antiblack genocide continuum.15 The remainder of this discussion attempts to resonate with this

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critical genealogy of antiblack genocide by outlining a historical analytic through which it can be traced in the present tense. It is widely acknowledged by legal and historical scholars, as well as indigenous liberation and human rights activists, that the United Nations’ official definition of genocide (as coded in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) is deeply flawed as both a juridical framework and historical conceptualization. While I have more thoroughly discussed the need for a critical disposition toward the UN’s intentional narrowing of the scholarly and legal understanding of genocide elsewhere, (Rodrı´ guez, 2009) it is worth emphasizing that the earliest draft formulations of the UN Genocide Convention offered a substantially broader understanding of this historical concept, which included genocidal practices that extended beyond the narrow realm of wholesale population decimation or liquidation. Native American scholar Ward Churchill provides a summation of versions of the pre-approval draft in the 1997 text A Little Matter of Genocide, describing a significantly more robust and layered definition of genocide than that eventually legislated by the UN. Central to this proposed UN definition of genocide, Churchill writes, was the juridical position that, y acts or policies aimed at ‘‘preventing the preservation or development’’ of ‘‘racial, national, linguistic, religious or political groups’’ should be considered genocidal, along with a range of ‘‘preparatory’’ acts, including ‘‘all forms of propaganda tending by their systematic and hateful character to provoke genocide, or tending to make it appear as a necessary, legitimate, or excusable act.’’ (Churchill, 1997, p. 410)

The early drafts of the Genocide Convention paid rigorous attention to genocidal state practices that extended beyond mass killing, and included complex definitions of cultural genocide, political repression, and a range of culpable acts that implicated a spectrum of state and state-sanctioned institutional and ideological/discursive mobilizations. Legal scholar Raphae¨l Lemkin, one of the central members of the Genocide Convention’s original drafting committee, is widely acknowledged as the originator of the term, as he develops an extensive definition of genocide in Chapter IX of his 1944 opus Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Importantly, Lemkin’s text employs Nazi Germany as a case study to build a multilayered understanding of genocide that provides a strong legal basis for criminal prosecution of offending states and material redress for genocide’s victims/survivors across different historical and political circumstances (Lemkin, 1944, 1947). While there are endemic limitations that emerge from Lemkin’s paradigmatic centering of the Nazi case, his text holds significant value within its own parameters: perhaps most importantly, his insistence on a

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strong juridical structure of international accountability for genocide as a ‘‘composite’’ of practices, usually though not exclusively carried out by members of the offending state, became a central and characterizing feature of the draft proposal he and others submitted for the UN’s final approval. On receiving Lemkin’s text, however, several former European colonial states in concert with the emerging Cold War superpowers coalesced to undermine the draft Convention of its definitional scope and legal enforceability. UN representatives from the United States and Soviet Union successfully expelled Lemkin and others from the Genocide Convention’s revision and approval process and, in dialogue with representatives serving on UN’s Legal Committee and Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, eviscerated some of the central juridical provisions delineated in the draft. (Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990, pp. 8–12) The UN’s maneuvering also resulted in the elimination of protocols for a permanent international tribunal – instead allowing accused governments to develop autonomous measures to internally assess accusations of genocidal conduct – and erased the entire second article of the draft, which defined the far-reaching concept of ‘‘cultural genocide.’’ As two prominent genocide scholars have succinctly written, ‘‘although it marked a milestone in international law, the UN definition is of little use to scholars’’ (Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990, p. 10). Thus, despite such important attempts at appropriating and rearticulating the terms of the UN Genocide Convention as William Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress’s (1951) We Charge Genocide petition to the UN (which seized on the language of the Genocide Convention to formally accuse the US government of committing genocide against its domestic Black population), and Jean-Paul Sartre and Arlette El Kaı¨ m-Sartre’s 1968 marshalling of evidence of US military genocide in Vietnam (Sartre & El Kaı¨ m-Sartre, 1968), the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is a momentous failure as legislation on its own terms, and fails as a remotely sufficient definition of genocide in its most historicized forms. It is precisely as a result of this failure that the work of Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress is being revisited at the current moment by a growing community of radical intellectuals, including anthropologist and Africana studies scholar Joa˜o Costa Vargas (2008) and Native American (Cherokee) feminist scholar Andrea Smith (2005), among others. These thinkers enable a critical revisiting of We Charge Genocide as a document for the historical present, a vital intellectual maneuver in light of the UN’s ideological hegemony in the terrain of genocide discourse. The remainder of this essay will proceed from an analytical and conceptual framing of genocide that is broadly informed by the texts of thinkers like

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Trask, Marable, Lemkin, Patterson, Vargas, Smith, and Churchill. Following the trajectory of these intellectuals, I am conceptualizing racial genocide as a logic of social formation and nation/civilization building that produces multiple, dynamically related systems of physiological, civil, and social death. Genocide, as I understand it here, is a socially productive process that is as centrally occupied with the creation of oppressive and repressive conditions of existence as it is with mobilizing antisocial, militarized processes that lead to intensified or protracted systems of physical human extermination. I am also suggesting that by tracing the institutional and political continuities of racial chattel slavery as a historically productive genocidal apparatus, it is possible to more seriously examine how the most normalized – and therefore terrifyingly acceptable – systems of white supremacist state and statesanctioned antiblack violence may be seen to emerge organically from the genealogies of racial chattel slavery and thus shape the present tense historical condition in which each of us differently and perpetually lives.

SLAVERY’S ABOLITION AND THE CARCERAL LOGIC OF GENOCIDE A racial chattel logic permeates the contemporary US social formation, most stridently in the mutually constituting production of its policing, criminalization, and imprisonment apparatuses. It has proved to be especially difficult to generate a critical language around this relation, despite – and because of – progressive attempts to tentatively narrate such historical linkages. While legal scholar Michelle Alexander has most recently proposed a historical analogy that views the emergence of post-1970s mass imprisonment as ‘‘the New Jim Crow,’’ she ultimately asserts that the condition is in fact not substantively comparable to Jim Crow, and that while ‘‘the parallels between the two systems of control are striking,’’ it is more important to understand that ‘‘there are important differences’’ (Alexander, 2010, p. 195). What I wish to critically engage here is not Alexander’s cataloguing of the institutional, cultural, and political differences between the racist regimes of formal segregation and post-segregation mass imprisonment. I strongly agree that a rigorous illustration of such empirical and political distinctions is central to any serious analysis of the post-1960s period. Rather, I question Alexander’s methodological (and political) choice to pigeonhole the Jim Crow-mass incarceration juxtaposition within a superficial posture of ‘‘analogy,’’ rather than enrich it through a robust conception of institutional

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genealogy and historical continuity, and infuse its conceptual power with an epistemic centering of the long present tense of antiblack state violence (if not antiblack genocide). (In fact, there are a number of disappointingly incomplete gestures to precisely these methodological possibilities evidenced throughout her text.) To invoke Jim Crow as part of a narrative framing of the current period of unprecedented antiblack and racist criminalization, in my view, invites an amplification of the prison regime’s fundamental connectedness to allegedly bygone eras of the US racist state and racist (white) civil society, rather than a mitigation or analytical disavowal of that connectedness. Of course, in one strict sense Alexander is correct in asserting that ‘‘if one were to draft a list of the differences between slavery and Jim Crow, the list might well be longer than the list of similarities. The same goes for Jim Crow and mass incarceration.’’ Alexander’s call for a rigorous inventory of the specificities of different racial ‘‘systems of control’’ (Alexander, 2010, p. 195) (from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration) is not to be dismissed, as it disciplines against rhetorical and analytical sloppiness on the part of activists and scholars alike. At the same time, I critically question the conspicuous racial telos of Alexander’s narrative, particularly as conveyed in her overarching assertion that the conditions of the racial present are marked by an ‘‘absence of overt racial hostility’’ among elected officials and other politicians, law enforcement officials, and within ‘‘the public discourse’’ more generally (Alexander, 2010, p. 197). It is in this vein that Alexander undermines the potential force of her accumulated descriptions of mass incarceration, especially as she resorts to a familiar refrain of the post-civil rights (and post2008) litany: But even granting that some African Americans may fear the police today as much as their grandparents feared the Klan y and that the penal system may be as brutal in many respects as Jim Crow (or slavery), the absence of racial hostility in the public discourse and the steep decline in vigilante racial violence is no small matter. It is also significant that the ‘‘whites only’’ signs are gone and that children of all colors can drink from the same water fountains, swim in the same pools, and play on the same playgrounds. Black children today can even dream of being president of the United States. Those who claim that mass incarceration is ‘‘just like’’ Jim Crow make a serious mistake. Things have changed. (Alexander, 2010, p. 197)

While affirming Alexander’s insistence on a critical analysis that does not resort to slipshod analogies and which appreciates the shifts in the institutional and discursive textures of the post-Jim Crow racial condition, I wish to challenge her conceptualization of ‘‘racial hostility’’ in this instance. (I will momentarily leave aside the question of Alexander’s gross

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mis-estimation of the post-1960s reawakening of organized white supremacist movements and ideologies, evidenced in shorthand by the tripling of Ku Klux Klan membership during the decade of the 1970s.) (Marable, 2007, p. 171) That is, I would posit that the tracking of ‘‘overt’’ racial phobias is only one, profoundly delimited method for constructing an analytical schema that attempts to locate the centrality of race, racist (state) violence, and histories of racial genocide to present social formations. Departing from Alexander’s premature surrendering of what could well have been a fruitful historical analytic (thus allowing her comparison of mass imprisonment to American apartheid to rot on the vine of provocation), I further question whether it is, in fact, the Jim Crow power relation that should be centered in examining the genealogy of the contemporary US imprisonment regime. How might we take seriously the possibility that the paradigmatic power relations formed by the antiblack racial genocide of chattel slavery – a paradigmatic power that consistently constitutes the changing discourses and institutionalized structurings of racisms more generally – forms a the central dimension of the contemporary US criminalization and carceral apparatuses? Legally, the prisoner/‘‘convict’’/‘‘inmate’’ is understood as the bodily property of the state, eviscerated of civil existence and designated as available for ‘‘involuntary servitude.’’ Scholars such as Angela Y. Davis (1998), Colin Dayan (2001), Marcus Rediker (2007), Alex Lichtenstein (1995), Sally Hadden (2001), Dennis Childs (2009), Sarah Haley (2009), David Oshinsky (1996), Douglas A. Blackmon (2008), Matthew J. Mancini (1996), Loı¨ c Wacquant (1999), and others have differently traced the links between racial plantation slavery and the emergence of the modern American penal system, elaborating how the construction of a carceral apparatus during the late-19th and early-20th centuries fundamentally replicated – and arguably exacerbated – the social and racial logics of the supposedly abolished slave plantation. Here, however, I am most concerned with the racist, antiblack, and white supremacist logics of slavery’s abolition, and how the relations of racial dominance underlying the terms of abolition construct the permanent conditions of possibility for the emergence of the ‘‘post-emancipation’’ criminalization/imprisonment regimes that have distended slavery into our present tense. The institutional, juridical, and cultural linkages between the white supremacist premises of ‘‘abolition’’ and the unfolding of the US prison regime over the course of the following century reflects a political legitimation and reinvigoration of slavery’s logic of antiblack racist genocide, as it has been reformed to fit the changing mandates of the ‘‘post-slavery’’ and ‘‘post-civil

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rights’’ American nation-building project. Guiding such a re-narration of the last sesquicentennial is a rereading and retelling of the text and animus of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, commonly valorized as the decree that freed the enslaved African: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [emphasis added]

The 13th Amendment performs its fundamental violence by recodifying the terms of bodily capture and subjection: criminalization is now the leverage point through which the ‘‘duly convicted’’ are made available for enslavement. The slave relation itself is not abolished. Accompanying this abolitionist recodification of slavery in the latter-19th century was a widespread, sustained, intensive white supremacist refusal to concede white civil society’s historical legal entitlement of access to largely unregulated racist terror. Plantation slavery’s abolition catalyzed and emboldened new and existing regimes of white racist violence over the course of the following decades, from the rapid expansion of the Ku Klux Klan and state-condoned proliferation of lynching to a renaissance of antiblack visual cultures and the institutional articulation of Jim Crow apartheid. In fact, this expansion of white supremacist violence in the postemancipation period evidences the generalized uncontainability of antiblack genocide as a primary cultural and institutional modality of American nation-building. Put differently: the historical context of white social and political reaction to the 13th Amendment suggests that the cultural animus of antiblack genocide was elaborated and extrapolated, not ‘‘abolished’’ or effectively curbed, by the end of plantation slavery and the national pronouncement of Black emancipation. By way of illustration, archival texts like the December 1865 Congressional report submitted by Freedman’s Bureau Chaplain and Sub-Commander Thomas Smith facilitate a re-narration of the post-emancipation moment as a focal point for a renewal of the kind of white supremacist violence that characterized the slave order. Dispatched to Shongalo, Mississippi to investigate ‘‘an alleged outrage committed by the [white] citizens on freedmen at that place,’’ (US Congress, 1865, p. 31) Smith exhaustively describes an incident representative of this racial climate. A small section of his account reads, On the evening of November 25 the colored people were having a party; first they had a quilting, then a dancing party; about ten or eleven o’clock, while y the people were enjoying themselves very pleasantly, a company of white men, supposed to number

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about twenty, came up suddenly, set fire to all the buildings, then, surrounding them, began, and for some time continued, to discharge fire-arms, also refusing to let the people come out at the doors y . The white men drove the colored people away, and went round picking up the bundles and other articles of property, throwing them all into the fire y. It was said that one man, a stranger in the place y hearing of the party, had gone to it, and when about to make his escape y several shots were fired at him; he fell, and his body was lifted up and thrown into the fire; was burned so, that when the inquest was held the jury was unable to distinguish either the race or sex, and called in a surgeon to decide those points. (US Congress, 1865, p. 32)

Such white mob violence – genocidal in its logic, localized and intimate in its scale – was catalyzed by the crisis of racial-national meaning wrought by the 13th and 14th amendments. This reopens a crucial part of the national racial story that must be retold: having lost its formal racial monopoly on the social-cultural structures of both ‘‘citizenship’’ and ‘‘freedom,’’ the white American world was cast into deep racial crisis. The long historical construction of US national subjectivity as essentially, if not purely white and essentially, genocidally, and always antiblack was formally displaced by the terms of ‘‘abolition’’ and emancipation, and the creation of ‘‘Black (‘Negro’) citizenship.’’ Yet, if we are to take seriously the fact that Smith’s report on the Shongalo ‘‘outrage’’ is representative of seemingly countless similar narrations (within and beyond the Freedman’s Bureau archive) of the high-intensity, repetitive, and persistent white supremacist populist violence that marked the Reconstruction period, then we are also forced to take a far more complex inventory of how the genocidal social logic of racial chattel slavery structurally supersedes (and therefore outlives) the institutional form of the slave plantation, and permeates the juridical and cultural forms of Black emancipation and the slave institution’s formal abolition. In this way, antiblack genocide is coded into Black emancipation, and constitutes the nominal freeing of the enslaved African. Performances of proto-genocidal antiblack violence have consistently made the white world intelligible to itself in the long aftermath of plantation slavery. Black physiological subjection to violent white will re-wires civil society’s circuits of cohesion and, as illustrated in the Shongalo case, restores white national self-recognition amidst the trappings of ‘‘Black freedom’’ and a contingent Black civil recognition. Against the liberal narrative of national moral fortitude invoked by Obama and his person, this re-telling of the national abolitionist tale centers on the re-codification and ‘‘reforming’’ of the white supremacist violence essential to the nation-building project, and brings forward the archival and institutional (living) artifacts of what Saidiya Hartman (1997), Jared Sexton (2010) (Sexton & Martinot, 2003),

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Frank Wilderson (2010), and others address as the political ontology of antiblackness. Recalling the larger contextualization of this discussion, it should be emphasized that the immediate effects of the 13th Amendment’s terms of reenslavement in accelerating the criminalization and policing of Black and other non-white populations of the southern states during the late-19th and early-20th centuries are well-noted in an existing body of scholarship (Hadden, 2001; Herna´ndez, 2010). This work allows us to apprehend the social technologies of ‘‘racial profiling’’ at their earliest and best, as they produced the prototypes of Jim Crow state violence and re-assembled Black slave labor via Black prison plantation labor. This is a useful, vital body of work that further demystifies the liberal racial narratives – including that articulated in Obama’s ‘‘A More Perfect Union’’ – responsible for constructing the abolition/emancipation moment as one of national racial decency and moral awakening. What remains rather distressing, however, is that recent antiracist critical scholarly discourses and activisms have not generally revisited, much less rigorously theorized and narrated, the present conditions through which this white supremacist logic of post-abolition, post-emancipation social (re-) organization has constituted multiple institutionalizations of racial dominance (e.g., prisons, policing, domestic counterinsurgency) in historical continuity with the structuring terms of genocidal racial slavery. To put it another way, the post-1960s, ‘‘post-civil rights’’ moment does not constitute an escape from or significant neutralization of what Vargas has analytically centered as the hemispheric-global structuring of antiblack genocide, but is instead a complex period of this genocidal logic’s rearticulation, momentary/localized dissipation, reinstitutionalization, and remilitarization.

PRISON REGIME AS (PROTO-)GENOCIDE To crystallize what I hope to be the potentially useful implications of this provocation toward a retelling of the slavery-abolition story: if we follow the narrative and theoretical trajectories initiated here, it should take little stretch of the historical imagination, nor a radical distension of analytical framing, to suggest that the singular institutionalization of racist and peculiarly antiblack social/state violence in our living era – the US imprisonment regime and its conjoined policing and criminalization apparatuses – elaborates the social logics of genocidal racial slavery within the American nation-building project, especially in the age of Obama. The formation and astronomical growth of the

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prison industrial complex has become a commonly identified institutional marker of massively scaled racist state mobilization, and the fundamental violence of this apparatus is in the prison’s translation of the 13th Amendment’s racist animus. By ‘‘reforming’’ slavery and anti-slave violence, and directly transcribing both into criminal justice rituals, proceedings, and punishments, the 13th Amendment permanently inscribes slavery on ‘‘post-emancipation’’ US statecraft. The state remains a ‘‘slave state’’ to the extent that it erects an array of institutional apparatuses that are specifically conceived to reproduce or enhance the state’s capacity to ‘‘create’’ (i.e., criminalize and convict) prison chattel and politically legitimate the processes of enslavement/imprisonment therein. The crucial starting point for our narrative purposes is that the emergence of the criminalization and carceral apparatus over the last forty years has not, and in the foreseeable future will not build its institutional protocols around the imprisonment of an economically productive or profitmaking prison labor force (Gilmore, 1999).16 So, if not for use as labor under the 13th Amendment’s juridical mandate of ‘‘involuntary servitude,’’ what is the animating structural-historical logic behind the formation of an imprisonment regime unprecedented in human history in scale and complexity, and which locks up well over a million Black people, significantly advancing numbers of ‘‘nonwhite’’ Latinos/as, and in which the white population is vastly underrepresented in terms of both numbers imprisoned and likelihood to be prosecuted (and thus incarcerated) for similar alleged criminal offenses?17 In excess of its political economic, geographic, and juridical registers, the contemporary US prison regime must be centrally understood as constituting an epoch-defining statecraft of race: a historically specific conceptualization, planning, and institutional mobilization of state institutional capacities and state-influenced cultural structures to reproduce and/or reassemble the social relations of power, dominance, and violence that constitute the ontology (epistemic and conceptual framings) of racial meaning itself (da Silva, 2007; Goldberg, 1993). In this case, the racial ontology of the postslavery and post-civil rights prison is anchored in the crisis of social meaning wrought on white civil society by the 13th Amendment’s apparent juridical elimination of the Black chattel slave being. Across historical periods, the social inhabitation of the white civil subject – its self-recognition, institutionally affirmed (racial) sovereignty, and everyday social intercourse with other racial beings – is made legible through its positioning as the administrative authority and consenting audience for the nation- and civilization-building processes of multiple racial genocides.

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It is the bare fact of the white subject’s access and entitlement to the generalized position of administering and consenting to racial genocide that matters most centrally here. Importantly, this white civil subject thrives on the assumption that s/he is not, and will never be the target of racial genocide.18 (Williams, 2010) Those things obtained and secured through genocidal processes – land, political and military hegemony/dominance, expropriated labor – are in this sense secondary to the raw relation of violence that the white subject inhabits in relation to the racial objects (including people, ecologies, cultural forms, sacred materials, and other modalities of life and being) subjected to the irreparable violations of genocidal processes. It is this raw relation, in which white social existence materially and narratively consolidates itself within the normalized systemic logics of racial genocides, that forms the condition of possibility for the US social formation, from ‘‘abolition’’ onward. To push the argument further: the distended systems of racial genocides are not the massively deadly means toward some other (rational) historical ends, but are ends within themselves. Here we can decisively depart from the hegemonic juridical framings of ‘‘genocide’’ as dictated by the United Nations, and examine instead the logics of genocide that dynamically structure the different historical-social forms that have emerged from the classically identifiable genocidal systems of racial colonial conquest, indigenous physical and cultural extermination, and racial chattel slavery. To recall Trask and Marable, the historical logics of genocide permeate institutional assemblages that variously operationalize the historical forces of planned obsolescence, social neutralization, and ‘‘ceasing to exist.’’ Centering a conception of racial genocide as a dynamic set of sociohistorical logics (rather than as contained, isolatable historical episodes) allows the slavery-to-prison continuity to be more clearly marked: the continuity is not one that hinges on the creation of late-20th and early-21st century ‘‘slave labor,’’ but rather on a re-institutionalization of anti-slave social violence. Within this historical schema, the post-1970s prison regime institutionalizes the raw relation of violence essential to white social being while mediating it so it appears as non-genocidal, non-violent, peacekeeping, and justice-forming. This is where we can also narrate the contemporary racial criminalization, policing, and incarcerating apparatuses as being historically tethered to the genocidal logics of the post-abolition, post-emancipation, and post-civil rights slave state. While it is necessary to continuously clarify and debate whether and how this statecraft of racial imprisonment is verifiably genocidal, there seems to be little reason to question that it is, at least, protogenocidal – displaying both the capacity and inclination for genocidal outcomes in its systemic logic and historical trajectory.

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This contextualization leads toward a somewhat different analytical framing of the ‘‘deadly symbiosis’’ that sociologist Loı¨ c Wacquant has outlined in his account of antiblack carceral-spatial systems. While it would be small-minded to suggest that the emergence of the late-20th century prison regime is an historical inevitability, we should at least understand that the structural bottom line of Black imprisonment over the last four decades – wherein the quantitative fact of a Black prison/jail majority has become taken-for-granted as a social fact – is a contemporary institutional manifestation of a genocidal racial substructure that has been reformed, and not fundamentally displaced, by the juridical and cultural implications of slavery’s abolition. I have argued elsewhere for a conception of the US prison not as a selfcontained institution or isolated place, but rather as a material prototype of organized punishment and (social, civil, and biological) death (Rodrı´ guez, 2006). To understand the US prison as a regime is to focus conceptually, theoretically, and politically on the prison as a pliable module or mobilized vessel through which technologies of racial dominance institutionalize their specific, localized practices of legitimated (state) violence. Emerging as the organic institutional continuity of racial slavery’s genocidal violence, the US prison regime represents a form of human domination that extends beyond and outside the formal institutional and geographic domains of ‘‘the prison (the jail, etc.).’’ In this sense, the prison is the institutional signification of a larger regime of proto-genocidal violence that is politically legitimized by the state, generally valorized by the cultural common sense, and dynamically mobilized and institutionally consolidated across different historical moments: it is a form of social power that is indispensable to the contemporary (and postemancipation) social order and its changing structures of racial dominance, in a manner that elaborates the social logics of genocidal racial slavery. The binding presence of slavery within post-emancipation US state formation is precisely why the liberal multiculturalist narration of the Obama ascendancy finds itself compelled to posit an official rupture from the spectral and material presence of enslaved racial blackness. It is this symbolic rupturing – the presentation of a president who consummates the liberal dreams of Black citizenship, Black freedom, Black non-resentment, and Black patriotic subjectivity – that constructs the Black non-slave presidency as the flesh-and-blood severance of the US racial/racist state from its entanglement in the continuities of antiblack genocide. Against this multiculturalist narrative, our attention should be principally fixated on the bottom-line Blackness of the prison’s genocidal logic, not the fungible Blackness of the presidency.

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CONCLUSION: FROM ‘‘POST-CIVIL RIGHTS’’ TO WHITE RECONSTRUCTION The Obama ascendancy is the signature moment of the post-1960s White Reconstruction, a period that has been characterized by the reformist elaboration of historically racist systems of social power to accommodate the political imperatives of American apartheid’s downfall and the emergence of hegemonic (liberal-to-conservative) multiculturalisms. By focusing on how such reforms have neither eliminated nor fundamentally alleviated the social emergencies consistently produced by the historical logics of racial genocide, the notion of White Reconstruction departs from Marable’s notion of the 1990s as the ‘‘twilight of the Second Reconstruction’’ (Marable, 2007, p. 216)19 and points toward another way of framing and narrating the period that has been more commonly referenced as the ‘‘post-civil rights’’ era. Rather than taking its primary point of historical departure to be the cresting of the Civil Rights Movement and its legacy of delimited (though no less significant) political-cultural achievements, White Reconstruction focuses on how this era is defined by an acute and sometimes aggressive reinvention and reorganization of the structural-institutional formations of racial dominance. Defined schematically, the recent half-century has encompassed a generalized reconstruction of ‘‘classically’’ white supremacist apparatuses of state-sanctioned and culturally legitimated racial violence. This general reconstruction has (1) strategically and unevenly dislodged various formal and de facto institutional white monopolies and diversified their personnel at various levels of access, from the entry-level to the administrative and executive levels (e.g., the sometimes aggressive diversity recruitment campaigns of research universities, urban police, and the military); while simultaneously (2) revamping, complicating, and enhancing the social relations of dominance, hierarchy, and violence mobilized by such institutions – relations that broadly reflect the long historical, substructural role of race in the production of the US national formation and socioeconomic order. In this sense, the notion of White Reconstruction brings central attention to how the historical logics of racial genocide may not only survive the apparent disruption of classical white monopolies on the administrative and institutional apparatuses that have long mobilized these violent social logics, but may indeed flourish through these reformist measures, as such logics are re-adapted into the protocols and discourses of these newly ‘‘diversified’’ racist and white supremacist apparatuses (e.g., the

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apparatuses of the research university, police, and military have expanded their capacities to produce local and global relations of racial dominance, at the same time that they have constituted some of the central sites for diversity recruitment and struggles over equal access). It is, at the very least, a remarkable and dreadful moment in the historical time of White Reconstruction that a Black president has won office in an electoral landslide while well over a million Black people are incarcerated with the overwhelming consent of white/multiculturalist civil society. I have tried to develop a few critical directions to engage the challenges of this moment. Departing from the Obama presidency’s reproduction and acceleration of the durable liberal myth of American racial progress, I began this essay by outlining how the Obama narrative (of which Obama is both an active agent and objectified racial medium) eviscerates the historical continuities of slavery in contemporary relations of social dominance and institutionalized racial subjection. Moving from the Obama ascendancy’s national racial story, I have attempted to stress the importance of examining how a specific racial discourse has produced the figure of Barack Obama as the Black presidential non-slave, which in turn composes a symbolic severing of racial blackness from racial chattel slavery. Suggesting that the work of confronting and refuting this narrative requires a combination of imaginative, creative, and theoretical labor, this essay outlines one approach to this formidable challenge by focusing attention on the normalized relations of racial dominance that have proliferated in the post-1960s period. I have argued that the intertwined social logics of racial chattel slavery, white supremacy, and multiple racial genocides compose social legacies that cannot be contained within discretely periodized frameworks. In other words, these legacies do not strictly exist in the ‘‘past tense.’’ My attempt at constructing a narrative outline of the present tense of racial genocide has, by necessity, been offered here in the form of a conceptual and theoretical schematic, which I hope might serve as a preliminary tool for critical appropriation by the reader. This schematic centrally relies on an analytical and conceptual framing of genocide that significantly departs from the hegemonic definition of the UN Genocide Convention: following the example of several radical scholars, I have offered a working conception of racial genocide as a logic of social formation and nation/civilization building that produces multiple, dynamically related systems of physiological, civil, and social death, which in their totality constitute entire historical periods and the particular social formations that animate them.

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Such an understanding of racial genocide facilitates a focusing on the historical continuities of racial chattel slavery as a socially productive genocidal apparatus. Centering an analysis of the 13th Amendment (and slavery’s abolition more generally) as a juridical-cultural recodification of the terms of antiblack genocide, I have addressed the emergence of racial criminalization as the leverage point through which the racial power relation of slavery is reconstituted, and through which slavery effects on present tense institutionalizations of racial dominance more generally. Taking the formation of the post-1970s US prison regime as the primary model of such an institutionalization of slavery’s present tense, I have outlined a notion of the prison as a period-defining statecraft of race: it is the apparatus through which state capacities are mobilized to reproduce the social relations of power, dominance, and violence that construct the discursive and institutional foundations of the US national form as a fundamentally racial and racist social form. The figure of Obama, in these terms, is animated by slavery’s historical present – his embodiment of racial blackness renders him an ever-available medium through which the reformation of racist, white supremacist, and antiblack genocidal social logics are explained and narrated in the aftermath of emancipation, civil rights, and multiculturalism. Thus, it is not necessarily the racist antiblack (and anti-Islamic) reaction against the Obama presidency that forms the central point of articulation for the present tense of racial slavery: rather, it is the structure of enlightened racial liberalism and progressive racial nationalism – the liberal racial populism that creates and articulates the Obama ascendancy – that constructs the most compelling and dangerous elaborations of this genocidal social logic. It is the racist and proto-genocidal violence re-narrated, condoned, and/or valorized by this discourse of racial liberalism and progressivism that requires our closest political attention in these historical moments. Who is left for dead outside the fleeting social truth of a multiculturalist ‘‘Obama constituency?’’ What does the liberal-progressive common sense of ‘‘racial progress’’ make of the massive and mind-numbingly normalized racial violences that have constituted White Reconstruction at the dusk of classical white supremacy?

NOTES 1. Schematically: conquestosettler colonizationoslaveryoCivil WaroemancipationoJim CrowoCivil RightsoObama presidency. 2. While its analytical terms and theoretical concerns are differently structured, this discussion is enabled by a body of work that most recently includes Jared

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Sexton’s essay ‘‘People-Of-Color-Blindness: Notes on the Afterlife of Slavery’’ (2010). Echoing the focal point of a later section of this essay, Sexton writes, it is not inappropriate to say that the continuing application of slave law facilitated the reconfiguration of its operation with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, rather than its abolition (in the conventional reading) or even its circumscription. (p. 37)

3. There is perhaps no more significant text in this conceptualization of the totality of racial slavery’s constituting relation to modern cultural formations, institutional architectures, and regimes of power than Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (1982). 4. While my characterization of the vast body of genocide studies literature is far from universally applicable, these tendencies toward an epistemic centering of quantitative calculation and discrete historical periodization surface repeatedly. Just a few recent examples include Baum (2008), Midlarsky (2005), and select essays from Hinton (ed.) (2002). 5. The discourse of betrayal abounds across various publics, but is especially acute among liberal-progressive outlets. Some widely read print and online examples of this discourse include Palermo (2008), Lindorff (2009), Hodge (2010), Fiss (2009), Dixon (2009), and Marchand (2009). 6. Obama quickly heeded calls to renounce his friend and mentor, most famously in his ‘‘A More Perfect Union’’ speech of March 18, 2008. See also Banks (2008) and The Washington Post (editorial) (2008). 7. The New York Times published copies of Obama’s course materials in a 2008 article. The course syllabus for ‘‘Current Issues in Racism and the Law,’’ taught by Obama in the Spring 1994 term, clearly indicates his substantial familiarity with some of the major works in the then-emerging field of critical race theory. See Kantor (2008). 8. Numerous articles in major newspapers summarized the work of genealogist and Library of Congress employee William Addams Reitwiesner, who researched Obama’s maternal ancestry in detail. See, for example, Kennedy (2007), Hinckley and Soole (2007), Swarns (2007), and Fornek (2007). 9. The Chicago Sun-Times (Hinckley & Soole, 2007) and Obama’s own Dreams from My Father: a Story of Race and Inheritance (2004) trace his paternal ancestry to Owiny, a leader of the Luo tribe during the 17th century. The Luo, as with numerous other tribes, frequently sold prisoners of war to European slave traders, though likely with little or no sense of the atrocities of the transatlantic trade and New World chattel slavery. While much of Obama’s paternal/African genealogy is unknown, it is entirely possible that he – like many in the African diaspora – has ancestors who were active in the West African circuits of the European slave economy. 10. An almost absurd political naı¨ vete´ characterizes much of the global media’s opinion-building response to Obama’s election. By way of example, see Bramham (2008), Cunningham (2007), and Hartcher (2008). 11. Here I am echoing Viet Mike Ngo’s initiation of a critical politics of despair in his prison interview ‘‘‘You Have to Be Intimate with Your Despair’: A Conversation with Viet Mike Ngo (San Quentin State Prison, E21895)’’ (2005).

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12. Here I am referencing Frantz Fanon’s elucidation of the changing, endangered, and violently secured conditions of insurgent truth-making under the conditions of racial colonialism. Fanon writes, The question of truth must also be taken into consideration. For the people, only fellow nationals are ever owed the truth. No absolute truth, no discourse on the transparency of the soul can erode this positiony . Truth is what hastens the dislocation of the colonial regime, what fosters the emergence of the nation. Truth is what protects the ‘‘natives’’ and undoes the foreigners. In the colonial context there is no truthful behavior. And good is quite simply what hurts them most. (Fanon, 2004, p. 14)

13. This clarification is central to the pedagogical imperatives of Black Studies as a coherent and critical political-intellectual project, and sits in permanent tension with the multiculturalist and comparative tendencies of certain pedagogical approaches within both American Studies and Ethnic Studies. The centering of the racial chattel relation as distinct from other forms of social relation thus marks a fundamental difference of both historical experience and political analysis that cannot be subsumed within other modalities of theorization. I am guided in this instance by texts as far-reaching as Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (2008) and Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (1993). 14. While this use of Foucault’s notion of biopolitics merits an extended discussion that I cannot provide here, it is worth clarifying that I am referencing his delineation of the biopolitical in relation to the genealogy of ‘‘race’’ as a matrix for social warfare. See Michel Foucault, ‘‘Society Must Be Defended’’: Lectures at the Colle´ge de France, 1975-1976 (2003). 15. For this insight I am indebted to Joa˜o Costa Vargas, whose forthcoming project Genealogies of Black Revolt in the Diaspora departs from precisely such a situating of Black radicalism and political thought within a theorized relation to antiblack genocide. 16. I have argued elsewhere, echoing a number of activists and radical scholars, that the US prison in its contemporary form has emerged as a system of human displacement and coercive social dis- and re-organization rather than as a site for creating a new ‘‘slave labor’’ force. Ruth Wilson Gilmore has addressed a key facet of this logic of displacement by arguing that, ‘‘the expansion of prison constitutes a geographical solution to socio-economic problems, politically organized by the state which is itself in the process of radical restructuring’’ (Gilmore, 1999, p. 174). 17. The US government document ‘‘Prisoners in 2008’’ provides a representative affirmation of my characterization. According to this data, the imprisonment rate of ‘‘non-Hispanic’’ Blacks was over 600% greater than that of whites, while ‘‘Hispanics’’ were almost 300% more likely to be imprisoned than whites (Sabol, West, & Cooper, 2010). 18. Here I am inspired by Randall Williams’ (2010) theoretical meditation in ‘‘Expiation for the Dispossessed: Truth Commissions, Testimonios, and Tyrannicide,’’ the penultimate chapter of his book The Divided World: Human Rights and Its Violence. 19. I am gesturing toward a historical framing here that resituates Marable’s periodization of a ‘‘Second Reconstruction’’ and its marking of a period of liberal

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racial policy/institutional reforms succeeded by a national trend ‘‘toward an increasingly uncertain and unequal racial future’’ (Marable, 2007, p. 216).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author is grateful to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and the anonymous outside readers for their patient and generous responses to an earlier draft of this chapter.

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BARACK OBAMA’S COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AS NEW BLACK POLITICS Tamara K. Nopper ABSTRACT This chapter explores how discourse about Barack Obama’s community organizing background underscores his new Black politics. Whereas new Black politics is associated with a minimization of race, centrist and neoliberal policies, and an unwillingness to ‘‘speak truth to power,’’ Obama has been characterized as ‘‘different’’ due to his community organizing experience. As I show, Obama’s community organizing background is invoked by him and others in ways that amplify an opposition to Black racial solidarity associated with the tradition of old Black politics. The first section examines how Obama’s community organizing is depicted as a quest for racial acceptance from old guard Black activists but translates into a story of his political maturation. The second section considers how Obama’s relationship with his (now) former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright is symbolized as a struggle between old and new Black politics and thus serves as a commentary on the presumed ineffectiveness of racial solidarity for addressing the plight of working-class Blacks. Keywords: Barack Obama; new Black politics; community organizing; racial solidarity; Black power Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 51–73 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022009

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Despite being described as a ‘‘new Black politician,’’ characterized as minimizing race, espousing centrist and neoliberal policies, and an unwillingness to speak ‘‘truth to power’’ (Ford, 2009; James, 2010; Marable, 2008, 2009), Barack Obama is considered by some as a ‘‘different’’ from other new black politicians because of his community organizing background (Marable, 2008). This article departs from this consideration. As I show, references to Obama’s community organizing, in discourse by and about him, underscores his new Black politics, particularly in regards to a rejection of race as a basis of group solidarity and political mobilization for African Americans. Obama’s story of community organizing is also depicted as a journey of political maturation and developing moral authority on racial and economic matters in contrast to the purported ineffectiveness, parochialism, corruption, nationalism, and radicalism pejoratively associated with old guard Black politics. To this end I first detail how Obama’s community organizing is represented as a quest for racial acceptance and eventual negotiation with old guard Black politics. I then examine how Obama’s relationship with his (now) former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright symbolizes a struggle between old and new Black politics so as to comment on the purported ineffectiveness of racial solidarity for addressing the plight of working-class Blacks whom Obama organizes.

THE NEW BLACK POLITICS The election of ‘‘hundreds of race-neutral, pragmatic black officials’’ in the post-Civil Rights era (Marable, 2009, p. 5) has led scholars to distinguish between the ‘‘old’’ and ‘‘new’’ Black politics (Ford, 2009; James, 2010; Marable, 2008, 2009; Walters, 2007). Compared to their civil rights and Black power predecessors, new Black politicians are characterized by Manning Marable (2008) as ‘‘post-racial black politicians,’’ who ‘‘espouse a politics that minimises matters of race. They do not like to talk about race and subsume it under the rubric of poverty and class. So they are generally left of centre, or liberal, on social and economic policy.’’ A related difference, as explained by Ronald Walters (2007), is that the old Black politicians ‘‘had been familiar to Blacks before these elections, serving them in various ways as heads of highly visible organizations in the field of civil rights. But by arising from within the Black community, they also arose at the periphery of the American electorate, a fact that defined the nature of the campaigning and the style, agenda, and audience addressed’’ (pp. 15–16). Specifically, those with roots in the Black political community tended to promote a ‘‘policy

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focus that was a vehicle for the assertion of Black interests’’ (Walters, 2007, p. 16). Conversely ‘‘Obama’s policy aims, although liberal to progressive, are more universalistic and lack concentrated attention to the Third World or issues that are associated strongly with underrepresented American groups’’ (Walters, 2007, p. 16). Of course, as Richard Thompson Ford (2009) notes, ‘‘Obama was not alone in his new, less confrontational style of politics. He was part of a cohort of new Black politicians who have won office not by appealing to narrow racial solidarities but instead by drawing broad support from voters of all races, and in some unlikely locations’’ (p. 39). In his provocatively titled article ‘‘Barack is the new Black’’ (2009), Ford explores the different style of politics as a source of generational conflict between the old guard and the new guard of Black leadership. As he suggests, the conflict may emerge from both substantive policy differences as emphasized by Walters as well as the old guard’s jealousy and resentment toward the younger generation’s relatively rapid ascendancy to political office. Taking as a point of departure Jesse Jackson Sr.’s infamous overheard sound bite about wanting to castrate Obama, Ford (2009) questions, ‘‘What was it about Obama’s speech that pushed Jackson’s buttons? Why did Jackson think that Obama was ‘talking down’ to his audience?’’ (p. 38). According to Ford, ‘‘It wasn’t the substance of Obama’s comments, which echoed themes that Obama and Jackson himself had sounded many times in the past’’ (p. 38). Rather, ‘‘Jackson’s bitter aside reflected a much deeper and more longstanding animosity’’ because Obama ‘‘had consciously and conspicuously avoided the style – and much of the substance – of the Black politicians of Jackson’s generation’’ (p. 38). Unlike Jackson, who is described by Ford as ‘‘a brash, belligerent, speak-truth-to-power race man in the Black Power tradition,’’ Obama ‘‘wasn’t angry or belligerent – he was poised, confident, and unflappable’’ (p. 38). Ford continues: The older generation of Black activists – and this included many who had in fact held public office – tried to pressure other people to take action on their behalf. They lectured White liberals and railed against conservatives. The basic model was oppositional and the tools used – mau-mauing, dramatic confrontation, public embarrassment, the guilt trip – were the tools of the weak. By contrast Obama didn’t raise the roof about social injustice, hoping that those in control would take some notice – he had every expectation that he would be in control. Obama and the Black politicians of his new generation didn’t speak truth to power—they were power. And they used the language and tools of the powerful: moderation and compromise, backed up by the proverbial big stick. (p. 38; emphasis in original)

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Joy James (2010) concurs with Ford that new Black politicians, or as she calls them, ‘‘the new Black candidate,’’ are less likely to speak ‘‘truth to power’’ than their predecessors. However, unlike Ford, James does not conclude that the new Black candidate represents power. Nor does James emphasize the purported jealousy of the old guard towards the new, intimated by Ford and some new Black politicians – as well as relatively younger African American professionals who identify with them – as one of the major sources of conflict between the two generations (Bai, 2008). Rather James considers the new Black candidate’s status in a multiracial democracy in which ‘‘Blackness remains fixed as negation (of civil society, of prosperity, of law and order, and of patriotism),’’ and thus, ‘‘is to be avoided or disciplined, or in the case of the candidate’s persona, transcended’’ (p. 27). In other words, she considers the disciplinary function of the new Black candidate: A product of ivy-league universities, no matter how humble his origins, the new black candidate reflects new social stratifications in which class privilege and racial etiquette, in the form of an uncompromised civility towards the mainstream, trump demands for ‘‘speaking truth to power’’. Now, both black conservatives and pragmatic black liberals shoulder the burden of chastising those without institutional power: progressive radicals, the alienated, ‘too-black’ ideologues or culturalists demanding anti-racist accountability from the mainstream majority and its chosen political class. (p. 27)

Although acknowledging many of the aforementioned tendencies of the younger generation of Black elected officials, Marable (2008) nevertheless considers Obama ‘‘different’’ from other new Black politicians due to his community organizing background and familiarity with leftist politics: What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organizer. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years. But to differentiate, this new generation of elected black officials are unlike the older group who emerged in the 1970s and 1980s whose constituencies were entirely black.

Although Marable (2008) cautions, ‘‘Obama is not a Marxist or a socialist – he is a progressive liberal with a kind of centre-left strategy,’’ he still sees Obama’s progressive potential but argues it is imperative that those ‘‘on the left y press him to carry out his own agenda.’’ Or, as he puts it, someone needs to be ‘‘A Philip Randolph, the Black socialist leader,’’ to Obama’s FDR. In the following two sections I explore how Obama’s community organizing figures in discourse by and about him. I show how Obama’s community organizing background is invoked in ways that underscore his

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new Black politics and his opposition to Black racial solidarity in the tradition of his Black political predecessors. The first section examines how Obama’s community organizing is depicted as a quest for racial acceptance from the old guard but translates into a story of his political maturation. The second section explores how Obama’s relationship with his (now) former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright is symbolized as a struggle between old and new Black politics that serves as a commentary on the presumed ineffectiveness of racial solidarity for addressing the plight of working-class Blacks on whose behalf Obama organizes.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AS POLITICAL MATURATION In his 1995 (2004) memoir, Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance, Obama describes his intention to pursue community organizing after graduating from Columbia University. The seventh chapter of the book begins, ‘‘In 1983, I decided to become a community organizer’’ (p. 133). At the time, Obama ‘‘didn’t know anyone making a living that way’’ and was unable to explain to his college peers ‘‘what it was that a community organizer did’’ (p. 133): I couldn’t answer them directly. Instead, I’d pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize Black folks. At the grass roots. For change. (p. 133)

According to Obama, he was partially inspired to take a more humble path than that generally associated with Ivy League graduates by ‘‘a series of images, romantic images, of a past I had never known’’ (p. 134). These images were ‘‘of the civil rights movement’’ (p. 134). Obama analogizes his quest to become a community organizer with his search for a place in the lineage of Black politics among those he would later call the ‘‘Moses generation,’’ or African Americans with political histories rooted in the Civil Rights Movement (Sweet, 2007): Such images became a form of prayer for me, bolstering my spirits, channeling my emotions in a way that words never could. They told me y that I wasn’t alone in my particular struggles, and that communities had never been a given in this country, at least not for blacks. Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens.

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TAMARA K. NOPPER They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men – and in the civil rights movement those dreams had been large. In the sit-ins, the marches, the jailhouse songs, I saw the African-American community becoming more than just the place where you’d been born or the house where you’d been raised. Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned – because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself – I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life. That was my idea of organizing. It was a promise of redemption. (pp. 134–135; emphasis added)

In his article ‘‘The Joshua generation: Race and the campaign of Barack Obama’’ (2008), David Remnick, borrowing from Obama’s self-identification as part of the generation of African Americans tasked with completing the unfinished journey of ‘‘the Moses generation’’ (Sweet, 2007), remarks: ‘‘Sometimes, as one reads ‘Dreams from My Father,’ it’s hard to know where the real angst ends and the self-dramatizing of the backward glance begins, but there is little doubt that Obama was at sea, particularly where race was concerned’’ (p. 2). Following this line of thought, Remnick quotes David Levering Lewis: The historian David Levering Lewis, who has written biographies of King and Du Bois, told me that after reading Obama’s books he had the sense of a young man almost alone in the world, trying to find a place. ‘The orphanage of his life compels him to scope out possibilities and escape hatches,’ he said y Lewis told me that he read the memoir as if Obama were a densely layered character in a coming-of-age novel. ‘To say he is constructing himself sounds pejorative, but he is open to the world in a way that most Americans have not had the opportunity to be,’ Lewis said. ‘That is something that outsiders have to do.’ (p. 2)

This narrative about Obama’s community organizing treats his commitment to service as an exploration into the meaning and basis of Black identity in a post-Civil Rights era. Levering Lewis, in his comments to Remnick about Obama’s memoir, concludes, ‘‘But, as he evolves, the African-American pathway is the pathway to service, to success, and to a more complete selfdefinition’’ (quoted in Remnick, 2008, p. 2). Or, as Remnick (2008) sums up: ‘‘He sought admission somehow into that distant world of seriousness and commitment – a connection to ‘the Moses generation.’ He craved authentic experience, a sense of service and belonging, and a racial identity’’ (p. 2). Related, Obama’s pursuit of community organizing is depicted as a desire to be recognized and accepted by those intimated as ‘‘authentically Black’’ due to their participation in the Civil Rights Movement. Service to community is thus depicted as Obama’s rite of passage into Blackness. Yet his baptism into the Black political community is stymied by the unresponsiveness of the old

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guard. Consider for instance, how Obama describes in Dreams from my father (2004) his efforts to connect with ‘‘progressive’’ Civil Rights organizations while finishing up at Columbia University: ‘‘And so, in the months leading up to graduation, I wrote to every Civil Rights organization I could think of, to any Black elected official in the country with a progressive agenda, to neighborhood councils and tenant rights groups’’ (2004, p. 135). Obama reportedly never received a response from the organizations to which he wrote. This lack of response from civil rights organizations is also emphasized in David Moberg’s article in The Nation (2007a) titled ‘‘Obama’s community roots.’’ In 1985, freshly graduated from Columbia University and working for a New York business consultant, Barack Obama decided to become a community organizer. Though he liked the idea, he didn’t understand what the job involved, and his inquiries turned up few opportunities. Then he got a call from Jerry Kellman, an organizer working on Chicago’s far South Side for a community group based in the churches of the region, an expanse of white, black and Latino blue-collar neighborhoods that were reeling from the steel-mill closings. Kellman was looking for an organizer for the new Developing Communities Project (DCP), which would focus on black city neighborhoods. (emphasis added)

As Kellman would later tell Byron York of The National Review (2008), ‘‘Barack had been very inspired by the civil-rights movement y I felt that he wanted to work in the civil-rights movement, but he was ten years too late, and this was the closest he could find to it at the time’’ (p. 1). Kellman, a white organizer working for a group that had been established by several Chicago Catholic churches, specifically sought an African American to organize area neighborhoods that were almost 100 percent Black. After receiving an application from Obama in response to an ad he had placed in trade publications, Kellman first thought Obama may be Japanese due to his last name and being from Hawaii. York (2008) reports, ‘‘It was only when Kellman talked to Obama on the phone, and Obama ‘expressed interest in something African-American culturally,’ that a relieved Kellman offered Obama the job’’ (p. 1). Thus, it was Kellman, a white man, who gives Obama a chance to professionally commit to organizing the Black working-class. Before heading to Chicago to work for Kellman, Obama, ‘‘decided to find more conventional work for a year’’ to both pay off student loans and save for the future (p. 135). The future for which he saved would eventually involve becoming a community organizer: ‘‘I would need the money later, I told myself. Organizers didn’t make any money; their poverty was proof of their integrity’’ (p. 135). ‘‘More conventional work’’ was employment at what Obama describes as ‘‘a consulting house to multinational corporations’’ in New York (p. 135). While employed at the consulting house, a young Obama

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is still committed to community organizing and thus considers himself akin to ‘‘a spy behind enemy lines’’ (p. 135). At the multinational corporation he encounters working-class African Americans who work in less glamorous positions at the firm. These African Americans will figure in his narrative as providing a counter to the old guard Black politics in which young Obama is purportedly eager to participate; as working-class Blacks they discourage Obama from pursuing community organizing. The Black administrative assistants who treated Obama ‘‘like a son’’ and with whom he shares over lunch his ‘‘wonderful organizing plans,’’ smile but nevertheless look ‘‘secretly disappointed’’ at the Columbia graduate’s career goals. However, it is ‘‘Ike,’’ ‘‘the gruff Black security guard in the lobby,’’ who is ‘‘willing to come right out and tell me I’d be making a mistake’’ (p. 135). Ike asks Obama why he would go into community organizing when he has other options: Forget about this organizing business and do something that’s gonna make you some money. Not greedy, you understand. But enough. I’m telling you this ‘cause I can see potential in you y got a nephew about your age making some real money there. That’s what we need, see. Not more folks running around here, all rhymes and jive. You can’t help folks that ain’t gonna make it nohow, and they won’t appreciate you trying. Folks that wanna make it, they gonna find a way to do it on they own. (p. 136)

Although he does not ‘‘pay Ike much attention at the time,’’ because he ‘‘sounded too much like my grandparents,’’ Obama nevertheless writes about ‘‘the idea of becoming an organizer slipping away from me’’ (p. 136). After being promoted to a ‘‘financial writer’’ Obama wavers between imagining himself as a ‘‘a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal’’ and ‘‘who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve’’ (p. 136). Eventually, Obama resigned from his corporate position and ‘‘began looking in earnest for an organizing job’’ (p. 138). His earnest pursuit eventually landed him an interview with ‘‘a prominent civil rights organization in the city’’ (p. 138), in which the director emphasized the ‘‘changing nature’’ of civil rights, one that departed from the redemptive nature that Obama dreamt about (p. 135): ‘‘I like it,’’ the director said after looking over my resume. ‘‘Particularly the corporate experience. That’s the real business of a civil rights organization these days. Protest and pickets won’t cut it anymore. To get the job done, we’ve got to forge links between business, government, and the inner city.’’ He clasped his broad hands together, then showed me a glossy annual report opened to a page that listed the organization’s board of directors. There was one black minister and ten white corporate executives. ‘‘You see?’’ the director said. ‘‘Public-private partnerships. The key to the future. And that’s where young people like yourself come in. Educated. Self-assured. Comfortable in boardrooms.’’ (p. 139)

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Obama was offered the job ‘‘on the spot’’ but ‘‘declined his generous offer, deciding I needed a job closer to the streets’’ (p. 139). He goes to work as a full-time organizer at City College in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYpirg). Obama describes his time at NYpirg in Dreams from my father accordingly: ‘‘I spent three months working for a Ralph Nader offshoot up in Harlem, trying to convince the minority students at City College about the importance of recycling’’ (p. 139). Some of Obama’s contemporaries from New York recall his work differently. In a 2007 article titled ‘‘Obama’s account of New York years often differs from what others say,’’ New York Times writer Janny Scott reports that ‘‘his years in New York City y in the early 1980s surfaces only fleetingly in his memoir. In the book, he casts himself as a solitary wanderer in the metropolis, the outsider searching for a way’’ (p. 1). Obama’s representation of his duties at NYpirg ‘‘surprised some former colleagues. They said that more ‘bread-and-butter issues’ like mass transit, higher education, tuition and financial aid were more likely the emphasis at City College’’ (Scott, 2007, p. 2). And as Scott (2007) relays, Eileen Hershenov, who ‘‘oversaw Mr. Obama’s work for NYpirg,’’ remembers the recent college graduate being adept at organizing: ‘‘You needed somebody – and here was where Barack was a star – who could make the case to students across the political spectrum’’ (p. 2). Related, Obama’s description of his time working at ‘‘a consulting house to multinational corporations’’ (135) is also recalled by others differently: ‘‘Far from a bastion of corporate conformity, they said, it was informal and staffed by young people making modest wages. Employees called it ‘high school with ashtrays’’’ (Scott, 2007, p. 1). Dan Armstrong, who was a colleague of Obama at Business International Corporation in New York in 1984 offered an opinion on why Obama’s account of his New York years differs from some of his colleagues: ‘‘All of Barack’s embellishment serves a larger narrative purpose: to retell the story of the Christ’s temptation. The young, idealistic, would-be community organizer gets a nice suit, joins a consulting house, starts hanging out with investment bankers, and barely escapes moving into the big mansion with the white folks’’ (quoted in Scott, 2007, p. 1). Such recollections from Obama’s colleagues, while perhaps inaccurate, nevertheless suggest a larger purpose to Obama’s telling, albeit how limited in its detail, of his New York years. Obama of course is not alone in crafting a narrative of himself as a candidate and politician – indeed, his future vice president Joe Biden was caught during his 1987 presidential campaign plagiarizing quotes – and storyline – from British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock (Shafer, 2008). Nevertheless, I want to consider how

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Obama’s depiction of his community organizing experience serves to signal him as a new Black politician. Although a story in which a person opts for the moral road less traveled by dedicating one’s life to political office is not specific to African American candidates, the casting of Obama’s foray into community organizing can also be interpreted as a commentary on Black politics in which a young Obama is initially eager to participate but as Kellman put it, was ‘‘‘ten years too late’’’ (quoted in York, 2008, p. 1). By downplaying his community organizing work in New York and overemphasizing his anxiety working for corporate America (as well as declining the offer from the prominent New York civil rights organization that, similar to Obama today, privileges private-public partnerships) (Gates, 2009), Obama depicts himself specifically as a Black man on a quest to seek, as he puts it, redemption vis-a`-vis acceptance and inspiration from the Moses generation. Depicting himself as a Black man interested in serving the Black community, Obama also tells a story of the failures and corruption of postBlack civil rights politics. Whereas New York serves as the site of Obama’s foray into community organizing and his initial reception, or lack thereof, from civil rights organizations, Chicago is the site of Obama’s political maturation, a process that involves a growing skepticism toward the Moses generation. In different accounts, Obama’s time in Chicago’s South Side, itself a trope for both poor and working-class Black Chicago and Black politics, is invoked to pose Obama as a pragmatic Black candidate in relation to the specter of the old guard. It is in Chicago that Obama encounters another ‘‘Ike,’’ the Black security guard in New York who told him to forgo community organizing and make money. The ‘‘Ike’’ of Chicago is an unnamed public school administrative aide that Obama references in a 1988 essay featured in Illinois Issues (2008a) titled ‘‘Why organize? Problems and promise in the inner city.’’ Obama begins his statement on organizing with: Over the past five years, I’ve often had a difficult time explaining my profession to folks. Typical is a remark a public school administrative aide made to me one bleak January morning, while I waited to deliver some flyers to a group of confused and angry parents who had discovered the presence of asbestos in their school. ‘‘Listen, Obama,’’ she began. ‘‘You’re a bright young man, Obama. You went to college, didn’t you?’’ I nodded. ‘‘I just cannot understand why a bright young man like you would go to college, get that degree and become a community organizer.’’ ‘‘Why’s that?’’ ‘‘Cause the pay is low, the hours is long, and don’t nobody appreciate you.’’ She shook her head in puzzlement as she wandered back to attend to her duties.

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Similar to Ike of Dreams from my father, the aide encourages Obama to pursue a different path than community organizing. And related to Ike’s statement, ‘‘You can’t help folks that ain’t gonna make it nohow, and they won’t appreciate you trying’’ (Obama, 2004, p. 136), the aide suggests that it is a futile effort because ‘‘don’t nobody appreciate you’’ (Obama (2008a). Both Ike and the aide’s comments serve to make Obama’s time as a community organizer an act of moral sacrifice that they encourage of him to be temporary. As Obama writes in ‘‘Why organize?’’ (2008a): ‘‘I’ve thought back on that conversation more than once during the time I’ve organized with the Developing Communities Project, based in Chicago’s far south side. Unfortunately, the answers that come to mind haven’t been as simple as her question. Probably the shortest one is this: It needs to be done, and not enough folks are doing it.’’ Ike and the aide, then, become signifiers of an alternative Black politic that eschews long-term community organizing (and by extension, constant confrontation against structural inequality) – because of its presumed futility in resolving the plight of the Black masses in which they are a part. Through the stories involving Ike and the aide – particularly the words of the former, old guard Black politics is also depicted as excessive, incompetent, and corrupt whereas a path dedicated to making money – albeit ‘‘not greedy’’ (p. 136) – is proposed as a more appropriate remedy for resolving the ills of the Black community. As members of the proletariat (a security guard and public school administrative aide) as opposed to the Black political ‘‘class,’’ Ike and the aide thus serve to authorize an alternative ‘‘authentic’’ Black politics that Obama can pursue. This alternative Black politics is one committed to the working-class and racial uplift through social mobility but that somehow elides the implied corruption and greed of the prominent civil rights organization in New York City at which Obama interviewed and eventually rejected in order to be ‘‘closer to the streets’’ (p. 139). Keep in mind Ike’s comment, ‘‘Forget about this organizing business and do something that that’s gonna make you some money. Not greedy, you understand. But enough y That’s what we need, see’’ (p. 136; emphasis added). Whereas Obama claims to once believe that poverty was ‘‘proof’’ of ‘‘integrity’’ (2004, p. 135), Ike and the aide absolve him of his planned long-term sacrifice. Related, by telling the stories of Ike and the aide, Obama is able to suggest that he must reject the trappings of the old guard, described by Ike as hustlers or ‘‘folks running around here, all rhymes and jive’’ (Obama, 2004, p. 136) to truly serve the Black working-class and poor. Pursuing a path that emphasizes making money but divorced from the old guard civil rights organizations is somehow redeemed of the immorality and corruption

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associated with the ‘‘hustle’’ and profanity of Black politics. In other words, Obama depicts himself as a different version of an authentic Black politics that is presumably more in tune with the needs of the Black proletariat than the old guard, who is characterized as being exploitative of the Black working-class whom Obama organizes. Additionally, Obama’s community organizing background is referenced so as to translate his quest for political office into an act of service that can simultaneously alleviate the plight of the Black masses but pose no threat to the racial order. Whereas the old guard’s quest for political office has been considered a call for Black power by both Blacks and non-Blacks, the racial anxiety of the latter has interpreted such a goal as one of corruption and reverse racism. Obama instead translates his professional goals of community organizing into a commitment to service through elected office and in turn, reassures the public that he is not pursuing Black power. In a revised version of his narrative about his path to community organizing involving Ike and the aide, Obama on the presidential campaign trail told an audience in Iowa: ‘‘People would ask me, ‘You seem like a nice guy, you have a fancy law degree, you make a lot of money, you’ve got a beautiful, churchgoing family, why would you want to go into something dirty and nasty like politics?’’’ (Macfarquhar, 2007, p. 9). This representation, of Obama seeking political office as a moral imperative – as opposed to selfish reasons, such as greed or corruption, associated with old guard Black politics – is also found in a 2007 story in The U.S. News & World Report: As a community organizer in the Altgeld Gardens public housing project in the mid1980s, Obama, then 23, quickly emerged as a tireless and pragmatic advocate for the community – traits that characterize the kind of president he says he wants to be. ‘‘His work as a community organizer was really a defining moment in his life, not just his career,’’ his wife, Michelle, told U.S. News. It helped him decide ‘‘how he would impact the world’’ – assisting people in defining their mutual interests and working together to improve their lives. (p. 1)

What some might see as a goal motivated by the same thirst for power associated with old Black guard elected officials is thus translated into a moral gesture on behalf of Obama. References to Obama’s community organizing background help him avoid appearing as a corrupt Black politician or as someone interested in consolidating power along racial lines. Consider, for instance, Moberg’s (2007a) depiction of Obama the community organizer in The Nation: ‘‘Often by confronting officials with insistent citizens – rather than exploiting personal connections, as traditional black Democrats proposed – Obama and DCP protected community interests’’ (emphasis added). Rather than being depicted as simply a Black

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organizer of Black communities – which could easily be read as an association with old guard Black politics, Obama’s community organizing in Chicago’s South Side promotes an image of him as a populist – a term rarely associated with the democratic tendencies of Black politicians. Thus, Obama’s community organizing can simultaneously demonstrate a commitment to both the Black working-class and multiracial populism; as he claimed in a 2008 election campaign speech: ‘‘I can bring this country together y I have a track record, starting from the days I moved to Chicago as a community organizer’’ (quoted in York, 2008, p. 1). Unlike Marable’s (2008) consideration of Obama as a different new Black politician because of his community organizing roots, it appears that references to Obama’s community activism serve to represent Obama as simultaneously supportive of the Black working-class and different from the old Black guard. It is here that we can consider the disciplinary function of new Black candidates (James, 2010) and specifically, of the invoking of Obama’s community organizing background. Obama’s story of political maturation involves distinguishing himself from the implied corruption, or the ‘‘rhymes and jive’’ of the old Black politics (Obama, 2004, p. 136), purportedly on behalf of the Black masses. Unlike new Black politicians who often minimize race (Marable, 2008), Obama actually amplifies his Blackness as well as the status of the Black working-class, symbolized by Ike and the public school administrative aide, so as to draw attention to his new Black political orientation. Whereas Obama would, in his 2008 speech, ‘‘A more perfect union’’ (2008b), suggest that it is others who are fixated on his Black authenticity, his story of community organizing is also one in which he openly engages questions of Blackness so as to differentiate his political approach and commitments. As the next section shows, Obama’s community organizing narrative is also one that promotes a consideration of class diversity among African Americans so as to ultimately dismiss Blackness, or race, as a source of political identity and collective action. I discuss how Obama’s relationship with his (now) former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright is symbolized as a struggle between old and new Black politics so as to serve as a commentary on the ineffectiveness of racial solidarity to address the plight of Blacks Obama encounters as a community organizer. Also considered is how Obama signals a commitment to the Black proletariat that simultaneously incorporates the Black working-class into an enlightened multiracial citizenry in which African Americans’ class status can be linked to that of non-Blacks, a gesture that ultimately displaces Blackness as a source of political organizing and treats such a dismissal as a moral imperative.

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REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT AND BLACK SOLIDARITY In the aforementioned 1988 essay ‘‘Why organize?’’ Barack Obama remarks on the import of Black churches in Chicago Black politics: Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources, membership and – most importantly – values and biblical traditions that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape of cities like Chicago. A fierce independence among black pastors and a preference for more traditional approaches to social involvement (supporting candidates for office, providing shelters for the homeless) have prevented the black church from bringing its full weight to bear on the political, social and economic arenas of the city. Over the past few years, however, more and more young and forward-thinking pastors have begun to look at community organizations such as the Developing Communities Project in the far south side and GREAT in the Grand Boulevard area as a powerful tool for living the social gospel, one which can educate and empower entire congregations and not just serve as a platform for a few prophetic leaders. Should a mere 50 prominent black churches, out of the thousands that exist in cities like Chicago, decide to collaborate with a trained organizing staff, enormous positive changes could be wrought in the education, housing, employment and spirit of inner-city black communities, changes that would send powerful ripples throughout the city.

Eventually, Obama would become affiliated with one such Black church in Chicago, Trinity United Church of Christ, which was under the leadership of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Questions of Obama’s religious faith would take on greater significance in his presidential campaign due to both anti-Muslim bigotry and anxieties that Obama agreed with the content of Wright’s incendiary speeches that were continuously fed to the public (Miller, 2008, p. 1). Obama would ‘‘counter’’ the Wright controversy with his 2008 address ‘‘A more perfect union,’’ popularly referred to as his ‘‘race speech.’’ His remarks depict his relationship with the Black church, and Trinity United Church specifically, as part of Obama’s journey towards affirming his place in the Black community. Like the Black civil rights organizations he was eager to work for as a community organizer, the Black church is treated, in Obama’s (2008b) account, as a source of an authentic Black politics and community in which he yearned to participate: People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters y Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our

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trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about y memories that all people might study and cherish—and with which we could start to rebuild. (p. 3)

Several months after delivering ‘‘A more perfect union,’’ Obama, while on the campaign trail, discussed the trajectory of his religious beliefs with Newsweek. Recalling his New York years, he commented, ‘‘I did a lot of spiritual exploration’’ (Miller, 2008, p. 1). Obama’s spiritual search would sometimes lead him to the famous Black church in Harlem, Abyssinian Baptist: ‘‘‘I’d just sit in the back and I’d listen to the choir and I’d listen to the sermon,’ he says, smiling a little as he remembers those early days in the wilderness. ‘There were times that I would just start tearing up listening to the choir and share that sense of release’’’ (Miller. 2008, p. 1). As Newsweek reported: Obama says his spiritual quest was driven by two main impulses. He was looking for a community that he could call home – a sense of rootedness and belonging he missed from his biracial, peripatetic childhood. The visits to the black churches uptown helped fulfill that desire. ‘‘There’s a side very particular to the African-American church tradition that was powerful to me,’’ he says. The exuberant worship, the family atmosphere and the prophetic preaching at a church such as Abyssinian would have appealed to a young man who lived so in his head. And he became obsessed with the civil-rights movement. He’d become convinced, through his reading, of the transforming power of social activism, especially when paired with religion. (Miller, 2008, p. 3)

According to Newsweek, ‘‘Obama’s organizing days helped clarify his sense of faith and social action as intertwined’’: ‘‘It’s hard for me to imagine being true to my faith – and not thinking beyond myself, and not thinking about what’s good for other people, and not acting in a moral and ethical way,’’ he says. When these ideas merged with his more emotional search for belonging, he was able to arrive at the foot of the cross. (Miller, 2008, p. 4)

‘‘And how much of the decision was pragmatic, motivated by Obama’s desire, as he says in ‘Dreams,’ to get closer to the people he was trying to help? ‘I thought being part of a community and affirming my faith in a public fashion was important,’ Obama says’’ (Miller, 2008, p. 4). While the Newsweek reporter, Lisa Miller, asked Obama about whether his decision to explore his faith was pragmatic, her question asked whether it was deliberate in the service of connecting with those on behalf of whom Obama organized in Chicago. Put simply, Obama is still depicted as exploring his faith as well as determining which church he would become affiliated with out of altruistic reasons – to connect with poor and working class Blacks. Such representation is also found in Dreams from my father. In it Obama

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describes meeting with Wright to encourage the pastor to support the work of his organization. He also recounts an exchange that ensues about class differences in the Black community. Obama (1995 [2004]) recalls, ‘‘‘I’ll try to help you if I can,’ he said. ‘But you should know that having us involved in your efforts isn’t necessarily a feather in your cap’’’ (p. 283). When Obama asks why, Wright tells him, ‘‘Some of my fellow clergy don’t appreciate what we’re about. They feel like we’re too radical. Others, we ain’t radical enough’’ (p. 283). The then community organizer interjects: ‘‘‘Some people say,’ I interrupted, ‘that the church is too upwardly mobile’’’ (p. 283). In response, The reverend’s smile faded. ‘‘That’s a lot of bull,’’ he said sharply. ‘‘People who talk that mess reflect their own confusion. They’ve bought into the whole business of class that keeps us from working together y We don’t buy into these false divisions here. It’s not about income, Barack. Cops don’t check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car.’’ (p. 283)

And referencing the sociologist William Julius Wilson – whose research Obama mentions in his 1988 essay ‘‘Why organize?’’ (but who he would not meet until 1996) (Gates, 2009, p. 18; Obama, 2008a [1988]), Wright, according to Dreams from my father, also said to Obama, ‘‘These miseducated brothers, like that sociologist at the University of Chicago, talking about ‘the declining significance of race.’ Now, what country is he living in?’’ (p. 283). In response to Wright’s reaction, Obama wondered, ‘‘But wasn’t there a reality to the class divisions’’ (p. 283). Obama later states in his book, ‘‘Wright was at least partly justified in dismissing the church’s critics, for the bulk of its membership was solidly working class y Still, there was no denying that the church had a disproportionate number of black professionals in its ranks’’ (p. 285). Eventually, Obama comes to identify Trinity United Church as a site in which the former gang-banger, the teenage mother, had their own forms of validation—claims of greater deprivation, and hence authenticity, their presence in the church providing the lawyer or doctor with an education from the streets. By widening its doors to allow all who would enter, a church like Trinity assured its members that their fates remained inseparably bound, that an intelligible ‘us’ still remained. (p. 286)

As he did on behalf of Ike and the public school administrative aide, Obama questions what relevance Black racial politics – in this sense expressed through Wright’s commitment to a cross-class Black solidarity and an ‘‘intelligible ‘us’’’ (p. 286) – had for the Black masses: It was a powerful program, this cultural community, one more pliant than simple nationalism, more sustaining than my own brand of organizing. Still I couldn’t help wondering whether it would be enough to keep more people from leaving the city or

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young men out of jail. Would the Christian fellowship between a black school administrator, say, and a black school parent change the way the schools were run? Would the interest in maintaining such unity allow Reverend Wright to take a forceful stand on the latest proposals to reform public housing? And if men like Reverend Wright failed to take a stand, if churches like Trinity refused to engage with real power and risk genuine conflict, then what chance would there be of holding the larger community intact? (p. 286)

Consistent with the class versus race debate, in which class diversity is raised so as to trump the existence of a coherent ‘‘Black community,’’ or Black ontology – and in turn an ‘‘authentic’’ Black politics (Gates, 2009), Obama the community organizer depicts himselfas the class consciousness of Black nationalist institutions. Obama’s rhetoric is similar to African American scholars such as Wilson as well as Henry Louis Gates – both supporters of Obama – who are quick to emphasize class diversity and the status of the Black poor so as to promote neoliberalism (Gates, 2009). ‘‘Black leaders’’ who emphasize the shared racial experiences of African Americans – notably, in Wright’s account with the racial state (‘‘Cops don’t check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car,’’ p. 283) – are depicted as bourgeois or politically out of touch for promoting an archaic notion of shared racial oppression despite the class diversity of the Black community or the ‘‘successes’’ of some Blacks in the post-Civil Rights era. Indeed, in Obama’s telling, those African Americans who may want to share fellowship with poor and working-class Blacks may be interpreted as frauds akin to white liberals with racial guilt because they derive validation from the ‘‘authenticity’’ of their poorer peers. Thus, Obama not only makes, perhaps inadvertently, a moral case for middle-class African Americans to socially distance themselves from poor and working-class Blacks so as to not to exploit them in a quest for ‘‘racial authenticity,’’ he also translates (some may say conceals) his opposition to racial solidarity into a concern about class differences and the plight of the people he organizes. Not depicted as the huckster brand of civil rights, Wright and Trinity United Church nevertheless become metaphors for an outdated mode of Black politics that Obama, the committed organizer, must also negotiate. By emphasizing racial solidarity in the post-Civil Rights era, Wright remains too preoccupied with a purportedly anachronistic sense of race in the face of class differences. Consistent with new Black politicians’ emphasis on class and poverty rather than race (Marable, 2008), Obama invokes his community organizing background to question the preoccupation with racial solidarity – as opposed to ‘‘class consciousness’’ – among the old guard, as represented by Reverend Wright’s diverse Black congregation.

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Despite his initial reservations about Wright’s church, Obama officially joined Trinity United Church ‘‘several years later, when he returned to Chicago’’ after graduating from Harvard Law School (Miller, 2008, p. 5). Whereas he had expressed reservations about the class diversity of the church in Dreams from my father, it appears that the presence of upwardly mobile and well-connected African Americans was much more attractive to Obama than he intimates in his commentary on Wright’s over-emphasis on racial solidarity. Toni Preckwinkle, who had been the alderman on Chicago’s south side whom Obama approached in 1995 about running for state senate, says as much in a 2008 New Yorker article ‘‘Making it: How Chicago shaped Obama.’’ As writer Ryan Lizza puts it, ‘‘For anyone trying to understand Obama’s breathtakingly rapid political ascent, Preckwinkle is an indispensable witness – a close observer, friend, and confidante during a period of Obama’s life to which he rarely calls attention’’ (p. 1). Reported by Lizza (2008), Preckwinkle ‘‘suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. ‘It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,’ she said. ‘It’s a good place for a politician to be a member’’’ (p. 1). Noticeably, Obama’s account of his relationship with Trinity United Church and Wright is dramatically different in ‘‘A more perfect union’’ (2008b). Here he does not talk about confronting Wright for having class diversity or, as mentioned in The New Yorker, his interest in connecting with ‘‘prominent parishioners’’ (Lizza, 2008, p. 1). Instead, the speech championed the very class diversity of the church Obama had questioned Wright about: Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. (p. 3)

As in Dreams from my father, Obama’s race speech amplifies the class diversity of Trinity United Church so as to discipline Black solidarity. Obama is able to both apologize for Wright’s commentary and signal his role in diversifying the Black community by speaking to the dichotomies that the church represents, thus distancing the then presidential candidate from the nationalism and ‘‘radicalism’’ of the Black church and his pastor.

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Such distancing, as James (2010) describes, attempts to redefine whiteness and rehabilitate Blackness to a non-Black public: Through electoral politics, both the new black political class and the mainstream white voter can shed past racial stigma and elevate their social status as pragmatic politicians and citizens who have moved beyond old antagonisms. In fact, in their electoral opposition to ‘‘bad’’ whites – i.e. those, particularly the less well educated, who will not vote for black candidates – affluent whites redefine ‘racial purity’: the good white is colorblind. In repudiating as divisive blacks who challenge the skewing of material and moral wealth towards whites, black elites redefine racial authenticity: the good black expresses no racial solidarity. (p. 27)

Consistent with James’ (2010) account of the disciplinary functions of new Black politics, Obama emphasizes the diversity of the Black congregation of Trinity United Church not to promote the cross-class racial solidarity among Blacks as espoused by Wright but rather to identify his rejection of the pastor’s brand of Black politics and the old guard generation it represents.

CONCLUSION Far from the centers of power and privilege that have spawned so many commanders in chief, it’s an unlikely place to incubate a future president. But the seemingly endless clumps of drab brick apartment buildings and patchy lawns on Chicago’s South Side are where Sen. Barack Obama learned some of his most enduring lessons about politics, leadership, and the paths to social change. (Walsh, 2007, p. 1)

These words, ‘‘Far from the centers of power and privilege y,’’ written by Kenneth T. Walsh for U.S. News & World Report, speak to the significance of Obama’s community organizing. Indeed, it appears that Obama’s community organizing has been one source of his popularity. For example, Jackie Kendall, executive director of Midwest Academy, an organization in Chicago, was quoted on the internet as saying, ‘‘He’s given community organizing a good name y My mother will know what I do now after all these years’’ (quoted in Moberg, 2007b). When the Republican candidate for vice-president, Sarah Palin, mocked Obama’s community organizing background at the Republican National Convention (RNC) – ‘‘I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities’’ – she was met with applause by her audience (Lawrence, 2008). But the reaction from many, of all political stripes, suggested that Obama’s community organizing background is meaningful to many people. In a letter to the editor sent to the Washington

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Post in response to the RNC, Tracy M. Soska, chair of the Community Organization and Social Administration Program at the University of Pittsburgh (2008), wrote: Listening to Governor Sarah Palin and Mr. Rudy Guliani [sic] at the Republican Convention deride Barack Obama’s background as a ‘‘community organizer’’ as less than valued work, seemed both smug and ignorant of this important and skilled profession. They demean the thousands of brave and trusted community organizers who serve, often for very meager wages, to ensure that citizens at our grassroots have a voice and role in decisions and issues that affect their lives, their communities, and our country.

And as reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education (Mangan, 2009): Discouraged by layoffs in the private sector and inspired by President Obama’s call to public service, students are flocking in record numbers to graduate programs in public affairs and public service, according to program directors who are reporting application increases as high as 52 percent for this fall.

Despite the inspiration that Obama’s community organizing background may engender, we should also consider how Obama’s community organizing experience – and its telling of it – make him popular in a post-Civil Rights era marked by anti-Black racial backlash and hostility toward old guard Black politics. Part of Obama’s popularity may stem from his community organizing background. But while his community organizing experience perhaps distinguishes him from other U.S. presidents, the casting of it by him and others does not distinguish him from new Black politicians. As shown in this article, discourse by and about Barack Obama’s community organizing background underscores his new Black politics. Whereas Obama has been considered a ‘‘different’’ new Black politician because of his community organizing (Marable, 2008), references to his community work serve to undermine beliefs in Black ontology and racial solidarity among African Americans, thus establishing Obama more firmly in the new Black political tradition. Stories about Obama’s community organizing are part of a larger narrative of him coming to terms with both his racial identity and the presumed politics of the Moses generation from whom he initially seeks acceptance. While there are plenty of issues with members and organizations of the old guard Black politics that African Americans have raised, the conclusion derived from Obama’s community organizing narrative is that race is an outdated source of political identity and collective action for African Americans in the post-Civil Rights era, a claim tantamount to suggesting racism is no longer a primary factor shaping life chances or

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decisive in structuring social relations. Through stories that depict old guard Black politics as either racial hucksterism or sincere but out of touch with the diversification of the Black community, Obama and his supporters are making a case for the new Black politics, which emphasizes a nonconfrontational class consciousness so as to disregard or minimize racial solidarity as the basis of political organization among African Americans (Ford, 2009; James, 2010; Marable, 2008, 2009; Walters, 2007). Related, Obama’s community organizing background is referenced by him and his supporters to simultaneously condemn old Black politics – and subsequently discipline those African Americans whose political identities are steeped in race consciousness. His activist background is also invoked to morally distinguish Obama from the presumed corruption and profanity of Black politics. In this vein, Obama’s quest for political power is represented as an extension of his community organizing and guided by an appreciation for both multiracial populism and the Black masses presumably underserved or exploited by the Moses generation. Overall, one of the most troubling aspects of Obama’s narrative is that it involves a celebration of community organizing and the championing of ordinary people in the service of an anti-Black project. Such a gesture is particularly insidious because people dedicate their lives and put themselves at further risk of isolation, repression, defeat, and incarceration, to challenge political conditions. Many with ‘‘opportunities’’ make thoughtful career decisions to pursue a path of service and in turn resist the trappings of corporate America or the desire to be wealthy. And some, in the process, demand a recognition of the centrality of racism in shaping life chances – and are viciously punished for doing so from people of all political stripes. Unfortunately, rather than support the valor of such risktakers, most notably Black people dedicated to Black liberation, the casting of Obama’s community organizing ultimately works against such efforts.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva for inviting me to submit to this special issue of PPST and for his helpful feedback on previous drafts. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their feedback as well as Ms. Louise Seamster and PPST editor Dr. Julian Go.

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REFERENCES Bai, M. (2008, August 6). Is Obama the end of Black politics? The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/magazine/10politics-t.html. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Ford, R. T. (2009). Barack is the new Black: Obama and the promise/threat of the post-Civil Rights era. Du Bois Review, 6(1), 37–48. Gates, H. L., Jr. (2009). A conversation with William Julius Wilson on the election of Barack Obama. Du Bois Review, 6(1), 15–23. James, J. (2010). Campaigns against ‘Blackness’: Criminality, incivility, and election to executive office. Critical Sociology, 36(1), 25–44. Lawrence, J. (2008, August 4). ‘Community organizer’ slams attract support for Obama.’ USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-0904-community_N.htm. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Lizza, R. (2008, July 21). Making it: How Chicago shaped Obama. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?current Page¼1. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Macfarquhar, L. (2007, May 7). The conciliator: Where is Barack Obama coming from? The New Yorker. Retrieved fron http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/07/ 070507fa_fact_macfarquhar?currentPage¼1. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Mangan, K. (2009, May 11). Schools of public affairs benefit from Obama’s call to service. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Schools-ofPublic-Affairs/47245. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Marable, M. (2008, December). The four legged stool that won the US presidential election. Socialist Review. Retrieved from http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?article number¼10628. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Marable, M. (2009). Racializing Obama: The enigma of post-Black politics and leadership. Souls, 11(1), 1–15. Miller, L. (2008, July 12). Finding his faith. Newsweek. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek. com/2008/07/11/finding-his-faith.html. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Moberg, D. (2007a, April 3). Obama’s community roots. The Nation. Retrieved from http:// www.thenation.com/article/obamas-community-roots. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Moberg, D. (2007b). Obama’s third way. Shelterforce Online, Spring. Retrieved from http:// www.nhi.org/online/issues/149/obama.html. Accessed on May 25, 2011. Obama, B. (2004 [1995]). Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance. Crown Publishers. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id ¼ HRCHJp-V0QUC& printsec¼frontcover&dq¼dreamsþfromþmyþfather&hl¼en&ei¼LXfeTb3iCIXd0QG u9YS5Cg&sa¼X&oi¼book_result&ct¼result#v¼onepage&q&f¼false. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Obama, B. (2008a [1988], September). Why organize? Problems and promise in the inner city. Illinois Issues. Retrieved from http://illinoisissues.uis.edu/archives/2008/09/whyorg.html. Accessed on May 1, 2011. Obama, B. (2008b, March 18). Barack Obama’s speech on race. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html?pagewanted¼1. Accessed on March 6, 2011. Remnick, D. (2008, November 17). The Joshua generation: Race and the campaign of Barack Obama. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/ 11/17/081117fa_fact_remnick?currentPage¼all. Accessed on March 6, 2011.

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THE MORE THINGS CHANGE: A GRAMSCIAN GENEALOGY OF BARACK OBAMA’S ‘‘POST-RACIAL’’ POLITICS, 1932–2008 Cedric de Leon ABSTRACT Numerous commentators have suggested that Barack Obama represents a new ‘‘post-racial’’ politics in the United States, distinct from a preexisting contentious form that originated with the civil rights era. Drawing on secondary historical data, Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign speeches, and county-level electoral returns from Indiana and North Carolina, I argue in contrast to such claims that post-racial politics comprise the latest in a line of successive attempts by the Democratic Party to articulate the New Deal voting bloc, in which the white suburban middle class is the primary constituency while African Americans are of secondary importance. By addressing the question of ‘‘Obama and the Politics of Race’’ in this way, this chapter seeks to integrate political parties into the study of racial ideologies. Specifically, it suggests that the latter may originate and subsequently develop in the context of partisan struggle.

Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 75–104 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022010

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From the beginning of his presidential campaign in 2007, commentators described Barack Obama as a new ‘‘post-racial’’ black candidate. In a New York Times op-ed piece, for example, Juan Williams wrote, ‘‘Mr. Obama is in the vanguard of a new brand of multi-racial politics. He is asking voters to move with him beyond race and beyond the civil rights movement to a politics of shared values’’ (New York Times, November 30, 2007). Likewise, National Public Radio (NPR) news analyst Daniel Schorr said, ‘‘The postracial era, as embodied by Obama, is the era where civil rights veterans of the past century are consigned to history and Americans begin to make racefree judgments on who should lead them’’ (National Public Radio, January 28, 2008). And in an article on the Newark mayoral contest of the same year, Peter Boyer compared Cory Booker with Mr. Obama, characterizing them as ‘‘African-American politicians whose appeal transcends race. Both men, reared in the post-Selma era and schooled at elite institutions, developed a political style of conciliation, rather than confrontation’’ (New Yorker, February 4, 2008). Mr. Obama for his part has cultivated this perception. In a 2007 NPR interview, Steve Inskeep asked the candidate to respond to a statement by U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush that in contrast to Mr. Obama, he was a ‘‘race politician’’ and ‘‘proud to be African American.’’ Mr. Obama replied, ‘‘In the history of African-American politics in this country there has always been some tension between speaking in universal terms and speaking in very race-specific terms about the plight of the African-American community y By virtue of my background, you know, I am more likely to speak in universal terms’’ (National Public Radio, February 28, 2007). Similarly, in his South Carolina Democratic Primary speech, Mr. Obama said, ‘‘When I hear that we’ll never overcome the racial divide in our politics, I think about that Republican woman who used to work for [segregationist] Strom Thurmond, who’s now devoted to educating inner-city children, and who went out into the streets of South Carolina and knocked on doors for this campaign.’’ Picking up on the message, some in the South Carolina audience chanted, ‘‘Race doesn’t matter!’’ (New York Times, January 26, 2008; February 12, 2008). The commentariat’s observations and the candidate’s efforts to abet them turn on two claims: (1) the prevailing politics of race prior to Mr. Obama’s ascendancy began with the allegedly confrontational style of civil rights era politicians and (2) Mr. Obama signals a departure from those politics. Such claims, however, have been asserted more than demonstrated. Accordingly, I ask two questions in this chapter: what were the pre-existing politics of race and has Mr. Obama in fact broken with those politics? Drawing on

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secondary historical data, Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign speeches, and county-level data from Indiana and North Carolina, I advance a three-part argument, anchored in a Gramscian theoretical framework that emphasizes the role of political parties in mobilizing electoral coalitions or blocs. First, I argue that the foundation of what scholars call ‘‘colorblind ideology’’ was laid between 1932 and 1965 when the Democratic Party granted whites privileged access to well-paying jobs and single-family homes through a variety of New Deal programs. In doing so, the Democrats constructed, and consequently garnered the mass consent of, a formidable white middle-class suburban constituency. At the same time, the Democratic Party used symbolic gestures and the promise of civil rights to recruit African Americans into the New Deal voting bloc. Lassiter has referred to the co-existence of white privilege and black civil rights as ‘‘the racial contradiction at the heart of postwar liberalism’’ (2006, p. 7). It is this racial contradiction that I argue comprises the core element of colorblind ideology, which suffers the juridical rights of racial others under liberal democracy so long as they do not impinge upon institutionalized racial inequalities. Next, I explain why the New Deal voting bloc fell apart and then came back together again. When the so-called ideological faction of the Democratic Party pressed for structural change in the areas of school and residential segregation – a violation of the terms of white consent to Democratic rule – middle-class whites in the North and South became a ‘‘swing vote’’ (rather than reliable rank-and-file Democrats) that oscillated between whichever party promised to protect the aforementioned white privileges (Aldrich, 1995, p. 247; Paulson, 2000, p. xxv). But once African Americans became a ‘‘captured’’ constituency within the Democratic Party after 1965 (i.e., unwanted by the opposition and increasingly ignored by their own party), the emergence of the white swing vote prompted Democratic pollsters, operatives, and leaders – most famously Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – to rearticulate the New Deal coalition by courting the white vote while largely distancing the party from demands for racial equality (Frymer, 1999, pp. 7–8, 100, 111, 114, 2010, p. 209). Finally, I show that Mr. Obama’s victory in 2008 was built largely on black turnout and a modest but decisive increase in white middle class votes. This, I argue, signals a reassertion of New Deal coalitional politics par excellence. In this sense, Mr. Obama is ‘‘post’’ in a chronological sense only: in every other way, he is merely the newest victor in the ongoing struggle to articulate the New Deal bloc. By addressing the issue of ‘‘Obama and the Politics of Race’’ in this way, this chapter makes three contributions. First, it synthesizes two otherwise

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isolated bodies of work, namely, the literature on political realignment on the one hand, and the literatures on colorblind ideology and whiteness on the other. In doing so, the paper contributes to each field individually. Focused as it is on the institutional dynamics of long-range party system change, the research on political realignments is largely silent on the politics of race – a silence that I argue opens the field to problems of periodization. That is, where students of realignment see rupture, students of racial politics may see the gradual unfolding of colorblind ideology. Conversely, the research on colorblind ideology and whiteness is largely silent on political parties. Party politics has with a few recent exceptions (see Frymer, 1999, 2008) escaped notice as a strategic site for the production of contemporary racial discourse. This chapter addresses the foregoing gaps by advancing a more party-sensitive analysis of the development of colorblind ideology. It is anchored in Antonio Gramsci’s ‘‘articulation’’ framework of political parties, according to which the latter naturalize and denaturalize electoral coalitions in their struggle for power (Gramsci, 1921, 1971, p. 192). So as to pre-empt any confusion, then, my question is not why Mr. Obama succeeded where other Democratic nominees like John Kerry have failed. Such a question would require a lengthy discussion, far beyond the scope of this or any one paper, about the role of the recession, the strengths and weaknesses of the McCain campaign relative to other Republican campaigns, and other variables. Nor do I want to suggest that colorblind racism has been the dominant racial ideology in the United States since the 1930s. This would deny the very existence of Jim Crow segregation and its ideological basis in biological racism. Rather this chapter advances a different and in my view a more delimited and defensible claim; namely that the framing of Mr. Obama as a post-racial figure comprises the latest in a long line of successive political projects to articulate the New Deal coalition and thus elide the racial contradiction at the heart of New Deal liberalism. In this, Mr. Obama does not represent a departure from the pre-existing politics of race but, as the saying goes, ‘‘more of the same.’’

THE REALIGNMENT OF 1964–1972 To begin assessing the claim that Mr. Obama is post-racial vis-a`-vis the putatively divisive politics of the civil rights era, we engage two bodies of work that conceive of the period between 1964 and 1972 as transformative of the American party system. The first, which I refer to here as ‘‘realignment studies,’’ uses the civil rights era to revise the general theory of realignment

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(Aldrich, 1995; Carmines & Stimson, 1989; Ladd, 1980; Lawrence, 1996; Paulson, 2000). As classically defined by V. O. Key, a realignment is a ‘‘sharp and durable’’ transformation of the party system (1955, pp. 4, 12). Realignments involve a critical juncture (e.g., a revolution, an election) and a new governing party whose hegemony lasts for roughly a generation. Recent work in realignment studies has focused on clarifying the timing and order in which the critical juncture and partisan shift occur. Thus, Carmines and Stimson, in their now classic account of the emergence of civil rights as a mainstream political issue, write that realigning issues ‘‘lie dormant’’ but then ‘‘rise from partisan obscurity and become so contentious, so partisan, and so long lasting that they actually define the party system in which they arise and transform the grounds of debate’’ (1989, p. 159). The difference between issues that remain dormant and those that ‘‘define the party system’’ is not race, but party elites, who, like Barry Goldwater, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson in the case of civil rights, take the lead by framing the issue in partisan terms and confronting the mass electorate (1989, pp. 40–47, 160). The other relevant body of work is the ‘‘Southernization of American Politics’’ thesis. It traces Republican hegemony after 1968 to Richard Nixon’s ‘‘Southern Strategy,’’ which allegedly tapped into a deep well of racial resentment flowing from the civil rights movement, deindustrialization, and the cultural assimilation of northern whites (see, e.g., Applebome, 1996; Carter, 1995; Edsall & Edsall, 1991; Phillips, 1969). Eventually, or so that argument goes, the segregationist Deep South became ‘‘the tail that wags the dog’’ in American politics (Lassiter, 2006, p. 6). While divergent in focus, both literatures converge on a crucial point, namely that 1964–1972 represents the beginning of the end of the New Deal era and the emergence of a contentious politics based on race instead of economics. It is this claim that is most problematic about the realignment literature, for it leads inexorably to a host of theoretical and empirical missteps. The first is that it erases the relationship between the 1930s and 1960s. As I seek to demonstrate, it was the threatened reversal of New Deal policies that made white working- and middle-class Democratic voters available for Republican recruitment. Second and in a related vein, the reported death of the New Deal racial order allows scholars and other commentators to mistake the confrontational posture of the Black Panthers and George Wallace for the prevailing politics of race since the 1960s, which overwhelming sociological data demonstrates is anchored in a more subtle discourse of colorblindness. Indeed, the southernization thesis is particularly hard pressed to explain why racially moderate candidates defeated their segregationist counterparts throughout the South from 1964 to 1972 when

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segregationist sentiment burned hottest (Lassiter, 2006, pp. 6, 254, 260–272; Schulman, 1991, p. 131). Lastly, these preceding difficulties lead to the problem of periodization, for as I show below the United States since 1932 has witnessed a gradual unfolding of a regime of race relations grounded in colorblind ideology. This claim is at variance with the post-racial thesis and the realignment literature, which conceives of the same period as an earlier regime of non-racial politics followed by a politics of racial confrontation. To the extent that there has been any shift, I argue, it has been in the way in which the Democratic Party has mobilized black voters as the secondary partner in the New Deal coalition.

WHITENESS AND COLORBLIND IDEOLOGY But if neither realignment nor southernization gets the prevailing politics of race before Mr. Obama right, then what mechanism does? Students of whiteness and colorblind ideology provide a partial answer. Though distinct, they share at least two analytical themes in common. First, both groups seek to uncover the origins and effects of white privilege. The research on whiteness tends to focus on the cumulative advantages of groups (e.g., Jews, the Irish) who have succeeded in claiming the mantle of whiteness (Brodkin, 1998; Citron, 1969; DuBois, 1935; Ignatiev, 1995; Lipsitz, 1998; MacLean, 2006; Mills, [2002]2004; Oliver & Shapiro, 1995; Roediger, 1991), whereas the research on colorblindness focuses on the ways in which the denial of racial inequality especially in college admissions and employment allows whites to evade and thus maintain their privilege in these areas (see, e.g., Bonilla-Silva, [2003] 2010; Bonilla-Silva, Lewis, & Embrick, 2004; Gallagher, 2003; Williams et al., 1999). In addition, both literatures point to the ways in which whites use abstract liberalism and the tenets thereof (i.e., individualism, egalitarianism, meritocracy, and choice) to justify their opposition to any structural alteration of white privilege. Within whiteness studies, Mills argues, ‘‘the transdisciplinary framing of the United States as y [a] liberal democracy y has facilitated and underwritten y massive evasions on the issue of racial injustice’’ ([2002]2004, p. 239). In the literature on colorblind ideology, Bonilla-Silva, Lewis, and Embrick demonstrate that among the most frequent objections to affirmative action in the Detroit metropolitan area is the notion that blacks take jobs that by rights should go to whites. The context, they contend, is depicted as a ‘‘head-to-head competition of merit’’ in which ‘‘race triumphs over merit,’’ and ‘‘whites are the real victims of discrimination’’ (2004, pp. 567–578).

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Related survey research on contemporary racial attitudes corroborates the finding that whites support juridical equality but oppose the implementation of policies directed at restructuring unequal institutional arrangements. Early National Opinion Research Center and Gallup Poll data, for instance, show that whereas white support for federal enforcement of school integration has never approached 50 percent, northern white support for school integration on principle grew from 40 to 80 percent between 1942 and 1970, and southern white support increased from 2 to almost 50 percent (Orfield, 1978, pp. 108–110). Kinder and Sanders note that ‘‘although whites’ support for the principles of racial equality and integration has increased majestically over the last four decades, their backing for policies designed to bring equality and integration about has increased scarcely at all’’ (1996, p. 92). And in a follow up edition to their previous work, Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, and Krysan report that ‘‘there has been a strong and generally steady movement of white attitudes from denial to affirmation of equality’’ but that ‘‘implementation questions do not all show a clear positive trend over time’’ (1997, pp. 191–192). Although the interlocking emphasis on white privilege and abstract liberalism represents a significant advance in the study of race relations, which has tended to focus on communities of color, there are at least two limitations to the way in which these scholars have ‘‘turned the gaze’’ toward the top of the racial hierarchy. In order to highlight institutional racism (a worthy intervention to be sure), scholars in both schools describe the cumulative advantages that whites enjoy as an outcome of state transfer payments, laws, and regulations. They are, however, largely silent on the role of political parties that, by virtue of their location on institutional pathways to elective office, often control the levers of state power and policy-making. Moreover, neither body of work contemplates the ideological projects used by parties to take control of the state, which, because of the nature of competitive democratic politics, requires the articulation of otherwise socially distant communities into majority coalitions. We therefore turn to the work of Antonio Gramsci to synthesize the scholarship on political parties with that of whiteness and colorblind ideology.

A GRAMSCIAN ALTERNATIVE For Gramsci, social divisions and electoral coalitions have no meaningful existence unless they are articulated or naturalized by political parties. This central theoretical premise works well not only with a bedrock assumption

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of sociology that race is socially constructed, but more specifically with a mounting recognition in related fields of inquiry that racialization often takes place in the political arena (Frymer, 1999, 2008; Gerteis, 2003; Marx, 1998; Redding, 2003; Valelly, 2004). Moreover, scholars of race relations have found Gramsci’s concept of hegemony (i.e., rule by consent) to be useful in explicating the contemporary terrain, where overt biological racism has given way to more subtle discursive practices (see, e.g., Bonilla-Silva, 2010, p. 26; Omi & Winant, 1986, p. 67; Winant, 2001, pp. 307–308). The backdrop of Gramsci’s approach was the ‘‘organic crisis’’ of interwar Italy in which parties proliferated and none recognized the authority of the others to rule (see (Fiori, [1965]1990, pp. 110–112, 138–141; Marzani, 1957, p. 11; Hoare and Smith, 1971, pp. xxxii–xxxix, xliii, xlv). It was in this moment of frightening possibility, which eventuated in the rise of fascism, that Gramsci (1921) published his article, ‘‘Parties and Masses.’’ There he famously observed, ‘‘The masses don’t exist politically, if they are not framed in political parties.’’ While in prison, Gramsci continued to write about the role of political parties in articulating the social world. In a note from his reflections on ‘‘The Modern Prince,’’ Gramsci wrote, Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously ‘born’ in each individual brain: they have a centre of formation, of irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion—a group of men y which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality. The counting of votes is the final ceremony of a long process. (Gramsci, 1971, p. 192)

His reference here to ‘‘the counting of votes’’ suggests that those who generate and shape ideas and opinions are the leaders and intellectuals of political parties. Gramsci is thus suspicious of economic determinists and others who insist that so-called objective conditions naturally give rise to a certain kind of politics. For Gramsci, socioeconomic change in and of itself has no natural political valence. It is up to parties to interpret the socioeconomic ‘‘in the political form’’ and channel the resulting energy into coalition-building. Neo-Gramscian scholars have echoed the articulation approach to political parties (de Leon, 2008, 2010; de Leon, Desai, & Tug˘al, 2009; Desai, 2002; Przeworski, 1985; Tug˘al, 2009). In a now classic critique of economic determinism, for example, Przeworski held that ‘‘Social cleavages, the experience of social differentiation, are never given directly to our consciousness. Social differences acquire the status of cleavages as an outcome of ideological and political struggles’’ (1985, p. 69). More recently, de Leon, Desai, and Tug˘al have used the concept of ‘‘political articulation’’ to denote ‘‘the process through which party practices naturalize class, ethnic, and racial

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formations as a basis of social division by integrating disparate interests and identities into coherent sociopolitical blocs’’ [their emphasis] (2009, pp. 194–195). How then do parties articulate the social world? In his essay on ‘‘The Southern Question,’’ Gramsci suggests that parties are involved in a twostep process aimed at forging sociopolitical blocs. First, political parties pose one group as the hegemonic [dirigente] or leading element of the bloc. Second, parties win the consent of likely allies by framing alternative leadership groups as impossible choices. Thus, Gramsci writes that the Italian Communist Party (PCI) ‘‘made the urban proletariat the modern protagonist of Italian history,’’ and in doing so ‘‘succeeded in modifying – if not completely at least to a notable extent – their mental outlook’’ ([1926]1992, pp. 48–49). But if parties convince one group of their right to rule, then they must also garner the consent of other groups to be ruled. In this, Gramsci offers an important clue in his account of the Sardinian chapter of the PCI, which turned the peasantry off from the local nationalist party in this way: Are you poor devils from Sardinia for a bloc with the gentry of the island, who have ruined you and who are the local overseers of capitalist exploitation? Or are you for a bloc with the revolutionary workers of the mainland, who want to destroy all forms of exploitation and free all the oppressed? (1992, p. 34)

As Gramsci tells it, the PCI was able to win the consent of Sardinian peasants by framing the nationalist alternative as an unimaginable choice. A bloc with the ‘‘gentry of the island’’ is said to be an unspeakable partnership with their hated ‘‘overseers,’’ whereas a bloc with the ‘‘revolutionary workers of the mainland’’ is described as an opportunity to free themselves and ‘‘all of the oppressed.’’ In this chapter, I argue that the New Deal Democrats engaged in a similar two-step process. The Democratic Party created and then posed white middle class suburbanites as the principal protagonists of the ‘‘consumers’ republic’’ within which working- and middle-class whites were entitled to the well paying industrial jobs and single-family homes that drove the postwar industrial economy and lifted the country out of the Great Depression. The latter’s partners in the New Deal bloc were African Americans, whom the Democrats mobilized in two phases. In the first phase, 1932–1965, the party made symbolic and eventually juridical concessions to blacks, while simultaneously protecting white entitlements. Then from 1968 to the present day, in a process that Paul Frymer (1999) has called, ‘‘electoral capture,’’ Democrats gave blacks the impossible choice of either staying

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with the party of Civil Rights or returning to the party of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. The paper then provides evidence that far from departing from this strategy of centering the white middle class and marginalizing the black community, Barack Obama has instead recuperated it and in doing so revived the New Deal voting bloc.

CASE SELECTION AND DATA Of all the states Mr. Obama carried in 2008, Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana appeared from the outset to be the most logical choices for testing the post-racial thesis. All other states that defected to the Democratic Party in that year had gone Democratic more recently. In contrast, Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana had been Republican strongholds at the presidential level since the civil rights era and accordingly were hailed as exemplars of a ‘‘racial breakthrough’’ in 2008. The Old Dominion and Tar Heel state had been written off as irredeemable casualties of the Republican southern strategy. Indiana meanwhile was as non-competitively Republican as any northern state could be. Conservative and overwhelmingly white, Indiana had not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964 (Lassiter, 2006; Marable, 2010; USA Today, November 5, 2008). Virginia, however, complicates matters. Northern white-collar workers have followed defense and research dollars to the southern metropolitan ‘‘Sunbelt’’ since the end of the Second World War. But whereas North Carolina’s high growth suburban counties are seen historically as part of the ‘‘New South,’’ similar communities in Virginia are seen as Washington, DC, suburbs. In other words, if northern Virginia’s support for Mr. Obama can be dismissed as support from Washington insiders, North Carolina’s support cannot (CNN, 2008; New York Times, November 4, 2008; Schulman, 1991; USA Today, April 6, 2011).1 Although North Carolina is not a perfect choice (Jimmy Carter carried it in 1976 after the Watergate scandal), it works well as a comparison with Indiana in other important ways, namely that the two states signaled a North-South convergence in the 1960s toward a politics of racial moderation yet remained solidly Republican at the presidential level for a generation. Neither Barry Goldwater in 1964 nor the segregationist George Wallace in 1968 carried Indiana or North Carolina despite winning the Deep South in their respective elections. Put another way, given the option of an avowedly anti-civil rights candidate, a majority of Indianans and

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Carolinians voted against that option at the height of the civil rights era (Lassiter, 2006). In this chapter I draw on three sets of data. First, I cull primary data from the secondary literature, with special reliance on the historiography of suburbanization and Paul Frymer’s (1999, 2008) research on race and the modern Democratic Party. Second, I conduct a content analysis of those speeches from the 2008 campaign that were posted to barackobama.com by Organizing for America, President Obama’s political arm. I chose this dataset over others, assuming that Mr. Obama and his operatives considered these speeches representative of the campaign. The content analysis was done using Bonilla-Silva’s (2010) four ‘‘central frames of colorblind racism.’’ ‘‘Abstract individualism’’ appropriates ideas associated with political and economic liberalism such as equal opportunity, choice and individualism to explain white opposition to race-based programs such as affirmative action. ‘‘Naturalization’’ allows whites to dismiss racial phenomena such as residential segregation as natural outcomes (e.g., gravitation to one’s kind). ‘‘Cultural racism’’ refers to arguments about minorities’ putative behavioral deficits (e.g., blacks have too many babies) to justify racial inequality. ‘‘Minimization of racism’’ suggests that racism is no longer a factor affecting the life chances of minorities (Bonilla-Silva, 2010, pp. 28–29). Lastly, I use U.S. Census data, county-level electoral returns, and qualitative data from county newspapers to gauge the extent to which the Obama campaign was able to reforge the New Deal coalition. The six counties analyzed here are Indiana’s and North Carolina’s only entrants on the list of the 100 fastest growing counties in the United States as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau (2007).

POLITICAL ORIGINS OF COLORBLIND IDEOLOGY: THE NEW DEAL VOTING BLOC, 1932–1965 The New Deal Democratic Party created and subsequently framed the white suburban middle class as the protagonist of modern American history by breaking with nineteenth-century producerism. To the extent that the Great Depression had been a crisis of underconsumption, then its solution was the economic empowerment of the ordinary consumer. Thus, during the 1932 presidential campaign, Franklin Roosevelt announced, ‘‘we are at the threshold of a fundamental change in our popular economic thought y we are going to think less about the producer and more about the consumer.’’

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Because private markets were unable to reinvigorate aggregate demand on their own, the Roosevelt administration guaranteed home loans and invested in defense appropriations to fuel what they hoped would become a selfreinforcing cycle of housing construction, employment, and mass consumption. After the Second World War, New Deal Democrats continued to pose the United States as a ‘‘consumers’ republic.’’ The Employment Act of 1946, for example, directed the federal government to promote ‘‘maximum employment, production, and purchasing power.’’ As Lizabeth Cohen notes, this period saw the emergence of ‘‘the purchaser as citizen who simultaneously fulfilled personal desire and civic obligation by consuming’’ (Cohen, 2003, pp. 24, 54–55, 119; Jackson, 1985, pp. 203–204; Schulman, 1991, p. ix). There is considerable evidence to suggest that the vision of a consumers’ republic approached common sense in this period. Institutional actors as adversarial as the National Association of Manufacturers and the Congress of Industrial Organizations linked mass consumption to national prosperity. Even President Eisenhower, a Republican, credited deficit spending on the interstate highway system for mitigating the effects of the 1950s recession. Indeed, by 1957, Fortune editor, William H. Whyte, would write, ‘‘thrift is now un-American.’’ Bride’s Magazine advised its readers, ‘‘[W]hat you buy and how you buy it is very vital in your new life – and to our whole American way of living’’ (Cohen, 2003, pp. 115–119, 121). White Americans came to see themselves as the central preoccupation of the New Deal as a result primarily of two initiatives: defense spending and home finance. Between 1946 and 1965, defense expenditures were 62 percent of the federal budget. These developments translated into jobs, spurring a mass migration to centers of defense research and production, located primarily in metropolitan Sunbelt counties like those in North Carolina’s ‘‘research triangle.’’ Between 1970 and 1976, population growth in all but three southern states, whose share of defense dollars more than tripled from the 1950s to the 1970s, outstripped that of most other states in the Union (Schulman, 1991, p. 160). But if defense spending furnished many of the middle-class jobs of the consumers’ republic, then federal home finance policy furnished both jobs and its iconic mass consumption commodity, the single-family home. Altering forever the rules of mortgage lending, the FHA and GI Bill allowed for minimum down-payments of 7 percent, with mortgage payments spread over as many as thirty years. Because the federal government guaranteed all FHA and GI Bill home loans, bankers approved an unprecedented lending spree. Federally backed mortgages helped 16 million World War II veterans purchase homes and in doing so underwrote their jobs in the building trades.

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The rate of homeownership increased from 44 percent in 1940 to 62 percent in 1960, and for the first time in history, a majority of Americans became people of property (Cohen, 2003, p. 195; Jackson, 1985, pp. 204–205). However, the FHA and GI Bill primarily backed loans for single-family homes in all-white suburban neighborhoods. The FHA’s own underwriting manual read, ‘‘If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.’’ These and other guidelines reinforced the consumerist framework of postwar citizenship by creating a racialized brand hierarchy of residential neighborhoods, within which whites strove to ‘‘trade up’’ from inner city ethnic neighborhoods to inner ring suburbs, and then on to outer ring suburbs now called ‘‘exurbs’’ (Cohen, 2003, p. 202; Jackson, 1985, pp. 206–207; Lassiter, 2006, p. 7; Sugrue, 2008, p. 202). The white suburban middle class was therefore the leading or hegemonic constituency of the New Deal voting bloc, but its pre-eminent, if paradoxical, partner was the African-American community. The Democratic Party mobilized blacks in two distinct phases, each of which reflected the centrality of white voters to their political strategy and the secondary status of black voters. The first phase, 1932–1965, began as southern blacks migrated to pivotal areas in populous battleground states. Truman administration official Clark Clifford observed, ‘‘the Negro vote today holds the balance of power in Presidential elections for the simple arithmetic reason that the Negroes y are geographically concentrated in the pivotal, large, and closely contested states such as New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan’’ (Frymer, 1999, pp. 95–96). The Democratic strategy for recruiting black voters evolved from symbolic gestures to civil rights, but stopped just short of addressing residential segregation, which, as we have seen, was a core principle of New Deal home finance. The 1936 Roosevelt campaign named African American delegates to the Democratic National Convention for the first time in party history. In 1940, blacks were mentioned in the party platform – again for the first time. In 1948, Harry Truman went so far as to endorse the findings of his Committee on Civil Rights, which decried the discrimination endured by blacks. Finally, in the 1960s, symbolic gestures flowered into a full-blown platform of civil rights when pollsters predicted that the loss of white votes in the South would be more than offset by support among northern and newly enfranchised southern blacks as well as racially moderate whites. Robert F. Kennedy admitted that his late brother had hesitated to press civil rights for fear that it would cost them votes ‘‘even in the suburbs.’’ But in 1963 the pollster Louis Harris reported that whereas Mr. Kennedy had lost

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4.5 million votes with his qualified support for civil rights, he gained 11 million votes from those who had voted for Richard Nixon in 1960. The pollsters were vindicated spectacularly in the 1964 presidential election when Lyndon B. Johnson, running on a civil rights platform, carried all but six states in the entire Union, including the upper South (Frymer, 1999, pp. 94–95; Lassiter, 2006, p. 229). The New Deal voting bloc therefore comprised the political incarnation of colorblind ideology, within which black juridical rights were permissible so long as white privileges in key redistributive programs remained untouched. Thus, the Roosevelt administration officially forbade racial discrimination in New Deal entitlements, but, as in the area of home finance, permitted racial loopholes. For example, the National Labor Relations Act legalized collective bargaining, but excluded farmworkers and domestic employees (among whom blacks were disproportionately concentrated) and did not prohibit racial discrimination with respect to union membership. This all but guaranteed that the high paying industrial jobs that vaulted workers into the middle class would be white jobs. Similar loopholes prevented blacks from participating in signature New Deal programs such as the Social Security Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, Aid to Dependent Children, and the National Recovery Act (Frymer, 1999, p. 94; Lipsitz, 1998, p. 5; MacLean, 2006, pp. 15–16).

COLORBLIND IDEOLOGY AS RESISTANCE AND RE-INVITATION, 1968–1992 The Democratic Party entered a second phase of black mobilization after a brief period in which its so-called ideological faction moved to address school and residential segregation. Having acquired middle-class jobs and home mortgages with relative ease, many white rank-and-file Democrats responded with puzzlement as to why blacks could not do the same without stateenforced integration. It was at this point that the racial contradiction of the New Deal voting bloc became expressed as a discourse of white entitlement and victimization within which residential segregation was an outcome of individual merit rather than collective racism, and ‘‘de facto’’ segregation was an individual consumer right (Lassiter, 2006, pp. 1, 3; Lipsitz, 1998, pp. 5, 20, 22; MacLean, 2006, pp. 15–16, 20; Sugrue, 1996, p. 211). Examples of the discourse are drawn from metropolitan Indianapolis and Charlotte, whose counties are compared below in the empirical section on Mr. Obama.

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In the case of Indianapolis, several anti-busing groups organized in response to a desegregation trial in the summer of 1971. Letters to the editor of the Indianapolis Star evince themes such as abstract liberalism that the scholarly literature now associates with colorblind ideology. One letter writer asks, ‘‘Are we going to allow a few people to dictate to us on where our children are to attend school?’’ (Indianapolis Star, July 16, 1971, quoted in Hayes, 1975, p. 18). Another takes the loss of liberty expressed in the first letter to what s/he believes is its logical conclusion: ‘‘No one wants it, but if we don’t fight it our every freedom is in jeopardy y If it’s our schools today what will it be tomorrow?’’ (Indianapolis Star, Oct. 8, 1971, quoted in Hayes, 1975, p. 18). And in a letter that pre-figures the charges of reverse discrimination that would come to dominate the affirmative action debate a generation later, still another person intoned, Is this not the rankest kind of discrimination? That is, making little children sacrificial goats to please the whims of social experimenters and latterday John Browns anxious to inflict punishment on young white children today for the sins committed against blacks by Southern plantation owners over a century ago? (Indianapolis Star, July 20, 1971, quoted in Hayes, 1975, p. 17)

Many of the same themes pop up in the Charlotte anti-busing movement of the mid-1970s. A physician and anti-busing activist from one of the city’s affluent suburbs explained his position in this way: ‘‘So many of us made the biggest investment of our lives – our homes – primarily on the basis of their location with regard to schools. It seemed like an absurdity that anyone could tell us where to send our children.’’ Similarly, an insurance executive and officer of the Concerned Parents Association explained, ‘‘I did not believe there was any possibility whatsoever that the government was going to dictate where my kids were going to public school’’ (Charlotte Observer, July 12, 1975, quoted in Lassiter, 2006, pp. 1–2). The above quotations are significant for several reasons. First, neither biological racism nor even segregationism is in evidence. This is especially important in the case of Charlotte, since those who stress the centrality of southernization or the ‘‘southern strategy’’ would have predicted a shrill, racist rhetoric. Instead we hear a rights-based discourse peppered with allusions to liberty, freedom, and individual autonomy. Thus, opponents of busing describe the government as dictating, telling, making, and inflicting. Indeed, the emergent discourse is profoundly one of white victimization, innocence, and entitlement. This is particularly salient in the last Indianapolis passage, where ‘‘little children’’ are made ‘‘sacrificial goats.’’ In Charlotte, the New Deal entitlement to segregated communities appears when the physician justifies his

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children’s schooling in terms of the biggest investment of their lives, their homes. Finally, there is the telltale minimization of contemporary racism, which is central to colorblind ideology. We are reminded that there are no longer any ‘‘Southern plantation owners,’’ the implication being that there is therefore no longer any racism to warrant ‘‘latterday John Browns.’’ Their privileges under the New Deal social contract having thus been violated, the protagonists of the consumers’ republic became a swing vote instead of a reliable base of Democratic support (Aldrich, 1995, p. 247). This critical defection inaugurated a Democratic strategy for rearticulating the New Deal bloc – one in which blacks became what Frymer calls a ‘‘captured’’ constituency: unwanted by the opposition and essentially ignored in the Democratic Party as the latter scrambled to bring middle America back into the fold, confident that blacks had nowhere else to go (Frymer, 1999, p. 8, 2008, p. viii). Although the strategy had changed in this new phase of black mobilization, middle class whites remained the party’s central preoccupation, while African-American voters were increasingly ignored. Indeed, beginning as early as the Johnson administration, there was a growing recognition that the party had to recuperate the terms of the New Deal social contract. Democratic pollster Richard Scammon, for example, warned Lyndon Johnson that ‘‘the American voter today is un-young, unblack, and un-poory . Campaign strategy should be carefully aimed at the white, middle-aged, middle-class voters – the people y who bowl regularly.’’ In 1984, after Jesse Jackson’s infamous anti-Semitic remarks in New York, advisors to Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale urged him to break with Jackson. When he refused, William Galston, a party advisor said, it was ‘‘the last opportunity to draw a line that middle-America could discern as being significant.’’ Finally, in 1992, after successive defeats at the hands of the Republicans, Bill Clinton, the party’s new nominee, signaled that he had gotten the message. Mr. Clinton used the occasion of the Los Angeles riots to distance himself from Jesse Jackson and attack an obscure female rapper named Sister Soulja for inciting violence. Even black Democratic leaders, who were sick of losing, copped to the Clinton line. Thus, Wayne County Commissioner Bernard Parker said at the time, ‘‘As a politician, I understand why Clinton is playing down. It’s because he is trying to reach white middle America. I’m not bothered by the strategy.’’ After the election, Washington Post writer Thomas Edsall wrote, ‘‘the rhetoric and strategy of the Clinton campaign restored the Democratic Party’s biracial coalition and made the party competitive again in the nation’s suburbs’’ (Frymer, 1999, pp. 4. 100, 111, 119).

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BARACK OBAMA AND THE REASSERTION OF THE NEW DEAL VOTING BLOC It is within this broader historical context that we assess Barack Obama’s ‘‘post-racial’’ politics. Having established that the New Deal Democratic Party and its descendants posed the white suburban middle class as the protagonist of the consumers’ republic and recruited African Americans but always at arms length, we must now ask whether indeed Mr. Obama’s own racial politics represent a departure or more of the same. My content analysis reveals that the white middle-class suburban voter remained at the center of the Democratic rhetorical and organizational strategy. Rhetorically the Democrats made their claim to the presidency by advancing a revisionist and non-racial account of New Deal liberalism. Mr. Obama’s personal narrative, so much a feature of his campaign, contained numerous idealized allusions to New Deal policies. For example, in El Dorado, Kansas, his grandparents’ ancestral home, then candidate Obama said, ‘‘I am standing here today y because my grandfather got the chance to go to school on the GI Bill, buy a house through the Federal Housing Authority [sic], and move his family west’’ (Obama, 2008a). In Indiana, Mr. Obama compared his own plans to remake the American middle class to President Eisenhower’s embrace of New Deal deficit spending programs: ‘‘Now, back in the 1950’s, Americans were put to work building the Interstate Highway system and that helped expand the middle class in this country. We need to show the same kind of leadership today’’ (Obama, 2008c). Later, in a speech in nearby St. Louis titled, ‘‘An Agenda for Middle Class Success,’’ he alluded to his future legislative agenda in this way: ‘‘we sent my grandfather’s generation to college on the GI Bill, which helped create the largest middle-class in historyy. And that’s what this country will do again when I am President of the United States’’ (Obama, 2008d). In these passages, Mr. Obama asserts that New Deal liberalism is the answer for what ails the United States. Indeed, he frames himself as the very product and embodiment of the aspirations and policies of the New Deal. Significantly, he echoes the discourse of colorblind ideology, in that his nostalgia is an abstract evocation of a putative golden age of the American economy without any mention of Jim Crow segregation or the secondary status of black voters in the New Deal coalition. Beyond these concrete references to the New Deal, Mr. Obama employed three of Bonilla-Silva’s four colorblind discursive frames.2 To repeat, the frame of abstract liberalism involves the use of concepts such as equal

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opportunity, choice, individualism, and rights to defend white privilege. Thus, whites explain their opposition to affirmative action because it supposedly gives preferential treatment to people of color, even though people of color are underrepresented in most good jobs. Likewise, whites defend segregation by suggesting that it is their right and choice to live in exclusive suburban communities, thus sidestepping the fact that residential segregation was made possible by the FHA’s and GI Bill’s preferential lending practices (Bonilla-Silva, 2010, p. 28). The application of egalitarianism and individualism in these examples is therefore ‘‘abstracted’’ from a reality and history of persistent discrimination and social inequality. Mr. Obama’s campaign speeches were shot through with examples of abstract liberalism. In the aforementioned Kansas speech, the candidate articulated a vision of equality and universality that drew a horizontal line of camaraderie between him and all Americans, saying, ‘‘Our family’s story is one that spans miles and generations; races and realities. It’s the story of farmers and soldiers; city workers and single moms. It takes place in small towns and good schools; in Kansas and Kenya; on the shores of Hawaii and the streets of Chicago. It’s a varied and unlikely journey, but one that’s held together by the same simple dream. And that is why it’s American’’ (Obama, 2008a). Mr. Obama swept the problems of inequality and discrimination under the rug on other occasions too, but in a way that eerily echoed white resistance to busing. In North Carolina, he said that the ‘‘fundamental promise’’ of the American creed was that ‘‘America is a place where you can make it if you try,’’ where ‘‘everyone should have the chance to live their dreams’’ (Obama, 2008f). Elsewhere in North Carolina, he declared, ‘‘I believe that if you work hard and do everything right, you shouldn’t live in fear of losing everything’’ (Obama, 2008g). In these passages, the candidate not only paints a picture of abstract equality in which ‘‘you can make it if you try,’’ but also reaffirms the aforementioned individual right of consumers who ‘‘work hard and do everything right’’ to ‘‘live their dreams.’’ The ‘‘fear of losing everything’’ is of course an allusion to the foreclosure crisis and perhaps even to the Great Depression, which preceded the original rise of New Deal liberalism, but the phrase simultaneously invokes the fears of busing. It is as if Mr. Obama was signaling to white voters that he would not relitigate the racial past. The frame of ‘‘cultural racism’’ refers to ‘‘culturally based arguments such as y ‘blacks have too many babies’ to explain the standing of minorities in society.’’ Thus, the failings of people of color are attributed to ‘‘their lack of effort, loose family organization, and inappropriate values.’’ Cultural racism blames the victim (Bonilla-Silva, 2010, p. 28, 40). In Mr. Obama’s

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speeches, cultural racism becomes manifest in the juxtaposition of ‘‘American’’ values of hard work and personal responsibility with the putative cultural degeneracy of the African American community. Thus, in the aforementioned speech on middle class success, he observed, ‘‘Americans I’ve met y believe in personal responsibility, and hard work, and self-reliance’’ (Obama, 2008d). In contrast, at the 99th Annual Convention of the NAACP, Senator Obama gave voice to white stereotypes about the fecundity and promiscuity of blacks by urging his audience to tell young black men that ‘‘responsibility does not end at conception y what makes them men is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one.’’ He also advised convention goers to be ‘‘good neighbors and good citizens,’’ lending credence to white fears that blacks are in fact culturally deficient in these areas (Obama, 2008e). In his now famous speech on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, he pointed to still another cultural defect, namely the ‘‘anger’’ of black people, which he claimed ‘‘is not always productive y it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change’’ (Obama, 2008b). Thus, black people are not only angry, a familiar cultural charge; their anger also blinds them to their ‘‘complicity in [their] condition’’ and isolates them from other Americans. As in his nod to individual consumer rights under abstract liberalism, Mr. Obama is speaking here not so much to black people, but to whites, whom he comforts by proclaiming his belief in hard work and personal responsibility. The implication is that he believes in these values so much that he is willing to scold the members of a venerable African American institution to their faces and in their own house. In this way, he signals to middle class whites that they will be the leading constituency of his administration. Finally, the frame of ‘‘minimization of racism’’ refers to the argument that ‘‘discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting minorities’ life chances’’ (Bonilla-Silva, 2010, p. 29). In the same speech on Reverend Wright, Mr. Obama argues that for the African-American community the path to a more perfect union ‘‘means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past.’’ He adds that black children ‘‘must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny’’ (Obama, 2008b). The candidate thus acknowledges the history and reality of racial discrimination but does not want to say that it is ‘‘a central factor affecting minorities’ life chances.’’ Hence, he speaks about the burden of the African-American community as ‘‘past’’ and warns against playing the victim. The path to a more perfect union therefore

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consists of teaching black youth – in the language of abstract liberalism – that ‘‘they can write their own destiny.’’ Again, Senator Obama addresses whites as much as blacks in this speech. It was, after all, an attempt on the part of the campaign to put to rest white fears that the candidate shared the militant politics of race evinced by his pastor. However, he also takes care to stand by whites who believe in the declining significance of race. The internal dynamics of the Obama campaign, to the extent that they have been reported, confirm that the organization was doing what so many Democratic campaigns had done before it, namely court white voters above all while doing just enough to guarantee the black vote. Thus, the New York Times reported that Mr. Obama walked a ‘‘rhetorical tightrope – reassuring whites without seeming to abandon blacks.’’ Senior aide David Axelrod confided that there was ‘‘a certain physics’’ to winning votes across racial lines, while another aide said, ‘‘there was certainly the feeling among some of the black staff that some of the white staff did not care about winning black votes.’’ Cornel West recounted his early criticism of Mr. Obama and the campaign’s subsequent attempt to reach out to him. Dr. West said, ‘‘He’s got large numbers of white brothers and sisters who have fears and anxieties y He’s got to speak [to] them in such a way that he holds us at arm’s length; enough to say he loves us, but not too close to scare them away.’’ He recalled that Mr. Obama expressed the fear that ‘‘he’d be pegged as a candidate who caters only to the needs of black folks’’ (New York Times, February 12, 2008). But if Mr. Obama was addressing the old constituents of the New Deal voting bloc, to what extent did he succeed in reuniting them? To answer this question we turn now to county-level electoral data from Indiana and North Carolina. The returns reveal three patterns. First, though not reported here, Senator McCain carried the rural counties of both states overwhelmingly often with 60 percent of the vote or more. Second, the Democrats predictably offset the rural vote by carrying the major cities. But third, the Obama campaign’s advantage was made possible by black voters in urban centers and white middle class voters in suburban areas, especially the high growth suburbs that have given the Republican Party super-majorities in the last several election cycles. Table 1 reports the returns of two counties that were critical to the Democratic victory in Indiana. Hamilton and Hendricks are Indiana’s only entrants in the 100 fastest growing counties in the United States. Both are affluent suburbs of Indianapolis and are over 90 percent white (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007, 2009).

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Table 1. Democratic Share of Popular Vote in High Growth Counties in Indiana and North Carolina, 2000–2008. County

2000

2004

2008

Hamilton, IN Hendricks, IN Brunswick, NC Mecklenburg, NC Union, NC Wake, NC

23.7 26.8 45.5 48.2 31.6 46.0

25.2 25.9 39.2 51.6 29.5 48.7

38.4 37.7 40.5 61.8 36.2 56.7

Sources: Indiana Secretary of State; North Carolina Board of Elections.

The Democrats increased their share of the popular vote in each of these key areas. Although the Republicans carried Hamilton and Hendricks as they typically do, their margin of victory dropped by a combined total of 32,504 votes relative to 2004. The loss of what are routinely bankable Republican votes in the suburbs was therefore decisive given the urban-rural stalemate and the fact that the Democratic margin of victory in Indiana was a mere 28,391 votes (USA Today, November 5, 2008). Additionally, while black turnout was far more important in North Carolina as we shall soon see, there was nevertheless a net gain to the Democratic Party of 11,534 black voters from 2004 to 2008 (Philpot, Shaw, & McGowen, 2009, p. 998). U.S. Census data and the local paper of record, the Indianapolis Star, provide important clues about who voted for Mr. Obama and why, especially in Hamilton County. First, as Table 2 reports, although both countries remain overwhelmingly white, the U.S. Census estimates a drop in the percentage of whites from 2000 to 2009 and therefore an increase in the percentage of people who are more likely to vote Democratic. Second, the Obama campaign benefited from some 240,000 newly registered Democrats but primarily in ‘‘defecting’’ counties: the twelve counties that President Bush carried in 2004 but were carried by Senator Obama in 2008.3 Demographic shifts and voter registration notwithstanding, however, a closer look at Hamilton County suggests that the Democrats’ 13.5 percent improvement over their 2004 performance appears to be due in large part to the defection of already registered Republican voters. One sure sign was the relatively enthusiastic turnout for Republican Governor Mitch Daniels: whereas Senator McCain carried Hamilton by 30,000 votes, Daniels carried it by 80,000. Indiana Republican Party Chairman Murray Clark called

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Table 2.

Percentage White Population in High Growth Counties in Indiana and North Carolina, 2000–2009.

County

2000

2009

Net Change

Hamilton, IN Hendricks, IN Brunswick, NC Mecklenburg, NC Union, NC Wake, NC

94.4 96.7 82.3 64.0 82.8 72.4

90.4 92.3 86.1 64.1 84.4 72.3

4.0 4.4 þ 3.8 þ 0.1 þ 1.6 0.1

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau (2000a, 2000b, 2009).

the disparity ‘‘jaw-dropping.’’ Moreover, an important component of the Obama campaign’s county organization was a chapter of ‘‘Republicans for Obama’’ (R.F.O.). One R.F.O. activist, Chuck Lasker, had been a ‘‘straightticket Republican since 1980’’ and identifies himself and his fellow Obama Republicans as ‘‘the religious right, both Catholics and Southern Baptists.’’ Further, while there is no definitive data to suggest that the defection of Hamilton County Republicans was due primarily to Mr. Obama’s postracial appeal, county residents either mentioned it outright or alluded to it. A white lawyer and college professor from Carmel, for instance, called Mr. Obama the ‘‘first really post-racial candidate,’’ adding, ‘‘he offers at least the promise of healing the polarization we’ve had in this country.’’ Chuck Lasker echoed these sentiments, explaining that he ‘‘crossed party lines to support Obama because he believes Obama can draw the country together’’ (Independent Star, April 21, 2008; July 25, 2008; July 26, 2008; November 9, 2008). Table 1 also reports the results of the presidential election in key counties in North Carolina. Like Hendricks and Hamilton, all four counties listed here are among the nation’s 100 fastest growing counties. Wake County is the anchor of the ‘‘Research Triangle’’ and houses the city of Raleigh. It is the fourth largest high growth county in the United States, and threequarters of its residents are white. Mecklenburg County contains the city of Charlotte and its suburbs. It is the second largest high growth county in the country and is two-thirds white. Union County is a Charlotte exurb and is 84 percent white. Brunswick County is a suburb of Wilmington at the southernmost tip of the state and is 86.1 percent white (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007, 2009).

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The returns suggest that the Democrats carried North Carolina by expanding their share of the black vote in cities and their share of white votes in the suburbs. George W. Bush carried Wake County in 2000 and 2004, but in 2008, the Democrats surged dramatically, improving on their 2004 showing by 8 percentage points. Mecklenburg County had been trending Democratic since 2000, yet it too witnessed a higher-than-expected 20-point Democratic margin of victory in 2008. As in Hamilton and Hendricks counties, the Democrats lost Union and Brunswick counties, but not until they shaved several percentage points off the 2004 Republican advantage. Finally, Democrats increased their already formidable advantage in the African-American community. According to the New York Times, 22 percent of North Carolina’s electorate in 2008 was black, compared to 18.6 percent in 2004 (November 6, 2008). The net gain due to increased black turnout was 156,816 votes from 2004 to 2008 (Philpot et al., 2009, p. 998). In a state where the Republicans lost by just 14,177 votes, the Democrats’ expansion in city centers and suburbs was sufficient to tip the state over to a Democratic nominee for the first time since 1976. Once again U.S. Census data and local newspapers offer valuable clues as to who voted for Mr. Obama and why. Table 2 reports that the percentage of whites in all four counties either increased or remained constant between 2000 and 2009. If the in-migration of non-whites played a role in North Carolina (which I do not deny), then they do not appear to have played a role in these four counties. It is possible that the in-migration of northern whites played a role, but as Schulman (1991) demonstrates, substantial white migration to the Sunbelt has been ongoing since 1938. Local newspapers point instead to other dynamics. In a precinct-by-precinct analysis of how ‘‘whites boosted Obama’’ in Mecklenburg County, the Charlotte Observer reported that although the GOP still managed to carry heavily white Republican precincts, the Democrats dramatically improved on their 2004 performance. For example, in the Charlotte suburb of Huntersville, which is 88.4 percent white, Mr. Obama took 41 percent of the vote to Mr. Kerry’s 28 percent. A similar pattern was found in Charlotte’s neighboring counties, which voted heavily for McCain, including Union County. At the same time, the article described ‘‘a massive turnout among African Americans’’ in which ‘‘a number of first-time voters y said they came to the polls solely because of Obama.’’ Thus, in the predominantly black precinct of Barringer Elementary School in west Charlotte, where Democrats are accustomed to overwhelming margins of victory, Senator Kerry defeated President Bush 723 to 36, while Obama defeated McCain 1617 to 16 (Charlotte Observer, November 6, 2008; U.S. Census Bureau,

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2009). In Wake County, the story seemed to center more on the 47,000 newly registered Democratic voters, but many of these were former registered Republicans like Nancy Anderson, a resident of the Raleigh suburb of Cary, which is 82.2 percent white. The article notes that eleven precincts that voted for President Bush in 2004 flipped for Mr. Obama in 2008, including heavily Republican Brier Creek Community Center in northwest Raleigh (News and Observer, November 8, 2008; U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). Once again it is difficult to discern why these voters chose Mr. Obama, but it is telling that the sentiments expressed in Hamilton County, Indiana were echoed in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. In an article titled, ‘‘Obama’s win not just for blacks,’’ Kevin Caston of the Charlotte Observer asked Leigh Robbins, a white woman who works in admissions at UNC Charlotte, why she supported the Obama campaign. She said that he is ‘‘a non-polarizing figure y He’s genuine, and that’s something that people – white and black or whatever your race can relate to’’ (Charlotte Observer, November 9, 2008). News reports also confirm the centrality of white suburban voters to the 2008 Democratic coalition nationally. The Democrats carried fifteen of the fastest growing 100 counties (compared to just three in 2004) and ran ahead of John Kerry in 94 of those counties. According to Politico, Democratic success in high growth areas ‘‘provided his margin of victory in at least two closely contested states: Indiana and North Carolina.’’ Mr. Obama’s win in Wake County was especially ‘‘decisive,’’ because it had been ‘‘one of the 13 fast-growing Bush counties’’ (Nov. 9, 2008). Regarding Indiana, USA Today observes, the Democrats ‘‘reduced the typical Republican advantages in some GOP strongholds. In Hamilton County, the state’s most affluent just north of Indianapolis, McCain won with 60% of the vote – far less than President Bush’s 75% in 2004’’ (November 5, 2008).

CONCLUSION Barack Obama’s post-racial politics therefore have a very long pedigree indeed. They originated in part, I argue, with the Democratic Party’s articulation of the New Deal voting bloc, whose racial contradiction emanated from posing the white suburban middle class as the protagonist of the consumers’ republic while recruiting and eventually capturing African-American voters with symbolic gestures and the promise of juridical rights. The result through two instantiations of this bloc (1932–1965 and then 1968–2008) has been the extension of citizenship to blacks without much alteration to the structural configuration of white privilege. Within

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this context, Mr. Obama’s post-racial mystique can be understood as a device cultivated by the Democratic Party to revive and hail the New Deal voting bloc. Mr. Obama offers ‘‘more of the same’’ in other ways as well. He may be America’s first black president, but the mechanisms through which President Obama rose to power are profoundly classical. The vehicle for his ascendancy has been the oldest mass party in world history, the Democratic Party, and his home base within that party was nothing less than the Chicago Democratic machine. Moreover, his victory and that of his party were achieved through the mobilization of majority coalitions, which, since the beginning of mass party formation in the United States, has demanded the unification of mutually isolated social groups into coherent political blocs (de Leon, 2010). By situating Mr. Obama’s ascendancy in the context of partisan struggle, this chapter tells a story about colorblind ideology and whiteness that is different from other accounts on offer. Although the existing literature has rightly shifted our attention to the subtleties and implications of contemporary racial ideologies, it has been largely silent on the role of political parties in shaping those ideologies. Put another way, we know much more about the content and internal structure of colorblind ideology, for instance, than we do about its partisan origins. This paper has tried to fill that gap. As I have already noted, I do not mean to suggest by this that sociologists of race are unaware of Gramsci. Quite the contrary, the widely held notion that race relations have passed ‘‘from domination to hegemony’’ (Omi & Winant, 1986, p. 67) is a Gramscian inspired idea that has been around for a while and points importantly to a non-coercive form of racial rule. However, this important insight has been divorced from the political party, which, for Gramsci, is responsible for acquiring mass consent to rule. This chapter contributes to the extant scholarship by offering a way to integrate political parties into our research. The above data also raise questions about the periodization of race relations in the realignment literature, which views the post-civil rights era as a systemic break with the New Deal. This is less true of more historically oriented social scientists like Valelly (2004) and Frymer (1999), but there is nonetheless also a tendency in this scholarship to spend much less time on the New Deal relative to the ‘‘two reconstructions.’’ My research joins Jackson (1985), Sugrue (1996), and others in suggesting that there is more to the intervening period than the entrenchment of Jim Crow segregation. It argues that the New Deal, so long glorified by the Left as a social democratic golden age, was formative of, and in fact complicit in, a new and insidious regime of racial rule.

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Future research should turn to at least three potential lines of inquiry. First, this chapter views the political projects of the Democratic Party in part as racial projects. Students should explore other such projects to better understand the interface between political parties and racial ideologies. In a related vein, theories of colorblind racism have rightly focused our attention on the dynamics of racial hegemony in liberal democracies. As a result, however, we have become less attentive to the dynamics of both racial hegemony in regimes of overt racial coercion and racial coercion in liberal democracies. How, for example, did the Nazi Party acquire German consent to rule even as they coerced and dominated those deemed to be racial others? Conversely, how and to what extent do political parties in liberal democracies use coercion to complement their more discursive racial projects? This points to the need for a third endeavor, namely more crossnational comparative work on the party–race interface. These and other challenges comprise the horizon of a more party-sensitive sociology of race, which takes as its starting point the claim that parties naturalize and denaturalize electoral coalitions in their struggle for power.

NOTES 1. The same might be said for Lake County, Indiana, which is considered a Chicago suburb and thus part of Mr. Obama’s ‘‘hometown’’ base. For this reason, Lake County is not part of this study. 2. Mr. Obama did not appear to use the frame of ‘‘naturalization,’’ which ‘‘allows whites to explain away racial phenomena by suggesting they are natural occurrences.’’ He did not, for instance, suggest that residential segregation was natural because people instinctively gravitate to their own kind (Bonilla-Silva, 2010, p. 28). 3. All these counties are over 80 percent white. Two-thirds have median incomes below the Indiana state average, which suggests that these are predominantly white blue-collar counties (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to Kara Cebulko, Emily Heaphy, and Eric Hirsch for commenting on previous drafts of this chapter and to Eduardo BonillaSilva, Julian Go, and the anonymous reviewers of PPST for their invaluable advice. I would also like to thank Louise Seamster for her logistical help with the review process.

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Gallagher, C. A. (2003). Color-blind privilege: The social and political functions of erasing the color line in post race America. Race, Gender & Class, 10(4), 1–17. Gerteis, J. (2003). Populism, race, and political interest in Virginia. Social Science History, 27(2), 197–227. Gramsci, A. (1921). Parties and masses. L’Ordine Nuovo, September 25, 1921, translated by Mark Camilleri. Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/1921/09/ parties-masses.htm. Accessed on March 21, 2011. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith, Eds. & Trans.). New York, NY: International Publishers. Gramsci, A. ([1926] 1992). ‘‘The southern question. In: Antonio Gramsci: The Modern Prince and other writings (L. Marks, Trans.) (pp. 28–51). New York, NY: International Publishers. Hayes, J. G. (1975). Sources of protest in the anti-busing movement in Indianapolis, Indiana. Unpublished dissertation, Purdue University. Hoare, Q., & Smith, G. N. (1971). General introduction. In: Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith (Eds.), Selections from the prison notebooks (pp. xvii–xcvi). New York, NY: International Publishers. Ignatiev, N. (1995). How the Irish became white. London: Routledge. Indiana Secretary of State. Retrieved from http://www.state.in.us/sos/elections/2400.htm. Accessed on January 29, 2011. Jackson, K. T. (1985). Crabgrass frontier: The suburbanization of the United States. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Key, V. O., Jr.. (1955). A theory of critical elections. Journal of Politics, 17, 3–18. Kinder, D. R., & Sanders, L. M. (1996). Divided by color: Racial politics and democratic ideals. Chicago, IL; London: University of Chicago Press. Ladd, E. C. (1980). Liberalism upside down: The inversion of the new deal order. In: W. Crotty (Ed.), The party symbol: Readings on political parties (pp. 274–287). San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman and Company. Lassiter, M. D. (2006). The silent majority: Suburban politics in the Sunbelt South. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lawrence, D. G. (1996). The collapse of the democratic presidential majority: Realignment, dealignment, and electoral change from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. Boulder; Oxford: Westview Press. Lipsitz, G. (1998). The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people profit from identity politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. MacLean, N. (2006). Freedom is not enough: The opening of the American workplace. New York, NY; Cambridge, MA; London: Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press. Marable, M. (2010). Obama, race and representation. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Retrieved from http://www.thedefendersonline.com/2010/01/29/obama-race-andrepresentation/. Accessed on May 2, 2011. Marx, A. W. (1998). Making race and nation: A comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Marzani, C. (1957). The open marxism of Antonio Gramsci. New York, NY: Cameron Associates. Mills, C. W. ([2002]2004). Racial exploitation and the wages of whiteness. In M. Krysan, & A. E. Lewis (Eds.), The changing terrain of race and ethnicity (pp. 235–262). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. North Carolina Board of Elections. Retrieved from http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/content. aspx?id ¼ 69. Accessed on January 29, 2011.

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Obama, B. (2008a). Remarks of senator Barack Obama: Reclaiming the American Dream (Jan. 29). El Dorado, Kansas. Retrieved from http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/. Accessed on January 28, 2011. Obama, B. (2008b). Remarks of senator Barack Obama: ‘A More Perfect Union’ (March 18). Philadelphia. Retrieved from http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/. Accessed on January 28, 2011. Obama, B. (2008c). Remarks of senator Barack Obama (April 10). Gary. Retrieved from http:// www.barackobama.com/speeches/. Accessed on January 28, 2011. Obama, B. (2008d). Remarks of senator Barack Obama: An agenda for middle-class success’’ (July 7). St. Louis. Retrieved from http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/. Accessed on January 28, 2011. Obama, B. (2008e). Remarks of senator Barack Obama: 99th annual convention of the NAACP (July 14). Cincinnati. Retrieved from http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/. Accessed on January 28, 2011. Obama, B. (2008f). Remarks of senator Barack Obama (Sept. 27). Greensboro. Retrieved from http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/. Accessed on January 28, 2011. Obama, B. (2008g). ‘‘Remarks of senator Barack Obama (Oct. 5). Asheville. Retrieved from http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/. Accessed on January 28, 2011. Oliver, M. L., & Shapiro, T. M. (1995). Black wealth/white wealth: A new perspective on racial inequality. New York, NY: Routledge. Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1986). Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York, NY: Routledge. Orfield, G. (1978). Must we bus? Segregated schools and national policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Paulson, A. (2000). Realignment and party revival: Understanding American electoral politics at the turn of the twenty-first century. Westport, CT; London: Praeger. Phillips, K. P. (1969). The emerging republican majority. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House. Philpot, T. S., Shaw, D. R., & McGowen, E. B. (2009). Winning the race: Black voter turnout in the 2008 presidential election. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73, 995–1022. Przeworski, A. (1985). Capitalism and social democracy. Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Redding, K. (2003). Making race, making power: North Carolina’s road to disenfranchisement. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Roediger, D. R. (1991). The wages of whiteness: Race and the making of the American working class. London; New York, NY: Verso. Schulman, B. J. (1991). From cotton belt to Sunbelt: Federal policy, economic development, and the transformation of the South, 1938–1980. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Schuman, H., Steeh, C., Bobo, L., & Krysan, M. (1997). Racial attitudes in America: Trends and interpretations (Rev. Ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Sugrue, T. J. (1996). The origins of the urban crisis: Race and inequality in postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sugrue, T. J. (2008). Sweet land of liberty: The forgotten struggle for civil rights in the north. New York, NY: Random House. Tug˘al, C. (2009). Passive revolution: Absorbing the Islamic challenge to capitalism. Stanford, MA: Stanford University Press. U.S. Census Bureau (2000a). Indiana – county. Census 2000 redistricting data (Public Law 94–171) summary file. Retrieved from http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_bm¼n&_

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lang¼en&mt_name¼DEC_2000_PL_U_GCTPL_ST2&format¼ST-2&_box_head_ nbr¼GCT-PL&ds_name¼DEC_2000_PL_U&geo_id¼04000US18. Accessed on May 14, 2011. U.S. Census Bureau (2000b). North Carolina – county. Census 2000 redistricting data (Public Law 94–171) summary file. Retrieved from http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ GCTTable?_bm¼n&_lang¼en&mt_name¼DEC_2000_PL_U_GCTPL_ST2&format¼ ST-2&_box_head_nbr¼GCT-PL&ds_name¼DEC_2000_PL_U&geo_id¼04000US37. Accessed on May 14, 2011. U.S. Census Bureau (2007). Housing unit estimates for the 100 fastest growing counties with 5,000 or more housing units in 2007. April 1, 2000 and July 1, 2007 (HU-EST2007-05). Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/popest/housing/HU-EST2007-top100.html. Accessed on January 27, 2011. U.S. Census Bureau (2009). State and county quickfacts. Retrieved from http://quickfacts. census.gov/qfd/index.html. Accessed on January 29, 2011. Valelly, R. M. (2004). The two reconstructions: The struggle for black enfranchisement. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Williams, D. R., Jackson, J. S., Brown, T. N., Torres, M., Forman, T. A., & Brown, K. (1999). Traditional and contemporary prejudice and urban whites’ support for affirmative action and government help. Social Problems, 46, 503–527. Winant, H. (2001). The world is a Ghetto: Race and democracy since World War II. New York, NY: Basic Books.

THE TEA PARTY IN THE AGE OF OBAMA: MAINSTREAM CONSERVATISM OR OUT-GROUP ANXIETY? Matt A. Barreto, Betsy L. Cooper, Benjamin Gonzalez, Christopher S. Parker and Christopher Towler$ ABSTRACT With its preference for small government and fiscal responsibility, the Tea Party movement claims to be conservative. Yet, their tactics and rhetoric belie this claim. The shrill attacks against Blacks, illegal immigrants, and gay rights are all consistent with conservatism, but suggesting that the president is a socialist bent on ruining the country, is beyond politics. This chapter shows that Richard Hofstadter’s thesis about the ‘‘paranoid style’’ of American politics helps characterize the Tea Party’s pseudoconservatism. Through a comprehensive analysis of qualitative interviews, content analysis and public opinion data, we find that Tea Party

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Author names are listed alphabetically, authorship is equal.

Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 105–137 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022011

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sympathizers are not mainstream conservatives, but rather, they hold a strong sense of out-group anxiety and a concern over the social and demographic changes in America.

INTRODUCTION In 2010, the Tea Party boasted major electoral wins in the U.S. House and Senate defeating both incumbent Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike. These results should come as no great surprise, given the widespread support the movement enjoys. The Tea Party claims a core membership of approximately 300,000 who have signed up to be members of at least one of the national Tea Party groups: 1776 Tea Party, ResistNet (Patriot Action network), Tea Party Express, Tea Party Nation, and Tea Party Patriots. Beyond this core group are two additional constituencies. One consists of the people who have attended at least one rally, donated, or purchased Tea Party literature: an estimated three million people.1 Another layer consists of Tea Party sympathizers, people who approve of the Tea Party. According to data from a 2010 University of Washington study, 27% of the adult population, or 63 million Americans, strongly approve of the Tea Party.2 Given this level of support, what does the Tea Party want? From at least one account, the Tea Party believes in a reduced role for the federal government, more fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, a free market, and a commitment to states’ rights.3 Indeed, these are core conservative, even libertarian, principles, very much in keeping with traditional American political culture (see among others Rossiter, 1982; Smith, 2007). What’s more, commitment to these values is widely considered patriotic. Yet, time after time, supporters of the Tea Party seem to be united by something beyond a belief in limited government. Specifically, Tea Party sympathizers appear united in their fervent disdain for President Barack Obama, and seem to be squarely opposed to any policies that might benefit minority groups. In this chapter, we take up the question of the Tea Party’s emergence and common Tea Party attitudes in the age of Obama. We argue that the Tea Party represents a right-wing movement distinct from mainstream conservatism, that has reacted with great anxiety to the social and demographic changes in America over the past few decades. Through a comprehensive review of original data, including a series of qualitative interviews with Tea Party supporters, and extensive content analysis of official Tea Party websites, we show that Tea Party sympathizers hold strong out-group

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resentment, in particular toward gays and lesbians, Blacks, and immigrants. We then assess quantitative survey data to determine if the findings can be generalized to the population of Tea Party sympathizers at large. Contemporary observers and Tea Party events gesture toward concerns that transcend limited government and fiscal conservatism. Recently, for instance, the NAACP has charged the Tea Party with promoting racism, and Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams has been chastised by other Tea Party leaders for penning an overtly racist letter poking fun at the NAACP. Their activists were a driving force behind the Arizona state statute SB1070, which many said would result in the targeting of Latinos for racial profiling. They may be best known for their many caricatures of President Obama, often depicting him as a primate, African ‘‘witch doctor,’’ and modern-day Hitler, among other things. Consider, moreover, the constant references to President Obama as a socialist. In fact, a recent study issued by Democracy Corps reports that 90% of Tea Party supporters believe President Obama to be a socialist; as such, they view him as the ‘‘defining and motivating threat to the country and its well-being’’ (Greenberg, Carville, Gerstein, Craighill, & Monninger, 2010). Perhaps the fact that the movement harbors members of white nationalist groups helps to explain the apparent intolerance of the movement (Burghart & Zeskind, 2010). However, beyond a perception of intolerance, we think there is something deeper in the emergence of the Tea Party that is more in line with studies of paranoia, conspiratorial beliefs, and out-group suspicion.

THE TEA PARTY AND PRESIDENT OBAMA The roots of this movement can be traced to the December 2007 anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, when Ron Paul supporters held a ‘‘money bomb’’ to raise funds for Paul’s 2008 presidential run (Vogel, 2007). Paul, while campaigning for the Republican nomination, was not considered a mainstream Republican based on his Libertarian beliefs, and the money bomb reflected this. Organized by a 37-year-old rock promoter, the money bomb relied on the enthusiasm and donations of online supporters, many of whom were first time donors. Paul’s Campaign for Liberty (CFL) went on to play a significant role in the growth of the Tea Party, according to a recent NAACP report, though there is little crossover in membership (Burghart & Zeskind, 2010). Paul himself has embraced the Tea Party, speaking at a number of rallies around the country since the birth of the movement.

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Though Paul’s candidacy may have provided some of the initial impetus, the Tea Party itself did not emerge during the 2008 campaign, rather it was following the election of Barack Obama that the term ‘‘Tea Party’’ began to be used to describe a political movement. The Libertarian Party of Illinois formed the Boston Tea Party Chicago in December of 2008 to protest for lower taxes and reduced government spending. Its founder Dave Brady later claimed he gave Rick Santelli the idea for the Tax Day Tea Parties that marked the real explosion of the movement onto the national political scene.4 Santelli, a CNBC on-air editor, delivered a speech from the floor of the Chicago stock exchange on February 19, 2009 that was largely credited with popularizing the concept of the Tax Day Tea Parties.5 Following Santelli’s broadcast, the character of the Tea Party movement shifted toward something more organized. Crucial in the transition of the movement from localized antitax, antistimulus protests to something more organized and national in character was Brenden Steinhauser and the D.C. lobby and training organization Freedomworks. After Santelli’s on-air diatribe, Steinhauser wrote a 10 step program for holding your own Tea Party and posted it to his website. Shortly after the program was posted, Steinhauser’s website saw a significant increase in traffic (Burghart & Zeskind, 2010). Freedomworks, founded by former Congressman Dick Armey, quickly became involved, calling supporters across the country and asking them to organize their own Tea Parties and announcing a nationwide tour. On February 27, 2009 the first ‘‘official’’ Tea Party was held, organized by Freedomworks, the free market oriented Sam Adams Alliance, and Americans for Prosperity. Freedomworks was just one of the six national Tea Party factions that arose in February 2009. Along with Freedomworks, ResistNet and Our Country Deserves Better PAC had existed before Santelli’s speech, and three more formed in its wake: 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Patriots, and Tea Party Nation. The September 12, 2009 rally hosted by Freedomworks in Washington, DC marked the first large-scale, national rally and the emergence of the Tea Party as a national movement. Although Tea Party organizations have tried to portray the movement as one made up of small donors and driven by grass-roots organizing, the truth is much more complicated. Freedomworks receives 15–20% of its funding from corporations, according to an NPR article, while Americans for Prosperity is financed by David and Charles Koch, two long-time libertarians whose opposition to nearly all Obama Administration policies earned their ideological network the nickname ‘‘the Kochtopus’’ (Mayer, 2010). Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity have largely been

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credited for the bulk of the public relations and logistical work behind Tea Party protests, despite claims that these were spontaneous and organized at the grassroots level.6 Although the Tea Party operated on the fringes of U.S. politics for much of 2009, they became a nationally recognizable movement following President Obama’s signing of the Affordable Care Act on March 30, 2010. The socalled ‘‘Tea Party Patriots’’ led protests across the country, and allegations were made that Tea Partiers spit on members of Congress, shouted racial epithets, and threw bricks through windows of Congress members.7 By now, Tea Party sympathizers had perceived the increased influence of African Americans, Hispanics, and gays in national politics, accompanied by significant growth in the minority and immigrant populations (Zeskind, 2011). The health-care bill was called a socialist takeover of America on most Tea Party websites. Indeed, following the passage of health-care reform, the Tea Party was visibly positioned as a counter movement in American politics and began to loudly proclaim, ‘‘I want my country back.’’ Many years ago, the noted historian, Richard Hofstadter, made what many of his contemporaries viewed as a hyperbolic claim. In his seminal essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, he believed the far right wing to practice a style of politics consistent with paranoia. For him, there was no other way to explain the ‘‘heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and the conspiratorial fantasy’’ associated with the Goldwater movement (Hofstadter, 1965). He is careful to distinguish paranoid politics, or the paranoid style, from the clinical version. However, he cites important similarities between political and clinical paranoia in that ‘‘both tend to be overheated, over-suspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression’’ (Ibid., p. 4). The key difference, as he sees it, is that the clinical paranoid perceives himself the object of the conspiracy. The paranoid politico, however, perceives the conspiracy to be ‘‘directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself but millions of others y His sense that his political passions are unselfish and patriotic, in fact, goes far to intensify his feeling of righteousness and his moral indignation’’ (Ibid., p. 4). Hofstadter also outlined a belief system on which the paranoid style rests: pseudo conservatism. Before we embark on Hofstadter’s account of the pseudo-conservative, though, we first identify a social-scientific path so that we may arrive at our destination. Conceptually, we can do so through what some have come to call paranoid social cognitions. The distrust and suspicion that are at the root of paranoid social cognition are generated by one’s location in a social system (Roderick, 1998). Stanford social psychologist Roderick Kramer argues that people with paranoid social cognition are

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trying ‘‘to make sense of, and cope with, threatening social environments y these ordinary y forms of paranoid cognition can be viewed as y responses to disturbing situations rather than manifestations of disturbed individuals [that are paranoid in a clinical sense]’’ (Ibid., p. 254). Part of the coping mechanism for dealing with alien situations among individuals prone to such psychological discomfort includes what Kramer identifies as a ‘‘hypervigilant and ruminative mode of information processing that contributes y to a variety of paranoid-like forms of social misperception and judgment’’ (Ibid., pp. 254–255). Kramer’s work suggests that, among other factors, paranoid social cognitions emerge from one’s uncertainty about their social standing. One of the ways that paranoid social cognition is produced, as we understand it, is when a newcomer enters a new social environment in which the existing group has been intact for sometime. The long-tenured members of the group are, understandably, more secure, more certain of their status in the group. However, amidst rapid social and demographic change, does the dominant group question their position and standing in society? As we touch upon below, it is not hard to imagine that members of the dominant group are introduced to a new social order in which some perceive their dominant position threatened. It is possible that some in the dominant group may think themselves unjustly under siege, something that results in what’s known as ‘‘poor me’’ paranoia (Tunnels-Ambrojo & Garety, 2009). With this type of paranoia, people believe they are ‘‘innocent victim[s] while condemning others for their persecution y where the individual maintains high self-esteem and views the persecutor as bad as inferior’’ (Ibid., p. 142). Combining ‘‘poor me’’ paranoia with the framework of paranoid social cognition permits us to transition to the belief system associated with the paranoid style. Returning to Hofstadter, we learn that the pseudo-conservative is a person who is quick to use the rhetoric of conservatism, a belief system that prizes traditions and institutions and has an appreciation for the history of both. Yet, according to Hofstadter, the pseudo-conservative fails to behave like a conservative in that ‘‘in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously [he] aims at their abolition (Adorno, 1950).’’ Furthermore, the pseudo-conservative ‘‘believes himself to be living in a world in which he is spied upon, plotted against, betrayed, and very likely destined for ruin’’ (Hofstadter, 1965, Chap. 2). This state of mind pushes him to attack a way of life and institutions he purports to revere, pressing his representatives to insist upon a rash of Constitutional

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amendments, including abolishing the income tax, cutting spending on welfare, and charging with treason people who try to weaken the government. Hofstadter believes such a person is attempting to get a fix on his position in the rapidly changing social system in which members of this group believe their material and/or cultural status to be in decline. Moreover, as Hofstadter suggests, they no longer have something to which they may anchor their American identity. Indeed, the pseudo-conservative has lost his bearings amidst a raft of social changes, much as someone suffering from paranoid social cognition does upon induction into a new social order – be it at school, in a neighborhood, or new job. In this environment, the pseudo-conservative in the paranoid style is simply trying to maintain their social status. We argue that the Tea Party bears an uncanny likeness to the extreme right-wing groups that are its forbearers. Drawing on content analysis and public opinion data, we show that the Tea Party movement is, in fact, full of pseudo-conservatism, in part, marked by suspicion and resentment of outgroups. This chapter unfolds as follows. First, we briefly review right-wing extremism in American history. We then turn to the content analysis of Tea Party websites to illustrate the point that Tea Party discourse is in fact far beyond that which one may credibly call conservative. We then turn to public opinion data, both qualitative and quantitative, evidence that allows us to further test our claims that support for the Tea Party is associated with pseudo-conservatism. We close with a discussion of the implications.

A Brief History of Right-Wing Extremism and the Tea Party Right-wing extremism and paranoid politics are well established parts of the American political landscape. These phenomena have their roots before the 20th century, but focusing exclusively on this period provides ample examples of the two in action. Although right-wing extremism, by definition, can only exist within right-wing movements, the paranoid style that births them is a tendency that exists across the political spectrum. Consider the Populist and Progressive movements around the turn of the 20th century. Populists were concerned with protecting agrarian economic interests and a rural way of life from the ever-encroaching influences of urbanization and industrialization. In contrast, the Progressive movement was rooted in the city and was primarily interested in protecting the urban masses from the vicissitudes of newly industrialized life. Among other things, Progressives were concerned with social welfare and consumer

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protection. Both movements were undertaken with different constituencies in mind – one rural, the other urban, respectively. Although neither maps perfectly into a contemporary left/right dichotomy, both contained strong leftist elements. Both movements were also marked by a paranoid style of politics. The former’s paranoia was directed primarily toward immigrants; the latter’s was towards Catholics (Higham, 1955; Hofstader, 1955). The Second Ku Klux Klan, whose putative principal goal was the preservation of traditional white Protestant morality, provides a third example of paranoid politics that used both extra legal violence and claims that they were enforcing law and order to achieve its ends. The nature of this threat was wide-ranging; the KKK of the 1920’s labeled Blacks, Catholic immigrants and Jews as threats. Unlike the previous two movements, its paranoid style went hand in hand with right wing extremism. Although McCarthyism was more mood than movement, it was a reaction to America’s perceived decline on the world stage and dominated policy formation and political discussion at mid-century. It is yet another example of paranoid politics merging with right-wing extremism. Joseph McCarthy and his followers identified Communism as the alien presence – similar to immigrants, Catholics, Blacks, and Jews of the aforementioned periods – that would ultimately infect, corrupt, and destroy the American state. This logic meant that those who were opposed to McCarthyism or perceived as susceptible to communist influence were additional targets for censure. Robert Welch and the John Birch Society (JBS) institutionalized McCarthyism by using a relatively small cadre of mainly wealthy business leaders to advance their program. The JBS also eventually argued that the conspiracy to undermine America predated the rise of Communism. The candidacies of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace would witness the combination of paranoid racial politics with the emerging New Right. Race, paranoid politics, and right-wing extremism all united in these campaigns. These latter mobilizations were, at least in part, fueled by whites’ anxiety over Blacks’ increasing assertiveness and increasing civil rights success during the latter stages of insurgency. These campaigns also promised to enforce law and order, similar to the Klan of bygone years (Daniel, 1963; Hofstadter, 1965; Lipset & Raab, 1970). American history suggests that right-wing movements have at least five things in common. First, these movements typically follow on the heels of major social and economic change that threatens to dislodge dominant groups from positions of influence and privilege to which they have become accustomed. Religious Fundamentalism, second, is another important feature of right-wing extremism. Christian fundamentalism generally centers

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on a literal interpretation of the Bible. A product of the 20th century, many fundamentalists support Biblical exegesis that calls for the maintenance of the nuclear family and traditional gender roles. This serves as the cultural touchstone of the right wing. Third, the movements frequently construct the world in morally absolute terms. These good-versus-evil narratives justify a crusade against the violation of the aforementioned order and can continue despite logical inconsistencies. Fourth, as a logical extension, many movement adherents prefer to maintain social arrangements that support their dominance. They invoke a past during which their economic and/or social comfort went unchallenged.8 Fifth, conspiracies are central to right-wing extremism insofar as the displaced group requires a target on which to pin its decline. For the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants ‘‘conspired to undermine’’ the morals of white Protestants; members of the John Birch Society and followers of McCarthy feared some American elites had sold out the country for Communism. This summary is not intended to be exhaustive. Instead, we offer this as a mere illustration of the most general tendencies we have observed over time. We believe the Tea Party conforms to this framework for a few reasons. Current conditions are ripe for a right-wing movement that employs paranoid politics. The near collapse of the financial system, with its attendant un- and underemployment, along with a continued rise in immigration from Latin American and Asia, court victories for gay rights, and the election of the nation’s first Black president all represent the rapid social change that has often inspired such movements. The Tea Party movement is also relatively prone to conspiratorial discourse, and much of its literature frames opponents as folk devils (Cohen, 1972). Fundamentalism, both religious and secular, governs the aforementioned second, third, and fourth points. It is relevant to the Tea Party inasmuch as Tea Partiers are both against abortion and gay marriage, two positions that support traditional family relationships (Public Religion Research Institute, 2010). The zealousness with which the movement attacks Obama, variously depicting him as Hitler, a socialist and communist is evidence of a secular moral absolutism so often linked to right-wing extremism. Repeated cries by movement leaders, such as Sarah Palin to ‘‘take back our country,’’ as well as references to the ‘‘real America’’ in which ‘‘hardworking, patriotic’’ Americans reside touches upon a different type of fundamentalism. These declarations resonate most in small towns, in the Midwest and South, which are predominantly white and, for the most part, working class. Perhaps this can be attributed to a more social fundamentalism, one on which the prototypical American rests (Devos & Banaji, 2005).

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The Tea Party is not the only place within contemporary American politics where we see some of the elements of paranoid politics. The paranoid style of politics is a mode of politics that has deep roots within American history, and it is not uncommon for movements across the political spectrum to use one or more of the elements we have highlighted. What is unique about the Tea Party, however, is the extent to which it combines the aforementioned elements of paranoid politics with those of right-wing extremism. As such, it provides a case study par excellence of the role that paranoid politics and right wing extremism play in a changing America.

A CHANGING AMERICA AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE TEA PARTY We think it likely that the election of Barack Obama, as the first Black president, and the change it symbolizes, represents a clear threat to the social, economic, political, and hegemony to which supporters of the Tea Party had become accustomed. More to the point, his ascendance to the White House triggered anxiety, fear, and anger among those who support the Tea Party. It is hard to argue with this assessment considering the fact that Obama’s predecessor, George Bush, exploded the deficit, and it was his watch on which TARP was hatched. Yet the Tea Party was nowhere to be found. With this in mind, it should be uncontroversial to assert that the election of Obama is at the root of the growth of the Tea Party. These emotional responses, we believe, ultimately resulted in the present day ‘‘heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy’’ that characterize the Tea Party movement. However, it was not only conservative Republicans who expressed these feelings, as feelings of anxiety among poor and working class whites were quickly swept up by the Tea Party. Scholars have recently highlighted Democrats’ failure to gain the political support of poor and working class whites, and, at times, progressive politicians have even added to their discontent. In fact, many white Democrats felt under attack when Barack Obama suggested that bitter working class Americans cling to their guns and religion during the 2008 Democratic primary elections (Fowler, 2008). The lack of attention poor and working class whites received from Democrats became central to Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy that attempted to garner the support of all Americans, across many different walks of life (Martin, 2008). However, in many cases Democrats left the door open for Republicans,

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and subsequently the Tea Party, to court poor and working class whites despite the fact that many Republican policy stances go against poor and working class whites’ economic interests. Poor and working class whites are swayed by conservative stances on ‘‘moral’’ social policies, de-prioritizing economic self-interest as noted by Frank (2004) and Bageant (2007). The need for a political base alongside Democrats’ inability to relate to poor and working class whites sends them elsewhere to express their anxieties. However, it was not just the election of Obama that triggered the Tea Party, but also the changing demographics and political debates in America over the past 40 years. In 1970, 83% of the U.S. population was White, nonHispanic, and in 2010 63% was White – a 20 percentage point decline in one generation. Accompanying this change has been an increase in the Black, Hispanic, and Asian populations in the United States and a vigorous debate about civil rights and immigration. At the same time, strides have been made in rights for gays and lesbians from the election of Harvey Milk in 1977 through the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2010. Across all these groups – Blacks, immigrants, and gays – the Tea Party has seemingly taken an oppositional stance to the expansion of rights and projects to aid minorities.

Racial Resentment For many, the election of the Nation’s first African American President is evidence of the end of racism in America. Yet, the emergence of the Tea Party in the months following the inauguration of Barack Obama, and the propensity of racially charged antics exposed at many of the group’s events and rallies, warrants a closer look at the immediacy of racism in America today. As research has shown, racism and racial resentment play an important role in determining not only support for Obama, but also support for Black candidates in general (Kinder & Sears, 1981; Parker, Sawyer, & Towler, 2009; Tesler & Sears, 2010). The influence of modern day racism is most known for its place in opposition toward affirmative action and other race-conscious programs (Bobo, 2000; Kluegel & Bobo, 1993; Feldman & Huddy, 2005; Sidanius, Levin, Liu, & Pratto, 2000). The racism that commonly guides contemporary white attitudes has been coined racial resentment and relies upon anti-Black affect, or a ‘‘pre-existing negative attitude toward blacks’’ (Feldman & Huddy, 2005, p. 169). In other words, racial resentment is fueled by the gains and growing demands of Black Americans (Kinder & Sanders, 1996), a new level of fuel with the first African American commander-in-chief.

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Old-fashioned racism, based on biological differences between Blacks and whites, is no longer acceptable in society today and a new, subtler, racism works to predict attitudes and behaviors (Parker et al., 2009; Sears & Henry, 2003). This new form of racism relies on stereotypes surrounding African Americans; stereotypes that put Blacks in opposition to treasured American values such as hard work, honesty and lawfulness (Kinder & Sanders, 1996; McConahay, 1982; Sears, 1993). In addition, ascribing these stereotypes to Blacks allows for whites to continue justifying their privileged position in society (Bobo & Kluegel, 1997). The centrality of American values in racial resentment links the ‘‘language of American individualism’’ to expressions of prejudice (Feldman & Huddy, 2005, p. 169). The attributes (or stereotypes) assigned to Blacks – laziness, preference for welfare, predisposition to crime – place them in opposition to the values American society rests on, isolating and alienating Blacks from the ideals that go hand-in-hand with being a good citizen in America. The timing behind the emergence of the Tea Party in American politics begs for a further examination of a group that is determined to ‘‘take back’’ their country and fight against a government absorbed by socialism. The Tea Party movement’s emphasis on American values and individualism places many of their policy stances and positions in opposition to minority policies, such as an increase in social programs, including spending for the poor and health-care reform. Also, the rhetoric of the Tea Party places its members in opposition to minority groups in America as well as the new leadership of the country. The Tea Party’s focus on individualism and American values alone are not enough to validate claims of racial resentment. In addition, accusations of racism within the Tea Party have existed since its beginning. A 2010 report by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) chronicles the involvement of white supremacy groups in the Tea Party since the movement’s first events on April 15, 2009 and, if nothing more, speaks to the Tea Party’s availability as a vehicle for white supremacist recruitment and thought. Other watchdog agencies, such as teapartytracker.org, have made it a point to highlight acts of racism and extremism within the Tea Party and at their rallies and events. Beyond the consistent chronicling of individual acts of racism and bigotry, much of the resentment in the Tea Party boiled over at the height of the health-care debate. As congressmen and women came together to vote on the proposed health-care bill in March 2010, racial epithets were launched at Rep. John Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia, and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat

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from Missouri, was spit on while trying to make it through the crowd at Capitol Hill (Douglass, 2010). These instances, among others, led to the denunciation of racism and bigotry in the Tea Party movement on a national stage. Namely, in July of 2010 the NAACP unanimously passed a resolution to ‘‘condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party,’’ which asked the movement’s leaders to ‘‘repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language’’ (NAACP, 2010). Although making it clear that the NAACP was not condemning the entire Tea Party as racist, the following reaction from one of the movement’s prominent leaders brought racial resentment to the forefront. Mark Williams, a leader of the Tea Party at the time, released a satirical commentary in response to the NAACP resolution. The response was a letter to President Lincoln from ‘‘colored people’’ and insinuated not only ignorance on the part of Blacks in America, but also reinforced many of the stereotypes central to racial resentment. The opening statement of the response is a blatant attack on African Americans: We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards.

Williams’ commentary continues to challenge the work ethic of Blacks and characterize African Americans as lazy and unwilling to compete in an American society centered on individual accomplishment: The racist tea parties also demand that the government ‘‘stop the out of control spending.’’ Again, they directly target Colored People. That means we Colored People would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

The final passage of Mark William’s response renders African Americans subordinate and inferior as he writes that Blacks ‘‘had a great gig’’ during slavery when they were afforded ‘‘Three squares, room and board, all [their] decisions made by the massa in the house.’’9 To be fair, the response by Mark Williams cannot be used as a generalizable measure of the sentiments of the Tea Party in the wake of the NAACP resolution, especially when considering the racially charged past of the leader himself; however, a better measure is the lack of immediate response from the Tea Party leadership across the nation. Even as Mark Williams’ Tea Party organization was expelled from the larger organization, there was little mention of his racist remarks in the process and other Tea Party leaders still denied allegations of racism in their ranks, let alone their followers (Burghart & Zeskind, 2010, pp. 65–66).

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Although the evidence consistently finds the Tea Party rampant with racial resentment and extremism, the movements members argue that they are following their conservative principles centered on small government and limited spending-stances that do not favor minorities or people of color by their political nature. This position, though, is not new as ideological conservatism is habitually argued to avoid accusations of racism (Glazer, 1975; Jacoby, 1994; Sowell, 1984). Scholars have worked hard to separate the influence of conservative principles from racial resentment. Whites’ disapproval for affirmative action and social welfare programs has been justified through a violation of norms central to conservative principles, such as hard work and self-relaince. The group dominance approach stands in opposition to principled conservatism, explaining that groups will use ideology and political symbols to ‘‘legitimize’’ each group’s claims over resources (Sidanius, Pratto, & Bobo, 1996). Furthermore, scholars have shown that racism not only works in conjunction with the individual values associated with principled conservatism – Sears and Mendelberg (2000) tell us that individualism becomes part of racism – but racism goes beyond conservative individualism to predict negative attitudes toward race-conscious policy and politicians of color (Feldman & Huddy, 2005; Sidanius et al., 1996; Tesler & Sears, 2010). When specifically examining negative attitudes toward President Obama, racism plays a major role regardless of ideological preference (Parker et al., 2009). The recent emergence of the Tea Party allows for a closer examination of the racial attitudes held by this unique group of Americans emphasizing the principles of individualism over all else.

Anti-Immigrant Attitudes The passage of Arizona’s SB1070 marked the return of immigration to center stage in American politics after a brief period out of the limelight. The law, which will allow for the racial profiling of Latinos based on the suspicion that they could be undocumented immigrants, was defended by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer by charging that the federal government was not doing its job to control undocumented immigration and that the state had the right to take steps to do so. This argument was strongly backed by state’s rights advocates and a large proportion of the Tea Party Movement, the latter of which made immigration restriction one of its central issues in the 2010 election. Statements about immigration from Tea Party politicians and movement leaders largely portrayed immigration as a threat to Americans or American

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culture. One glaring example of this is Sharon Angle’s 2010 campaign ad ‘‘Best Friend,’’ which features a voice-over that ominously states, ‘‘Illegals sneaking across our borders putting Americans’ jobs and safety at risk,’’ while showing video of dark-skinned actors sneaking around a chain link fence.10 Angle was a darling of the Tea Party movement in Nevada and attacked Harry Reid on immigration in both the ‘‘Best Friend’’ ad, as well as a second ad called ‘‘At Your Expense’’ that charged that Reid supported special college tuition rates for undocumented immigrants, which would be paid for by Nevada taxpayers.11 Both ads juxtaposed the dark-skinned actors portraying illegal immigrants with white Americans working or with their families on the same screen. The implicit racism in Angle’s ad was reminiscent of the now notorious ‘‘White Hands’’ ad of Jesse Helms and the ‘‘Willie Horton’’ campaign ad run by George W. Bush in 1988. Sharon Angle was not the only Tea Party candidate who tried to use the threat of Latino immigration to capture votes in the 2010 election. In Arizona, J. D. Hayworth, John McCain’s Republican primary challenger made immigration one of the central planks of his campaign. Unsurprisingly, Hayworth authored a book on the subject of undocumented immigration in 2005 called Whatever It Takes, in which he argued in favor of increased immigration enforcement and notes that while immigration is clearly good for the country, the proportion of immigrants coming from Mexico is too high because it could lead to American becoming a bicultural nation. In Hayworth’s own words, ‘‘Bicultural societies are among the least stable in the world (Tomasic, 2010).’’ Hayworth is a strong supporter of Arizona’s SB1070 but believes, that even more steps must be taken against undocumented immigrants, stating at a 2010 rally in Mesa, Arizona, that, ‘‘There is a whole new term: birth tourism. In the jet age there are people who time their gestation period so they give birth on American soil.’’12 To prevent this, Hayworth argued that the state of Arizona should stop birthright citizenship, a view echoed by Russell Pearce, a state senator from Arizona and the architect of SB1070. Tea Party organizations also sought to portray immigration as a threat to America in the lead up to the 2010 general election. The Tea Party Nation emailed its roughly 35,000 members in August and asked them to post stories highlighting the victimization of Americans by illegal immigrants. The group specifically asked for stories about undocumented immigrants taking the jobs of members, committing crimes, or undermining business by providing cheap labor to competitors.13 The Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) assisted two Tea Party groups, Voice of the People USA and Tea Party Patriots Live, in coordinating rallies in support

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of Arizona’s SB1070. The ALIPAC mission statement points out that, ‘‘Our state and federal budgets are being overwhelmed. Schools, hospitals, law enforcement, and public services are being strained while the taxpayers incur more costs and more debt. Our nation’s very survival and identity are being threatened along with our national security.’’14 ALIPAC is supported by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its links to white supremacist organizations. The Tea Party, while disavowing that its anti-immigrant rhetoric was based on racism, has continued to portray immigration in starkly threatening terms, which while not explicitly racist has strong undercurrents of implicit racism, with Sharon Angle’s campaign videos being the most obvious example of this. A New York Times/CBS News poll released in August of 2010 unsurprisingly found that 82% of self-identified Tea Party supporters believed illegal immigration was a ‘‘serious problem.’’15 Perceived threats from immigrant groups have been shown to be a powerful predictor for immigration restriction and anti-immigrant attitudes in the sociology, psychology, and political science literatures. Group position theory, pioneered by the sociologist Herbert Blumer, argues that prejudice is composed of four feelings: a sense of superiority, a feeling that the subordinate group is in some way intrinsically different or alien, a feeling of entitlement to certain privileges or advantages, and finally a suspicion that the subordinate group poses a threat to these privileges or advantages (Blumer, 1958). Perceived threat is necessary for prejudice with Blumer stating that ‘‘the feeling essential to race prejudice is a fear or apprehension that the subordinate racial group is threatening, or will threaten, the position of the dominant group’’ (Ibid., p. 4). Blumer never stated that the threat had to be a realistic one, and thus a subordinate group could be perceived as a threat even if there was no real evidence that they truly were one. A body of literature on group threat theory grew out of the work by Blumer but emphasized the role of threat over the other aspects of group position theory. Both Hubert Blalock and Lawrence Bobo extended Blumer’s original concept of the role of threats to group position, with Blalock explaining competition between minority groups through group threat and Bobo arguing that realistic threats are the best predictors of opposition to policies benefiting minorities (Blalock, 1957; Bobo, 1983, 1988; Bobo & Hutchings, 1996). There is a good deal of support for group threat theory. For example, Zarate, Garcia, Garza, & Hitlan (2004) found that people reported more prejudice when they were induced to identify differences between their group

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and Mexican immigrants on interpersonal traits. When immigrants were seen as differing from the norm they were believed to pose a threat to the social fabric of the country and were subsequently evaluated in a more negative fashion (Zarate et al., 2004). Sniderman, Hagendoorn, and Prior (2004) similarly found that perceived threats to the national culture was the strongest predictor of hostility toward immigrants in the Netherlands, as well as support for the role of economic threat perceptions. This latter finding was supported by Espenshade and Hempstead (1996), who found that those who believed that the U.S. economy was worsening had more negative attitudes toward immigrants. Examining both realistic and symbolic threats, Stephan, Stephan, and Gudykunst (1999) found evidence for the role of both threat types in prejudice against immigrants. Symbolic threats were conceptualized as threats to national culture or values, whereas realistic threats, drawing on the work of Lawrence Bobo (1983, 1988), were threats to the economic, social, or political resources of whites. Thomas Wilson provides further evidence confirming the impact of group threat on immigration attitudes in his 2001 study on American views toward immigration policy. He notes that, ‘‘native-born Americans’ opposition to policies benefiting immigrants is based in large part on their perceptions that immigrants pose a direct threat to their interest y’’ (Wilson, 2001). Interviews with Tea Party supporters suggested these attitudes were real. When asked how immigrants made them feel, one respondent said, ‘‘I don’t know really, but maybe nervous. I see what they have done. Here they come, they have no insurance. They are draining state governments. We have to provide for them because they are here.’’ Other respondents conflated illegal immigrants, immigrants, and Hispanics while explaining their cultural deficiencies, ‘‘Nevada has grown to be heavily Hispanic in the last 15 years. And Good Lord, education reflects that. You know, the education standards they are just plummeting because – yeah, I mean, the Hispanic children – everybody needs to be educated, but if they weren’t here illegally, our kids would be in better shape. It’s wrong for the American people.’’ Still others suggested an actual criminal threat from immigrants, saying ‘‘They make me nervous. I have relatives down in Tucson; one is a law enforcement officer. You never know if they are going to get killed.’’

Homophobia and the Tea Party Many supporters have denied that social issues, including rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people (LGBT), have played a large

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role in the Tea Party movement. The movement, they claim, is fundamentally built on principled conservatism, limited government, and lower taxes. Others have claimed that gay men and lesbians should flock to the Tea Party because its libertarianism will result in greater political freedom for GLBT people. The campaign websites of two major 2010 Tea Party candidates, Rand Paul and Christine O’Donnell, do not mention lesbian or gay issues at all, while Sharron Angle, mentions opposition to same-sex marriage only in passing. Despite the limited mention of sexuality on the front pages of the Tea Party movement, subsequent campaigning frequently took on antigay tones in these three major campaigns. In addition to opposing same-sex marriage, Angle took stands against adoption by lesbians and gay men as well as extending antidiscrimination laws to cover sexual orientation and gender expression.16 She also declared in a candidate questionnaire that she would not take campaign money from any group that supported homosexuality.17 Previous comments about gays and lesbians were some of the many soundclips that plagued O’Donnell during election season. She had claimed that being gay was ‘‘an identity disorder’’ and also worked with ex-gay ministries, which claim to change sexual orientation, and with the Concerned Women for America, which espouses very conservative views regarding sexuality.18 In stating his disapproval of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, Rand Paul signaled that he would disapprove of similar proposed legislation, including the Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA), which would prohibit workplace discrimination against lesbians and gay men. Libertarianism and these antigay, socially conservative impulses create tension in the Tea Party, and this is evident both in the above examples from campaign websites and Tea Party message boards. The tension further reveals itself in qualitative interviews with Tea Party supporters, who frequently claim nominal tolerance of gay men or lesbians while categorically defining them as nonnormative and beyond the pale of full inclusion in the U.S. polity. A Tea Party supporter from our 2010 MSSRP study best encapsulates this tension. ‘‘I think they’ve got a right to exist,’’ he explains, ‘‘but I don’t particularly want them around me.’’ These tensions – between libertarianism, and grudging acceptance on the one hand and social conservatism and condemnation on the other – illustrate a site of contestation within the Tea Party Movement. Who is a ‘‘real’’ American? From whom are they ‘‘taking back’’ the country? Who are the folk devils? Are lesbians and gay men a part of ‘‘real’’ America, or not?

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We believe that racial resentment provides a framework for understanding this ambivalent position regarding GLBT people. Several factors lead us to believe that this comparison is valid (Feldman & Huddy, 2005; Kinder & Sanders, 1996; Morrison, Parriag, & Morrison, 1999; Morrison & Morrison, 2002). Key facets of racial resentment appear when discussants talk about nonracial groups, specifically gender and the role of gender discrimination and affirmative action programs for women (Swim, Aikin, Hall, & Hunter, 1995). Questions of whether or not gay Americans believe in and live by the ‘‘American Creed,’’ e.g. a belief in hard work, self-reliance, and individualism, are key elements of the debate over the role of gay men and lesbians; place in public life. It would not be surprising for people who hold racially resentful attitudes to transfer those attitudes onto other emergent minority groups, as they have with gender. Overall, qualitative interviews seem to confirm that many Tea Party members’ antigay attitudes can be classified as more resentful than old fashioned, or ‘‘traditional heteronormative’’ (Massey, 2009; Morrison, Parriag, & Morrison, 1999; Morrison & Morrison, 2002). These Tea Party supporters protest gay men and lesbians’ inability or unwillingness to adopt community norms by ‘‘flaunting’’ their sexuality publically. They tend to not express antigay sentiment violently, and few claim to want to arrest or physically harm members of the GLBT community. Some do express antigay sentiments in terms of ‘‘old fashioned’’ heterosexism and the language of sin, such as the North Carolina respondent who said: I just pity them y because I know where they are going at the end of time.

Just as most white Americans express racist views in terms of racial resentment, many antigay views will be expressed in more subtle ways that clearly mark gay men and lesbians’ subordinate role in American public life. Respondents voice this subtler, ‘‘resentful’’ homophobia, which has parallels to racial resentment, by expressing tolerance toward gay men and lesbians so long as they are secondary citizens. Few will deny the right of queer people to exist in the abstract, and many, will oppose policies that actively seek out gay men and lesbians for punishment, such as military policies prior to Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell by using the logic of limited government. This does not mean that respondents view lesbians and gay men as equal members of the polity. Indeed, the logic of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell appears to guide many members’ beliefs of the normative role for lesbians and gay men in American life. The ideal gay or lesbian citizen is one who never ‘‘flaunts’’ her sexuality. Practically speaking, this is difficult to for any individual gay man or lesbian to attain because the respondents expansively define ‘‘sexuality.’’ Many

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actions whose sexuality is erased for heterosexuals are defined as explicitly sexual for homosexuals. These can include holding hands with a partner, discussing a relationship, otherwise visibly embodying gender difference. Membership in political movements and groups that protest for gay rights also have the potential to end nominal Tea Party support for lesbians and gay men. By both denying that systemic discrimination against sexual minorities exists (Massey, 2009) and by claiming any governmental remedy for discrimination is reverse discrimination or ‘‘special rights’’ (Dugan, 2005), this rhetoric denies political action to gay men and lesbians. Ultimately, the rhetoric of Tea Party members follows this logic, dichtomizing gay men and lesbians. A good, or ‘‘respectable,’’ gay man believes in the American Creed and avoids the identity politics of the mainstream gay rights movement. His demeanor is assimilated to heterosexual norms, and he does not challenge anyone’s ‘‘right to disagree’’ with his lifestyle. On the contrary, a bad, or unacceptable, lesbian is one who has politicized her sexual orientation, either by challenging the ‘‘right to disagree’’ or by pushing for legislation such as DADT or ENDA. She may also reject heteronormativity and dress in a way that defies gendered norms or is ‘‘flamboyant.’’ A respondent from California best sums up this distinction ‘‘I have it in my family; and as individuals, I feel positive. As a group, I feel negative, because I think that when your child is being taught by a teacher y you’re going to be very unhappy when they’re teaching a five-year-old child how to be a good little lesbian or homosexual.’’ Likewise, a respondent from Nevada distinguished between not caring ‘‘what they [gay men and lesbians] do amongst themselves’’ and being negative ‘‘if they try to push marriage.’’ This characterization is not unique to sexual minorities. Similar shifts in public opinion have been observed either between favorability of Black Americans in general compared to Black nationalists on the ANES (Black and Black, 1989).

Some Preliminary Findings from a 2010 Pilot Study Despite such similarities with right-wing extremism, some who are sympathetic to the Tea Party think it’s squarely in the mainstream (Williams, 2010) or insist that the Tea Party is simply more conservative.19 We gathered evidence to determine if this is true. The data in the ensuing analysis were from the Multi-State Survey of Race and Politics (MSSRP) research project, a nonpartisan academic project conducted by the Center for Survey Research at the University of

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Washington. The 2010 MSSRP survey is drawn from a probability sample of 1,006 cases, stratified by state. The MSSRP included seven states, six of which were battleground states in 2008. It includes Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio as the battleground states. For its diversity and its status as an uncontested state, California was also included for comparative purposes. In addition, follow-up phone interviews were conducted for a number of the respondents who participated in the 2010 MSSRP survey. The qualitative interviews were randomly drawn from respondents who participated in the 2010 MSSRP, and were stratified by the same states in the original survey. The survey conducted open-ended followup interviews with 35 respondents, asking them to expand on their attitudes toward the Nation and different groups in America.20 To get a sense of Tea Party dialogue, we examine content from over thirty major Tea Party websites. The data for the analysis on Tea Party websites was collected from five states identified as top tea party venues by a Rasmussen Reports (2010) as well as from six more battle ground states that match our individual level survey data. In total, 1,079 articles and postings from 31 official Tea Party websites were examined, dating back no further than 2009. Only official Tea Party websites that represent a particular state in its entirety, such as the Colorado Tea Party, or websites from a major city or region of the state, were included in our analysis. The content from these websites was randomly sampled in order to accurately represent all of the content within the website over time. Websites and blogs that did not represent the state, major city or region within the state, blogs that did not have official domain names, and the comments on blog posts and articles were not part of the analysis. By limiting our examination to these official Tea Party-sanctioned websites, we are focusing on a section of the elite dialogue taking place online between the communication leaders within the tea party. If anything, our results present a conservative estimate of the online content circulated and discussed by Tea Party supporters, as we are not analyzing the comments by members of the websites, but only the official blog posts. In addition, content from the National Review Online, a major conservative commentary, is compared to content from the Tea Party websites. If the Tea Party is a reflection of mainstream conservatism, the content from their online websites should be similar to the content from the National Review Online. The content for the National Review online consisted of 754 articles from the online website that were sampled by examining every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday throughout 2009 to achieve a representative sample of the entire year. Content was coded by identifying

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the main topic of each blog post or news story for the official Tea Party websites or the NRO. Thus, there are a total of 1,079 coded posts for the Tea Party and 754 coded posts for the NRO, and each post is categorized for its main theme or topic. Finally, content from the Glenn Beck show, a less traditional conservative talk show is also compared to the Tea Party websites. The Glenn Beck show content was examined by analyzing transcripts from 844 segments on 170 different shows randomly selected throughout 2009 and 2010. The content analysis had a final intercoder reliability of 0.84. Throughout 2010, we tracked entries on official Tea Party websites, and systematically coded the content of each. As a point of comparison, we also coded entries from the National Review, considered by many the gold standard of conservative intellectual thought in America (Smith, 2007, Chap. 5). If the Tea Party was truly a conservative movement, we should see the content of the Tea Party websites mirror that of the National Review. If, as we suspected, that the Tea Party is more about pseudo-conservatism than conservatism, we should see content centering upon conspiratorial discourse of some kind. Table 1 contains the results. If the Tea Party movement were really about conservatism, i.e., particularly concerned with the size of government – the content of its websites would mirror that of the National Review. This failed to materialize. For instance, the National Review’s content focused primarily on core conservative issues: the size of government and national security. Indeed, these issues constitute more than 75% of the content on the National Review Online. Only 15% of its content centered upon conspiracy theories, attacks on Obama, or attacks on gays, lesbians, or immigrants.

Table 1.

Content Analysis of Competing Conservative Voices in 2010.

Primary Topic of Content

Race/immigration/GLBT Personal attacks on Obama Conspiracy/socialism Take our country back Complaints about media bias Govt too big/states rights Foreign policy/homeland security Nontopical/not categorized Total N (total pieces coded)

Tea Party Websites (%)

National Review Online (%)

Glenn Beck Show (%)

10 8 23 10 15 14 18 2

8 2 6 2 2 39 38 3

6 8 19 11 4 23 20 9

1,079

754

844

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If their official websites are any indication, the Tea Party’s priorities are quite a bit different. Only 32% of the content found on their websites confronts core conservative issues of government spending, states rights, and foreign policy. Rather, over 50% is devoted to conspiracies, attacks on the president, gay men and lesbians, and immigrants, and calls to ‘‘take our country back.’’ Perhaps most important, almost one-in-four of the issues addressed on their websites entertains conspiracies that the president is a communist, socialist, or the that the policies sought by the government Obama leads will ultimately result in the demise of America. What we have presented so far validates our claim that the Tea Party – at least many of its elites – is brimming with right-wing extremists insofar as a good portion of its discourse skews away from traditional conservatism, and toward conspiracies and the derogation of perceived ‘‘others.’’ In addition to collecting more than a year’s worth of content analysis in 2010, we also analyzed mass opinion. First, we wish to show that people in the mass public who sympathize with the Tea Party (true believers) differ in their attitudes and behavior from the public at-large. Second, we wish to control for competing explanations of why Tea Party sympathizers retain the intolerant attitudes they so often display, including conservatism.21 The data from 2010 are important because they provide one of the earliest comprehensive views of Tea Party supporters and opponents, and establish a baseline of attitudes to which scholars can compare into the future. Our preliminary analysis suggests that Whites who support the Tea Party are statistically more likely to hold negative attitudes toward Blacks, toward immigrants, gays, and relatively more likely to violate due process for persons the authorities deem suspicious. Further, we find that Tea Party sympathizers are much less supportive of civil rights and liberties, and instead favor surveillance, profiling, and detention of ‘‘suspicious persons.’’ Not surprisingly, they are also more likely to be politically aware and politically active. Even after accounting for ideology, partisanship, authoritarianism, and ethnocentrism, in a variety of regression models, the results hold. We begin with racial attitudes. In measuring racial attitudes toward Blacks, we find a statistically significant increase in anti-Black attitudes among Tea Party supporters. Even after controlling for well-known covariates and competing theories such as ideology, authoritarianism, and ethnocentrism,22 we find moving from low to high approval of the Tea Party, on its own, produces a large increase in anti-Black animus (see appendix for full regression table). That is, racially conservative view points among Whites result not just from ideology or ethnocentric world views (which have their

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own statistically significant effect), but rather the additional independent contribution of Tea Party mentality. Again, we want to be clear: beyond ideology, ethnocentrism, or authoritarianism, supporting the Tea Party leads Whites to increase animosity toward Blacks. In the example in Fig. 1, we demonstrate that Tea Party supporters are considerably more likely to believe Blacks need to ‘‘try harder’’ in order to gain equality with Whites. Likewise, we find a very similar result for attitudes toward immigrants. Although an estimated 44% of Tea Party opponents believe immigrants take jobs from Americans, a much higher 88% of Tea Party supporters are estimated to agree that immigrants are taking jobs away. In our full analysis, we find that this rate of anti-immigrant attitudes is surpassed only by the most strident White ethnocentrists. The same trends hold for other immigration variables such as the belief that state and local agencies should be enforcing immigration laws and checking immigration status, where we find Tea Party approvers are significantly more likely to hold strict antiimmigrant positions after accounting for ideology. This should come as no surprise as the Tea Party has mobilized thousands of supporters in the state of Arizona to promote and defend the controversial SB1070, which required police to check illegal immigrant status of any suspicious offender, and went further in supporting a second bill in Arizona that banned the teaching of Latino ethnic-studies or history in public schools, and prevented people with Spanish accents from teaching public school. Another potential out-group in America today consists of gays and lesbians. Despite their reported small government and states rights claims, we wondered if Tea Party supporters would favor government limits into the lives of gays and lesbians. Across a variety of topic areas, we find true believers of the Tea Party are statistically less likely to support equality for gays and lesbians in terms of marriage, military service, adoption, and more. Even after controlling for items such as ideology, religiosity, and moral traditionalism there is an additional and sizable effect for Tea Party support and antigay attitudes. Although 55% of all Whites support gay adoption, only 36% of Tea Partiers do. Finally, we asked respondents a battery of questions that tap their views on civil liberties, including whether or not it’s appropriate for the government to detain people without a trial, something prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. However, during current war on terrorism, Tea Party supporters are statistically less likely to support these liberties, including the right to a trial as reported in Fig. 1 below. Although the 6th amendment states ‘‘the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial’’ almost 40% of Tea Party supporters strongly agree that the government should be

The Tea Party in the Age of Obama Public Support for Tea Party and Out-Group Attitudes. Source: 2010 Multistate Survey on Race and Politics Pilot Study.

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Fig. 1.

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able to detain terror suspects as long as they wish without putting them on trial. Although just 7% of those who disapprove of the Tea Party agree with suspending trials, 39.5% of Tea Party supporters agree with unlimited detentions. On other civil liberties topics such as profiling, phone taps, and police searches, our pilot study finds Tea Party supporters are consistently willing to give the federal government more authority to intervene in people’s lives.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Over the past few decades America has experienced many social, demographic, and political changes. In particular, the minority and immigrant population has grown dramatically, and this has culminated in the election of many prominent African American, Latino, and Asian American candidates to office. At the same time, minority groups have continued to promote equal rights, especially civil rights, for a range of groups including racial/ethnic minorities, but also women, gays and lesbians. To an extent, the shock of these social changes to the dominant in-group was absorbed by the previous eight years of the Republican presidency of George W. Bush. Even as society and demographics changed, calling into question the perceived social order of yesteryear, political control of the country rested in the hands of a Republican administration. In 2008 everything changed, with the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president in America’s history. Although this alone was not the sole inspiration of the Tea Party movement, the election of Obama provided an opening for his staunchest critics to reach out to those disaffected by the social change in America, and to perhaps question, ‘‘what happened to my country?’’ Not only did the social and demographic landscape of America look different in 2008 than it did a generation before, but so too did the President of the United States. In this chapter, we set out to assess the extent to which Richard Hofstadter’s pseudo-conservative framework fit with the Tea Party. Ultimately, we observed a fairly snug fit. The Tea Party, as the contemporary representation of the extreme right, is pretty consistent with its predecessors, sharing with them the major tenets of right-wing extremism. All share an aversion to social change, and tend to transform the manifestly political into a crusade of good versus evil, often White heterosexual versus other. These groups also share a preference for maintaining the status quo, and tend to subscribe to conspiratorial thinking, demonizing their ‘‘enemies.’’ Though many pundits describe the Tea Party as the conservative wing of the

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Republican Party, we find that conservatism alone is not driving the Tea Party. At a much deeper level, Tea Party sympathizers are concerned with the distribution of goods and rights in a changing America. Although spending on Social Security is something that must be protected at all costs, spending on public education, English as a second language, or health care for all must be avoided at all costs. With the analyses, insofar as it’s possible to do so, we sought to explore the contours of pseudo-conservatism. If, as many sympathetic to the Tea Party claim, they are really simply die-hard conservatives, and not extremists, this should have evident in the content analysis. Yet, as we make plain, the discourse taking place on the Tea Party websites, in their official posts, are at sharp variance with the principal organ of conservative thought, the National Review. Further, our in-depth interviews with Tea Party sympathizers suggest a connection to the rhetoric used online. Those who strongly supported the Tea Party avoided any explicit racist language, but clearly stated a general disdain for minority groups and questioned whether groups like immigrants or gays should have equal opportunity in America. Taken a step further, our quantitative analysis of a large public opinion survey finds very clearly that Tea Party supporters hold statistically distinct attitudes toward minority groups. After parsing out the effects of ideology, partisanship, and authoritarianism, we find a lasting effect for Tea Party support, in which support for the Tea Party is statistically associated with negative attitudes towards Blacks, immigrants, and gays and lesbians. Our hypothesis that the support for the Tea Party is commensurate with pseudo-conservatism received support from the models we estimated. Specifically, we reasoned that if support for the Tea Party continued to predict attitudes and behavior, after accounting for conservatism, it is a good bet that the Tea Party and pseudo-conservatism are related. This is exactly what we found.

NOTES 1. Data compiled by Devin Burghart, Institute for Research on Education & Human Rights. 2. 2010 Multi-State Survey on Race and Politics (MSSRP). 3. http://www.teapartypatriots.org/mission.aspx; 4. http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/04/libertarian-party-of-illinoiswe-gave-rick-santelli-the-idea-for-the-tax-day-tea-parties/ 5. http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/libertarians-cordially-invite-you-to-atea-party

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6. http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/09/lobbyists-planning-teaparties/ 7. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/20/tea-party-protests-nier-f_n_507 116.html 8. Daniel (1963), Lipset & Raab, Hofstader (1955). For an alternative interpretation of the McCarthy phenomena as it pertains to ‘‘classical’’ right-wing movements, see Rogin (1967). 9. Entire transcript of Williams’ response can be found at http://gawker.com/ 5588556/the-embarrassing-racist-satire-of-tea-party-leader-mark-williams?utm_sour ce ¼ feedburner&utm_medium ¼ feed&utm_campaign ¼ Feed%3A þ gawker%2Ffu ll þ %28Gawker%29 10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ¼ tb-zZM9-vB0&feature ¼ channel 11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ¼ uJC_RmcO7Ts&feature ¼ channel 12. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/jd-hayworth-arizona-immigrat ion-anger 13. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/03/tea-party-seeks-stories-horrorsillegal-immigration/ 14. http://www.alipac.us/content-16.html 15. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/us/20immig.html?_r ¼ 1 16. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/05/politics/main6748062.shtml 17. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/05/sharron-angle-make-gay-ad_n_67 2549.html 18. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-16/christine-odonne lls-gay-former-aide-speaks-out/ 19. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/25/tea_partiers_racist_not_ so_fast_105309.html 20. On average, the 2010 MSSRP took 45 min to complete and the survey had a 51% cooperation rate (COOP4). The study has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1% and was in the field February 8–March 15, 2010. The MSSRP qualitative follow-up survey was in the field August 15–30, 2010, with an average interview time of 25 min. 21. In February–March 2010, we fielded an original public opinion survey called the MSSRP to examine what Americans thought about issues of race, public policy, national politics, and President Obama, exactly one year after the inauguration of the first African American president. The survey was drawn from a probability sample of 60,000 household records, stratified by state and resulted in 1,006 completed interviews. The completed sample included 505 White non-Hispanics, 312 African Americans, 99 Latinos, and 90 of ‘‘other’’ race. Throughout this chapter, we focus especially on the attitudes of Whites. Our study included seven states, six of which were politically competitive states in 2008, including Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio. For its diversity and its status as an uncontested state, California was also included for comparative purposes. The study, using live telephone callers, averaged about 40 min in length and was in the field February 8–March 15, 2010. Overall, AAPOR cooperation rate, 4 was 47.3, the margin of error is plus or minus 3.1% for the full sample, and plus or minus 4.4% when examining the White and non-White samples independently. 22. The full regression model includes: Tea Party approval, age, education, income, gender, partisanship, ideology, federal government thermometer, religiosity, authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, and state and region controls and are found in the appendix.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors wish to thank Eduardo Bonilla-Silva for his thoughtful review and suggestions. We also received helpful feedback from Devin Burghart, Luis Fraga, Mark Sawyer, Loren Collingwood, and Marcela GarciaCastan˜on. Research for this chapter was supported by the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (WISER), and the University of Washington Research Royalty Fund.

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APPENDIX: MULTIVARIATE ORDERED LOGIT REGRESSION RESULTS Independent Variable

Tea Party support Age Education Income Male Republican Independent Ideology

Blacks Should Immigrants Gays should Govt can Try harder take jobs away not adopt Detain indef. Coefficient (SE)

Coefficient (SE)

Coefficient (SE)

Coefficient (SE)

0.8098 (0.1362) 0.0158 (0.0071) 0.0761 (0.0721) 0.0068 (0.0759) 0.2477 (0.2242) 0.2566 (0.4051) 0.3395 (0.3004) 0.0135 (0.092)

0.3550 (0.1214) 0.0104 (0.0067) 0.1058 (0.0656) 0.0093 (0.0739) 0.3133 (0.216) 0.0708 (0.3991) 0.1710 (0.3011) 0.2486 (0.0840)

0.3835 (0.1790) 0.0287 (0.0104) 0.1724w (0.1005) 0.2442 (0.1141) 1.1482 (0.3418) 1.0452 (0.5492) 0.2905 (0.4562) 0.6151 (0.1311)

0.6339 (0.1491) 0.0131w (0.0078) 0.0922 (0.0734) 0.2076 (0.0872) 0.3669 (0.2475) 0.8862 (0.4481) 0.0168 (0.3629) 0.3950 (0.0959)

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Federal Govt Therm Church attendance Born again

0.0404 (0.0515) 0.0219 (0.0809) 0.5732 (0.2826) Ethnocentrism 0.0359w (0.0214) Authoritarianism 0.4847 (0.0932) Rural geography 0.1842 (0.2566) Ohio 0.2820 (0.3255) Georgia 0.2888 (0.403) Michigan 0.8706 (0.3423) Missouri 0.2996 (0.4167) Nevada 0.9933 (0.6418) Carolina 0.0756 (0.4016) Cut1 30.976 (14.041) Cut2 30.093 (14.039) Cut3 29.572 A (14.036) Cut4 27.927 (14.027) N 340 0.2854 Pseudo R2 w

0.0459 0.0268 (0.0471) (0.0715) 0.0794 0.1383w (0.0775) (0.1117) 0.1484 0.6596w (0.2699) (0.3671) 0.0354 0.0074 (0.0168) (0.023) 0.1282 0.4814 (0.0861) (0.1279) 0.0503 0.4238 (0.2559) (0.3768) 0.4132 0.9042 (0.3217) (0.4713) 1.6833 1.2464 (0.3831) (0.5713) 0.5791w 1.1276 (0.3417) (0.5159) 0.6338 1.3325 (0.3954) (0.5784) 0.7756 0.2615 (0.6015) (0.9501) 0.4750 2.4521 (0.3895) (0.6037) 20.118 48.940 (13.139) (20.402) 21.794 48.669 (13.143) (20.399) 23.045 (13.150)

319 0.1036

po.100; po.050; po.010; and po.001.

324 0.3834

0.0284 (0.0554) 0.2110 (0.0909) 0.4086 (0.3072) 0.0067 (0.0184) 0.3202 (0.0991) 0.6316 (0.2892) 0.2681 (0.3635) 0.6954w (0.4219) 0.0215 (0.3858) 0.3017 (0.4459) 0.2029 (0.7180) 0.0745 (0.4425) 21.332 (15.197) 22.157 (15.201) 23.062 (15.205)

303 0.1413

THE SWEET ENCHANTMENT OF COLOR BLINDNESS IN BLACK FACE: EXPLAINING THE ‘‘MIRACLE,’’ DEBATING THE POLITICS, AND SUGGESTING A WAY FOR HOPE TO BE ‘‘FOR REAL’’ IN AMERICA Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Louise Seamster ABSTRACT This essay tackles the Obama ‘‘phenomenon,’’ from his candidacy to his election, as a manifestation of the new ‘‘color-blind racism’’ that has characterized U.S. racial politics in the post-civil rights era. Rather than symbolizing the ‘‘end of race,’’ or indeed a ‘‘miracle,’’ Obama’s election is a predictable result of contemporary U.S. electoral politics. In fact, Obama is a middle-of-the-road Democrat whose policies since taking office have been almost perfectly in line with his predecessors, especially in terms of his failure to improve the lot of blacks and other minorities.

Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 139–175 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022012

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In this essay, I review the concept of color-blind racism and its application to the Obama phenomenon. I also revisit some of my past predictions for Obama’s presidency and evaluate their accuracy halfway through his term. Finally, I offer suggestions for constructing a genuine social movement to push Obama and future politicians to provide real, progressive ‘‘change we can believe in.’’ This chapter is based on a chapter I added for the third edition of my book, Racism without Racists. Louise Seamster, a wonderful graduate student at Duke, helped me update some material, locate new sources, and rework some sections, as well as abridge some of the many footnotes (interested readers can consult the chapter). I kept the first person to maintain the more direct and engaged tone of the original piece and because the ideas (the good, the bad, and the ugly ones) in the chapter are mine, and thus, I wish to remain entirely responsible for them.

Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1966), p. 90.

‘‘WE ARE ALL MAD HERE.’’ ON MADNESS IN THE AMERICAN WONDERLAND Since the 2008 presidential campaign, Americans have behaved much like the characters in the upside down world of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.1 In many ways, the entire nation succumbed to Obamania. Fortunately, some progressive critics had a shield that protected them from this social current. They were able to navigate the turbulence for two reasons: first, given that this country does not have a traditional left and has extremely weak labor unions (Aronowitz, 1991), it has never been easy to be a progressive in America. Second, now that Obama is president, many leftists feel vindicated, as the concerns they expressed about Obama’s ‘‘progressive’’ credentials and their predictions about an Obama presidency have become a reality. Unfortunately, this vindication is somewhat Pyrrhic as Obama’s victory has increased (I hope temporarily) the madness in the nation and even further reduced the space for criticizing his policies from the left. First and foremost, this chapter represents my explanation of the ‘‘miracle’’: the election of a black man as president of the United States.

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My explanation runs counter to those who believe his victory represents the ‘‘end of racism’’ and the beginning of the era of ‘‘no more excuses’’ (Reed & Louis, 2009) for people of color. In contrast, I contend Obama’s ascendancy to the presidency is part and parcel of the ‘‘new racism’’ and the All in the (Color-Blind) Family soap opera that began running on a U.S. TV station in the early 1970s. Second, this chapter is a call for progressives and liberals who believed in Obama’s message of hope and change to get serious. Obama is close to the end of his first term as president, and we must all scrutinize his actions, as we have done with all presidents until now. As I was involved in debates about Obama leading up to the 2008 election, I will use my assessments and predictions to evaluate whether he has delivered on his promises so far, or whether, as I predicted, he has been a neoliberal politician. But before I begin, several caveats. First, my criticism of Obama is neither of all he stands for nor of all of his actions in office (after all, I label his politics center-right, not right-wing). At the end of this chapter I enumerate some of the good things he has done so far and outline a course of action to make sure he delivers more good things for ‘‘we the people.’’ Third, although I will criticize President Obama’s image, politics, and policies, I want to be absolutely clear on one important point: in comparison to the president he replaced and the Republican candidate he faced, Obama seems like pure gold. Fourth, since Obama emerged as a viable candidate, the bulk of the American intelligentsia ceased its critical mission. Being critical (or analytical) is part of the job of intellectuals in any society and when they are not critical, they abdicate their responsibility. With these caveats out of the way, we can now begin the slow ascent out of the rabbit-hole we call Obamerica.

‘‘DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE’’: THE REAL QUESTION POSED BY OBAMA’S VICTORY George Orwell stated a long time ago that ‘‘To see what is in front of one’s nose needs constant struggle’’ (Orwell, 1946). In the 2008 election cycle, Americans did not see what was in front of their noses; they saw what they wanted and longed to see. Although blacks and other people of color saw in Obama the impossible dream come true, whites saw the confirmation of their belief that America is indeed a color-blind nation. But facts are, as John Adams said, ‘‘stubborn things’’ (Adams, 1965) and

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astute social analysts knew that since the late 1970s, racial progress in the United States had stagnated and, in many areas, regressed. The evidence of such a state of affairs was, as the title of a report of the early 1990s put it, ‘‘clear and convincing’’ (Struyk & Fix, 1993). All socioeconomic indicators revealed severe racial gaps in income, wealth, housing, and educational and occupational standing. Since I have addressed these inequalities in previous work (particularly in Bonilla-Silva, 2001, Chap. 4), I will review here some economic disparities for 2008 – the year Obama was elected president. All the statistics I cite, unless otherwise specified, come from the report ‘‘State of the Dream 2009: The Silent Depression’’ (Rivera, Huezo, Kasica, & Muhammad, 2009), a very useful compendium of information from sources such as the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The Black unemployment rate is currently 11.9%. Among young Black males aged 16–19, unemployment is 32.8%. [Unemployment for whites in 2008 was 5.8%; see page 13 of the report].  The median household incomes of Blacks and Latinos are $38,269 and $40,000, respectively, while the median household income of whites is $61,280 (v).  People of color are disproportionately poor in the United States. Blacks and Latinos have poverty rates of 24% and 21% respectively, compared to a 10% poverty rate for whites (v).  People of color are more likely to be poor (24.5%), remain poor (54%), and move back into poverty from any income class status than their white counterparts (vi).  Nearly 30% of Blacks have zero or negative worth, versus 15% of whites (vi).  Only 18% of people of color have retirement accounts, compared to 43.4% of their white counterparts (vi). Since Obama has taken office, things have only worsened for blacks. According to data from the BLS, by November 2010 the rate had increased to 16.0% for blacks, 13.2% for Latinos, and 8.9% for whites, for an overall unemployment rate of 9.8% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011). The unemployment rate for black men between 16 and 19 has now risen to 50.1%. And in August 2011, just before this chapter went to press, the Pew Research Center issued a report stating that median wealth for whites is now 20 times that for blacks and 18 times the median Latino wealth – these are the widest gaps in 25 years (Kocchar, Fry, & Taylor, 2011).

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The racial inequality that existed in 2008 and which remains today is not the product of ‘‘impersonal market forces’’ (Wilson, 1978, 1987) or due to the presumed cultural, moral, ethical, intellectual, or family ‘‘deficiencies’’ of people of color, as conservative commentators such as Charles Murray (1984), Murray and Herrnstein (1994), and Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom (1997) and many others have argued. Racial inequality today is due to the ‘‘continuing significance’’ of racial discrimination (Feagin, 1991). The scholarly community has documented the persistence of discrimination in the labor and housing markets and has uncovered the co-existence of oldfashioned as well as subtle ‘‘smiling discrimination’’ (Brooks, 1996; Pager & Sheppard, 2008). But racial discrimination is not just about jobs and housing. Discrimination affects almost every aspect of the lives of people of color. It affects them in hospitals (Blanchard & Lurie, 2004; Penner et al., 2009), restaurants (Rusche & Brewster, 2008), trying to buy cars (Ayres, 2002) or hail a cab (Kovaleski & Chan, 2003), driving (Meehan & Ponder, 2002) or flying (Harris, 2001), or doing almost anything in America. Indeed, ‘‘living while black [or brown]’’ (Gabbidon & Peterson, 2006) is quite hard and affects the health (physical and mental) of people of color tremendously, as they seem to always be in ‘‘fight or flight’’ mode (Smith, Allen, & Danley, 2007). Indicators of subjective matters also denote trouble in paradise (we limit the discussion to racial attitudes, but could include data on perceptions of wellbeing and the like). Although the first wave of researchers in the 1960s and 1970s assumed tremendous or moderate racial progress in whites’ racial attitudes, most contemporary researchers believe that since the 1970s, whites have developed a new way of justifying the racial status quo distinct from the ‘‘in your face’’ prejudice of the past. Analysts have labeled whites’ post– Civil Rights racial attitudes as ‘‘modern racism,’’ ‘‘subtle racism,’’ ‘‘aversive racism,’’ ‘‘social dominance,’’ ‘‘competitive racism,’’ ‘‘Jim Crow racism,’’ or the term I prefer, ‘‘color-blind racism.’’ Regardless of the name given to whites’ new way of framing race matters, their switch to color-blind racism did not change the basics, as color-blind racism is as good as, if not better than, the old method of safeguarding the racial order. Despite its suave, apparently nonracial character, the new racial ideology is still about justifying the various social arrangements and practices that maintain white privilege. The overall contemporary racial situation I have described is compounded by a mean-spirited white racial animus. The first component of this animus is the anti-affirmative action and ‘‘reverse racism’’ mentality that emerged in the early 1970s and that took a firm hold of whites’ racial

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imagination since the 1980s (Pincus, 2003; Chap. 2 in Crosby, 2004). This mentality, which was in evidence during the confirmation hearings in July 2009 of Judge Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, and its connection to racial prejudice is well-documented (Unzueta, Lowery, & Knowles, 2007). The second component of the racial climate people of color face is the antiimmigration mood that started slowly in the latter part of the 20th century and has become one of the central axes of racial politics in the early part of the 21st century (Esses, Dovidio, & Hodson, 2002). With the economy in shambles, and with agitators such as Lou Dobbs fueling enmity toward undocumented workers (whom he calls ‘‘illegal aliens’’), a thick nativist mood is palpable, finding expression in draconian anti-immigrant measures enacted in localities across the nation, not to mention the Tea Party movement (examined by Barreto et al. in this section). ‘‘And then out of nowhere,’’ paraphrasing the much-maligned Father Pfleger, came a relatively unknown black politician who said, ‘‘Hey, I am Barack Obama,’’ and almost the entire nation said (like Hillary Clinton), ‘‘Oh damn, where did this black man come from?’’ (in McCormick & Bracchaer, 2008). Since January of 2008 the nation has been mesmerized by Obama; by his ‘‘Yes we can’’; by his appeal to our ‘‘better angels’’; and by his relentless call for national unity. Many Americans have felt inspired, proud, and a few, like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, have even felt a ‘‘thrill going up [their] leg’’ (Matthews, 2008). But the question we must ponder now that Obama is the president of the still (Dis)United States of Amerika is: Were we all wrong? Were neoliberal and conservative analysts right when they claimed America had seen D’Souza’s (1995) ‘‘end of racism’’ or, at least, William Julius Wilson’s (1978) ‘‘declining significance of race?’’ Were whites right in claiming that America had become a color-blind nation and that minority folks were the ones who kept race alive by playing the infamous ‘‘race card?’’ Analytically and politically, too many liberal and progressive commentators dug a deep hole for themselves in the 2008 election as they either went with the flow and assumed Obama was truly about social and racial change, or took the stand that white racism would prevent Obama from getting elected. But there is a more fitting, historically accurate, and sociologically viable explanation. The ‘‘miracle’’ – the fact that race matters in America tremendously, yet we elected a black man as our president – is but an apparent one. Obama, his campaign, and his ‘‘success’’ are the outcome of 40 years of racial transition from the Jim Crow racial order to the racial regime I have referred to as the ‘‘new racism’’ (Bonilla-Silva, 2001). In the new America that presumably began on November 4, 2008, racism will

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remain firmly in place and, even worse, may become a more daunting obstacle. The apparent blessing of having a black man (and we should truly say ‘‘this black man’’) in the White House is likely to become a curse for black and brown folks. In the remainder of this chapter I do three things. First, I describe the context that made it possible for someone like Obama to be elected president. Second, I discuss what Obama did in order to be elected president. Finally, I conclude by discussing a few things we can do if we wish to attain real change at this juncture when so many whites (and many people of color) believe we are finally beyond race even though racial inequality remains entrenched.

‘‘BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING ...’’: THE CONTEXT THAT ALLOWED THE ‘‘MIRACLE’’ In the midst of the trial against the Knave of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the King instructed the White Rabbit to read some verses. The rabbit asked the King, ‘‘Where do I begin?’’ The King replied: ‘‘Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’’ Americans have not placed the election of Barack Obama as president in its proper context and, thus, in order to understand where we are today we must ‘‘begin at the beginning.’’ From Jim Crow to the New Racism Regime The Obama phenomenon is the product of the fundamental racial transformation that transpired in America in the 1960s and 1970s. Unlike Jim Crow, the new racial order that emerged – the ‘‘new racism’’ – reproduces racial domination mostly through subtle and covert discriminatory practices which are often institutionalized, defended with coded language (‘‘those urban people’’ or ‘‘those people on welfare’’), and bonded by the racial ideology of color-blind racism (for a full discussion of ‘‘the new racism,’’ see Chap. 4 in Bonilla-Silva, 2001; cf. Smith, 1995). Compared to Jim Crow, this new system seems genteel, but it is extremely effective in preserving systemic advantages for whites and keeping people of color at bay. The new regime is, in the immortal lyrics of Roberta Flack’s song, of the ‘‘killing me softly’’ variety. This new regime came about as the result of various social forces and events that converged in the post–WWII era:

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(1) the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s; (2) the contradiction between an America selling democracy abroad and giving hell to minorities at home, which forced the government to engage more seriously in the business of racial fairness; (3) the black migration from the South that made Jim Crow less effective as a strategy of social control; and (4) the change of heart of so-called enlightened representatives of capital, who realized they had to retool the racial aspects of the social order in order to maintain an adequate ‘‘business climate.’’ The most visible positive consequences of this process are well-known: the slow and incomplete school desegregation that followed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision; the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Housing Rights Act of 1968; and the haphazard political process that brought affirmative action to life. Unfortunately, alongside these meaningful changes, whites developed very negative interpretations of what was transpiring in the nation.2 The concerns they expressed in the late 1960s and early 1970s about these changes gelled into a three-headed beast in the 1980s. The first head of the monster was whites’ belief that the changes brought by the tumultuous 1960s represented the end of racism in America. Therefore, since they believed racism had ended, they began regarding complaints about discrimination by people of color as baseless and a product of their ‘‘hypersensitivity’’ on racial affairs. The second head of the beast was that a substantial segment of the white population understood the changes not just as evidence of the end of racism, but also as the beginning of a period of ‘‘reverse discrimination.’’3 Hence, this was the ideological context that helped cement the ‘‘new racism.’’ ‘‘The third head of the beast was whites’ increasing tendency, particularly after the increased militancy and urban rebellions of the 1960s, to view blacks (especially young black males) as a threat and to become increasingly concerned with ‘‘law and order.’’ Elsewhere I have described in detail how the new racial practices for maintaining white privilege operate ideologically, socially, economically, and politically (again, interested parties should see Chapter 4 in BonillaSilva, 2001 and, for an update, see Bonilla-Silva & Dietrich, 2009). Given the focus of this chapter, I will just briefly review my analysis of developments at the political level. Nowadays three major factors limit the advancement of people of color in the political arena. First, there are multiple structural barriers to the election of black and minority politicians, including racial gerrymandering, multimember legislative district members, and the like. Second, despite some progress in the 1970s, people of color are still severely under-represented among elected and appointed officials

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(whites still show a preference to vote for white candidates); the proportion of minority elected and appointed officials still lags well behind their proportion in the population. Third, because most minority politicians must either ‘‘compromise’’ to get elected or are dependent on local white elites, their capacity to enact policies that benefit the minority masses is quite limited. More significantly, in an early analysis of these matters I mentioned the emergence of a new type of minority politician. By the early 1990s it was clear that both major political parties (but the Democratic Party in particular) had learned from the perils of trying to incorporate veteran civil rights leaders such as Jesse Jackson. Regardless of the limitations of Jackson as a leader and of his ‘‘rainbow coalition’’ strategy of the 1980s, he and his coalition proved to be too much of a challenge to the ‘‘powers that be’’ (Marable, 1989, pp. 3–4). Hence, both parties and their corporate masters developed a new process for selecting and vetting minority politicians. After the Democratic Party co-opted civil rights leaders such as John Lewis, Andrew Young, and the like, they began almost literally manufacturing a new kind of minority politician (the Republican Party followed suit later). Consequently today’s electorally oriented minority politician (1) is not the product of social movements, (2) usually joins the party of choice while in college, (3) moves up quickly through the party ranks, and, most importantly, (4) is not a race rebel.4 The new breed of minority politicians, unlike their predecessors, are not radicals talking about ‘‘the revolution’’ and ‘‘uprooting systemic racism.’’ If Republican, they are anti-minority conservatives such as Michael Steele (the former chairman of the Republican National Committee), Tim Scott (the first black congressman elected by South Carolina since Reconstruction), Bobby Jindal (governor of Louisiana since 2008), Alan Keyes (conservative commentator and perennial candidate for any office), and J. C. Watts (former Congressman from Oklahoma and still a very influential leader in the GOP). If a Democrat, they are post-racial leaders with center to center-right politics such as Harold Ford (former congressman from Tennessee and currently head of the conservative Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and an MSNBC commentator), Cory Booker (Newark’s mayor since 2006), Deval Patrick (governor of Massachusetts since 2006), Adrian Fenty (D.C.’s mayor from 2006 to 2010) and, of course, Barack Obama. Not surprisingly, plutocrats love these kinds of minority politicians because, whether Republican or Democrat, neither represents a threat to the power structure of America, instead representing Booker T. Washington-style accomodationism.

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Obama’s case is illustrative. Although during his carefully orchestrated presidential campaign he and his team touted his credentials as a ‘‘community organizer,’’ Obama’s real story at the moment of his political conception is quite different. During the campaign Obama said ‘‘community organizing is ‘something I carry with me when I think about politics today – obviously at a different level and in a different place, but the same principle still applies’’’ (Judis, 2008). His wife, Michelle Obama, added, ‘‘Barack is not a politician first and foremost’’ and that ‘‘He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change’’ (Judis, 2008). But the historical record is quite different. First, Obama accomplished quite little in his two years as a paid community organizer (all reports, including Obama’s own account in The Audacity of Hope, reveal he was very disappointed with the pace of change) and second, by 1987 he had all but abandoned Saul Alinsky’s ideal of the community organizer and was dreaming of getting elected to office. Hence, in the same article, which is sympathetic to Obama, the author states that ‘‘Obama y has become exactly the kind of politician his mentors might have warned against’’ (Judis, 2008). The record also shows that by the time Obama ran for office in 1996, he had already acquired many of the typical characteristics of post–civil rights minority politicians. After he won the Illinois state race in 1996, Adolph Reed, a black political science professor and contributor to various progressive magazines, said the following about Obama: In Chicago, for instance, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundationhatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neo-liberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program – the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics, as in Haiti and wherever else the International Monetary Fund has sway. So far the black activist response hasn’t been up to the challenge. We have to do better. (Reed, 1996)

Obama negotiated Chicago Democratic politics quickly and successfully, and by 2002, he had become the darling of the city’s black elite, and soon after, of the white elite. Christopher Drew and Mike McIntire, in a 2007 article in The New York Times, state that Obama ‘‘improbably’’ raised fifteen million dollars for his senate campaign (Drew & McIntire, 2007). But their characterization of this quick turnaround (from having problems settling his campaign debt from his loss to Congressman Bobby Rush in

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2000 to the success of his campaign in 2004) as ‘‘improbable’’ is inaccurate, because by 2003 Obama had already received the blessing from the Democratic Party elders and financiers, beginning with a fundraiser held at the home of Vernon Jordan, according to Paul Street. Street states that ‘‘Obama passed this preliminary trial with flying colors’’ (Street, 2009, p. xxiii; my emphasis). The people in the meeting liked his academic background, suave and cool style, and political outlook. Attendees such as Gregory Craig (prominent attorney and former special counsel to Bill Clinton), Mike Williams (legislative director of the Bond Market Association), and other big wheelers appreciated that Obama was not a ‘‘racial polarizer’’ (i.e., that he was not like Jesse Jackson) and that he was not ‘‘anti-business.’’ This explains the seemingly ‘‘improbable’’ victory of Obama in the 2004 Senate race and the 700 million dollars he was able to raise in the 2008 presidential campaign. According to an investigative report by Ken Silverstein (2006) and a book by David Mendell (2007), Obama rose quickly beyond the confines of Illinois because the American elite resolutely loved his ‘‘reasonable tone.’’ Therefore, post–civil rights minority politicians like Obama are not truly about fundamental change and challenges to the American social order, but about compromise. If they were truly about fundamental change and frontal challenges, they would not be the darlings of the two mainstream parties. Although some post–civil rights minority politicians may, from time to time, ‘‘talk the talk,’’ their talk is rather abstract almost to the point of being meaningless, and they seldom if ever ‘‘walk the walk.’’ For instance, Obama talked during the campaign about corporate lobbyists, but said nothing about corporate power; complained about ‘‘big money’’ in politics, yet raised more money than any politician in American history; subscribed to the Republican lie about a crisis in Social Security and is likely to follow through with destructive policies to ‘‘save’’ a program that is actually solvent;5 and talked about alternative energy sources and clean energy, yet was allied with folks in the ‘‘clean coal’’ and ‘‘safe nuclear energy’’ camp (see Chap. 1 in Street, 2009; also, see the commercials by the energy sector that ran on national TV in the late spring and early summer of 2009, and how they used Obama’s speeches during the campaign to bolster their agenda). Based on all the information at hand, there is no question that politicians like Obama are ‘‘accomodationist’’ (Marable, 1991) par excellence and teach the ‘‘wretched of the earth’’ (Fanon, 1968) the wrong political lesson: that electoral, rather than social-movement politics, are the vehicle for achieving social justice. In the next section we show that Obama’s political road to the

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(still) White House perfectly matches the practices and tone of post–civil rights minority politicians.

‘‘‘WHO ARE YOU?’ SAID THE CATERPILLAR’’: ON THE MEANING OF OBAMA’S POLITICS When questions arose during the campaign about Obama’s progressiveness due to his support of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and other seemingly reactionary positions he held, Obama said in an interview with the New York Times that ‘‘I am someone who is no doubt progressive’’ (Powell, 2008). However, true to the style of post–civil rights minority politicians, he insisted he did not like to be ‘‘labeled’’ as right or left and preferred to be regarded as a ‘‘nonideological’’ and ‘‘pragmatic’’ politician. As the campaign advanced, Obama’s nonideological stand betrayed a conservative bent, and some commentators questioned his commitment to ‘‘progressiveness.’’ For instance, in harsh yet prophetic words, Huffington Post blogger Taylor Marsh labeled Obama’s brand of progressiveness as ‘‘progressive cannibalism.’’ He was referring to Obama’s willingness ‘‘to do whatever he can to get elected, cannibalizing his own and our ideals as he goes; bringing as many people along as he can, including conservatives who will have no allegiance to what progressives have worked for over decades to achieve’’ (Marsh, 2007). In this section, I restate doubts I raised about Obama during the campaign and argue his politics and tone were not, as so many liberals and progressives believed, tactical maneuvers to get elected, but represented who Obama truly was and how he will be as president. Because the concerns I expressed about the Obama phenomenon in events during the campaign were borne out by subsequent events, I reproduce them here almost verbatim. I maintain the present tense used in the original, but print the statements in a different font to distinguish them from the brief (and contemporary) discussion that appears after each one. The first concern I have is that Obama does not represent a true social movement, but an undercurrent of various actors and contradictory forces that did not necessarily agree on fundamental issues. Lacking a social movement with a common agenda, I believe his presidency will become problematic, as we have no way of predicting his actions and will not have people ‘‘in the streets’’ to curb them if needed.

When I wrote this, many commentators thought Obama had a ‘‘grassroots’’ approach to politics (see Sullivan, 2008 as an example). However, all

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his political praxis during the campaign was in line with mainstream party politics (in fact, all he did was through the Democratic Party) and did not emanate from or create a social movement. The massive rallies and the 700 million-plus dollars he raised in the campaign did not emanate from the organized (or unorganized, as many social movements follow a more spontaneous path; Piven & Cloward, 1978) efforts of activists with a common agenda. The mantra of his campaign, ‘‘Change we can believe in,’’ was so abstract that almost anything and anyone could have fit in. The most significant matter, however, was that Obama supporters lacked a common agenda and belief system. What I surmised during the campaign – that white support was not indicative of post-racialism – has now been corroborated in post-election studies. Noted survey researchers Professor Tom Pettigrew from UC-Santa Cruz and Professor Vincent Hutchings from the University of Michigan found that Obama’s white voters were just slightly less prejudiced than McCain’s white voters. And because Obama’s white voters were younger than McCain’s, as they age and face real life issues (e.g., getting a job, getting married, selecting a neighborhood and schools for their kids, etc.), they are likely to regress to their racial mean – that is, will develop views similar to those of older whites today (Blinder, 2007; Forman & Lewis, 2006). (Professor Pettigrew puts some weight on the fact that most young whites voted for Obama, while Professor Hutchings is less impressed with this fact.)6 Second, none of the policies Obama has offered on the crucial issues of our time (health care, NAFTA, the economy, immigration, racism, the Wars, etc.) is truly radical and likely to accomplish the empty yet savvy slogan he adopted as the core of his campaign: change.

I will say a bit more about some of Obama’s policy preferences later, but want to point out here that few of his ardent supporters knew about his policy proposals and even about his positions on crucial issues. For instance, while on vacation in the summer of 2008, I had a discussion with several minority professors about Obama in which they told me I was ‘‘too harsh’’ on Obama. As the discussion proceeded, I said, ‘‘I cannot believe you are all for Obama so blindly given his support for the death penalty.’’ One of them laughed and told me that Obama was not for the death penalty. I urged the colleague to check the matter on the Internet and, a minute later, the person said, ‘‘Well, but Obama has a nuanced position,’’ to which I replied, ‘‘When one is dead there is no nuance.’’ Third, Obama has reached the level of success he has in large measure because he has made a strategic move towards racelessness and adopted a post-racial persona and

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political stance. He has distanced himself from most leaders of the Civil Rights movement, from his own reverend, from his church, and from anything or anyone who made him look ‘‘too black’’ or ‘‘too political.’’ Obama and his campaign even retooled Michelle Obama7 to make her seem less black, less strong, and more white-lady-like for the white electorate.

Obama’s post-racial stand during the campaign was not a new thing. Those who have read his books, Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope, are familiar with his long-standing attempt to be, if not beyond race, at least above the racial fray. Hence, it was not at all surprising when President Obama answered the only question he was asked about race in his second press conference by suggesting race was a factor in life, but that he was dealing with America’s ‘‘real’’ problems.8 It was also not surprising when in his third press conference he answered a question by Andre Showell, a black journalist for BET, about what specific policies he had enacted to benefit minority communities, with ideas reminiscent of how conservatives frame race matters. ‘‘So my general approach is that if the economy is strong, that will lift all boats as long as it is also supported by, for example, strategies around college affordability and job training, tax cuts for working families as opposed to the wealthiest that level the playing field and ensure bottom-up economic growth. And I’m confident that that will help the African-American community live out the American dream at the same time that it’s helping communities all across the country.’’9 As part of his post-racialism, Obama avoided the term racism in his campaign until he was forced to talk about race. And in the ‘‘race speech’’ so many commentators heralded and compared to speeches by MLK, he said Reverend Wright’s statements ‘‘expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic’’ and classified them as ‘‘divisive.’’ This should be surprising to race scholars across the nation who regard racism as indeed ‘‘endemic’’ and know that race has been a ‘‘divisive’’ matter in America since the 17th century! For readers who are familiar with my work (particularly Bonilla-Silva, 1997, 2001), it should not be surprising to learn that I agree with Reverend Wright about his claim that racism is endemic to America. Thus, I do not believe his statements were ‘‘divisive.’’ As I have suggested in my speeches, our nation has been deeply divided by race (and class and gender as well) since colonial times! Obama’s speech was clearly a political speech intended to appease the concerns of his white supporters riled by the media-driven frenzy in March of 2008 based on a snippet of a sermon given by Reverend Wright.10 Some readers may be surprised by the fact that many blacks liked Obama’s ‘‘race speech’’ (Halloran, 2008). This puzzle, however, can be

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solved. First, whites and blacks heard Obama’s race speech and interpreted the controversy over Reverend Wright differently. A poll commissioned by Fox News indicated that whereas 40% of whites had doubts about Obama because of his relationship with Reverend Wright, only 2% of blacks did. Thus, for blacks, his association with Reverend Wright was not a big deal. A CBS-New York Times poll taken in late March (2008) showed that blacks regarded Obama’s campaign and his ‘‘race speech’’ as having had a positive effect on ‘‘race relations.’’ Second, progressive black dissenting voices on this speech and on all matters related to Obama did not get much play in the media. Hence, the black public did not see or hear a critique of this speech on mainstream TV stations or on black stations or radio shows. Third, the black masses experienced (and as I write these lines, still are experiencing) an understandable yet problematic nationalist moment that did not allow for meaningful dissent about Obama and his politics to be expressed in the black community. Accordingly, all these factors help explain why blacks heard Obama’s condemnations of racism and his comments about the continuing significance of discrimination, but paid little attention to his implicit definition of racism, his acquiescence to whites’ claims of ‘‘reverse racism,’’ or his rather desperate attempt to placate whites’ concerns in the speech. The text of the speech11 can be deconstructed as a play with five acts. In the first act, Obama stated that America is a great country, but recognized that it is still a ‘‘work in progress.’’ His campaign, Obama insisted, had worked to continue the long ‘‘march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.’’ In the second act, he inserted his usual ‘‘I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.’’ In the third act, Obama chastised Reverend Wright and expressed his profound disagreement with his views, but said he could not ‘‘disown him more than [he could] disown [his own] grandmother’’ who had also uttered racist statements in the past. In the all-important fourth act of the play, Obama justified the anger both whites and blacks have and stated that ‘‘racism’’ has affected both groups (he said white racial resentment was partly ‘‘grounded in legitimate concerns’’). And in the last act of the play, Obama called for racial reconciliation and for all Americans to be our ‘‘brother’s keeper’’ and continue working together ‘‘to build a more perfect union.’’ His speech had three serious problems. First, Obama assumed racism is a moral problem (he called it a ‘‘sin’’) that can be overcome through goodwill. In contrast, I have argued that racism forms a structure and, accordingly, the struggle against racism must be fundamentally geared toward the removal of the practices, mechanisms, and institutions that maintain systemic white privilege. Second, Obama conceived ‘‘racism’’ (in his view,

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prejudice) as a two-way street. In the speech he stated that both blacks and whites have legitimate claims against one another, that is, that blacks have a valid complaint against whites because of the continuing existence of discrimination and whites against blacks because of the ‘‘excesses’’ of programs such as affirmative action. Obama was wrong on this point because blacks do not have the institutional power to implement a pro-black agenda, whereas whites have had this kind of power from the very moment this country was born.12 He was also wrong because whites’ claims of ‘‘reverse discrimination’’ do not hold much water empirically (Roscigno, 2007). Further (as Tamara Nopper shows in her contribution to this section), Obama’s hints at the ‘‘excesses’’ of the 1960s in this speech and many others do not match the evidence. Indeed, affirmative action has been at best a Band-Aid approach to deal with the hemorrhage of racial inequality. Third, Obama’s post-racial call for everyone to get along13 so that we can deal with America’s real problems shows the Achilles heel of his stand: he truly does not believe racism is a serious structural problem in America. Otherwise he would not insist – and he has continued this line of argument – that we must get on with America’s real problems such as the economy, health care, the wars, and the like. Yet the speech accomplished its mission: it placated his white supporters who, from then on, hardly showed more concerns about Obama’s racial views.14 The speech, accordingly, can be classified as a ‘‘neoslave narrative’’ (Nopper, 2008), an accounting of America’s progress through the iniquities of slavery to the bright days of emancipation. Fourth, as Glen Ford, executive editor of The Black Agenda Report, Adolph Reed, Angela Davis, Paul Street, and a few other analysts suggest, Obamania is a craze. His supporters refuse to even listen to facts or acknowledge some very problematic positions Obama has, such as his support for the death penalty.

Obama’s liberal and progressive supporters wanted to believe, in ahistorical fashion, that Obama was a stealth progressive who once elected would turn left (what Adolph Reed has jokingly called ‘‘‘we’ll come back for you’ politics’’ (Reed, 2007). But, paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr., ‘‘leaders should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their politics’’ and the content of Obama’s politics was (and is) center to center-right on almost all fundamental matters. Black and progressive America, unfortunately, seems destined to learn this lesson after this ‘‘neomulatto’’ (Horton & Sykes, 2004) rents the White House for a short while and does not do any meaningful renovation.

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Anyone who lived in the United States during the 2008 presidential campaign knows that the entire country was captivated by Obama who, despite my criticisms, is a truly outstanding orator, astute politician, and remarkably charismatic man. The problem, however, remains. If Obama’s charisma and charming smile prevent us from asking the hard questions, probing his record, and acknowledging his actual positions on issues, then we risk endorsing style over substance and flowery rhetoric over truly progressive positions. Lastly, perhaps the most important factor behind Obama’s success, and my biggest concern, is that he and his campaign mean and evoke different things and feelings for his white and nonwhite supporters. For his white supporters, he is the first ‘‘black’’ leader they feel comfortable supporting because he does not talk about racism; because he reminds them every time he has a chance he is half-white; because he is so ‘‘articulate’’ or, in Senator [now Vice-President] Biden’s words, echoed later by Karl Rove, Obama was ‘‘the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy’’ (Thai and Barrett, 2007) because Obama keeps talking about national unity; and because he, unlike black leaders hated by whites such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, does not make them feel guilty about the state of racial affairs in the country.15

Since very early on in Obama’s campaign, his white supporters were not on the same page as his minority supporters. He quickly became an Oprahlike figure for whites, that is, a black person who has ‘‘transcended’’ his blackness and become a symbol (and it was no small potatoes that Oprah encouraged him to run and, after he entered the race, endorsed him wholeheartedly and campaigned for him). For instance, Katie Lang, a white woman profiled in a Washington Post article, stated that ‘‘‘Obama speaks to everyone. He doesn’t just speak to one race, one group,’’’ and added, ‘‘‘He is what is good about this nation’’’ (Duke, 2007). Mrs. Lang also said: Kind of like, if I could compare him to Tiger Woods. When I look at Tiger Woods, I see the best golfer in the world. So when I see Barack Obama, I see a strong political candidate. I do not see ‘‘Oh, that’s a black man running for president, or African American or multiracial black.’’ It’s not what comes to mind first. What comes to mind first is: great platform, charismatic, good leader, attractive. (Duke, 2007)

And many whites, like Joyce Heran in the article I cite erlier, said without much hesitation that if Obama were like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, they ‘‘probably wouldn’t like him as much’’ (Ibid.). In sharp contrast, for many nonwhites, but particularly for blacks, Obama became a symbol of their possibilities. He was indeed, as Obama said of himself, their Joshua16 – the leader they hoped would take them to the Promised Land of milk and honey. They read between the lines and thought

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Obama had a strong stance on race matters. For the old generation desperate to see change before they die, and for many post-Reagan generation blacks and minorities who have seen very little racial progress during their lifetimes, Obama became the new Messiah of the Civil Rights movement. Since Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucus, black America projected onto Obama its dreams, history, and pride. This, as I stated earlier, is understandable. In a country with a racial history such as ours and where successful black leaders end up killed (Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X), vilified (Malcolm X, Minister Farrakhan, and Reverend Al Sharpton), or ridiculed (almost all black politicians), one understands why the possibility of a having a black president became a symbol of the aspirations of the entire black community. In interviews with dozens of blacks from across the nation after the Iowa victory, The New York Times reported they ‘‘voiced pride and amazement over his victory [in the caucus] and the message it sent’’ (Cardwell, 2008). The love fest between blacks and Obama that began in January after an initial period of doubt has not ended. As I finish writing this article, few public black figures or commentators have broken ranks with Obama and, those who have (Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West) have been fiercely attacked and condemned by other black commentators. Although blacks’ nationalist moment has a raison d’eˆtre, people ultimately do not eat pride, cannot find a job by feeling good about themselves, or fight discrimination by telling white folks ‘‘We have a black president so you better behave’’ (would this have helped Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates?).17 Professor Ronald Walters, a black political scientist at Maryland, has wisely said that ‘‘one should not let the honeymoon that President Obama is enjoying among blacks and their leaders extend too far into the future’’ (Walters, 2003).

‘‘‘WELL! WHAT ARE YOU?’ SAID THE PIGEON. ‘I CAN SEE YOU’RE TRYING TO INVENT SOMETHING!’’’: MY PREDICTIONS DURING THE CAMPAIGN AND MY SCORECARD Social scientists must always verify how their analyses hold up over time. In this section, I restate predictions I made during the presidential campaign and assess my ‘‘batting average.’’ I made two large predictions. First, I predicted the voices of those who contend that race fractures America profoundly would be silenced. Obama’s blackness, I suggested, would

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become an obstacle for people of color as whites would throw it back at them – as well as his words and actions (and even Michelle Obama’s)18 – as evidence that race was no longer a big deal in America. Second, I argued Obama’s election would bring the nation closer to my prediction about racial stratification in the United States becoming Latin America–like (Bonilla-Silva & Dietrich, 2009). Obama’s presidency, I claimed, would accelerate the pace toward symbolic unity without the nation enacting the social policies needed for all of us to be truly ‘‘all Americans.’’ And like in Latin American countries, Obama’s nationalist stance (including his nowubiquitous line, ‘‘There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America’’) might shut the door for the recognition of race as a central factor of life. Obamerica may bring us closer than ever to a regime of ‘‘multicultural white supremacy’’ (Rodrı´ guez, 2008) similar to those in Latin America and the Caribbean, where ‘‘racially mixed’’ folks are elected to positions of power without altering the racial order or changing the racial distribution of goods and services. These are two broad predictions that cannot be easily assessed at this juncture, so I will let history and readers judge the accuracy of these two predictions. I now review more targeted predictions I made during the election based on President Obama’s first two years in office. First, based on promises and remarks Obama made during the campaign, I predicted he would increase the size of the military, wait longer than planned for withdrawing from Iraq, increase the scope of the military intervention in Afghanistan and, more problematically, bomb Pakistan if he got ‘‘actionable intelligence.’’ (I did not predict the situation in Libya, obviously, although this in itself is a troubling indication of Obama’s willingness to involve the United States in another military engagement in yet another country in the Middle East, and the end of this new engagement is not in sight). Although the severe economic crisis has prevented President Obama from fulfilling his promise of increasing the size of the military by 100,000, Defense Secretary Gates announced in late July of 2009 that he was going ‘‘to increase the size of the U.S. Army by up to 22,000 troops’’ (Bumiller, 2009). Regarding Iraq, the president has already taken a much weaker and slower approach. Even though the end to combat operations was announced in the fall of 2010 (not the first such announcement), Obama has left 50,000 troops in Iraq, justifying their continued presence by arguing that the remaining troops are no longer ‘‘combat forces’’ but are now called ‘‘advisory training’’ and ‘‘assistance’’ brigades. Euphemisms aside, we should be aware that 50,000 American troops (and an equal number of

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military contractors) will be viewed as an occupying force no matter what we call them. And as these troops eventually withdraw, the decreasing military role will likely be replaced by an ‘‘extensive expansion of the American Embassy and its operations, bolstered by thousands of private contractors’’ (Myers, Shanker, & Healy, 2010). Indeed, contractors have earned little scrutiny in the debate over timelines for troop withdrawals: it seems to be assumed that they will remain there indefinitely. And if Iraq was (and still is) a quagmire, increasing the scope of the intervention in Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan are even more problematic ventures. No foreign power has ever been able to conquer Afghanistan, and the last one that tried (the Soviet Union) was forced out after 9 years, even though it maintained about 100,000 troops in the territory during its intervention. The Soviets lost more than 14,000 soldiers and rotated over 600,000 soldiers in this costly incursion (Roy, 1987). To complicate matters further, whereas Iraq is a country of just 29 million people, Pakistan is the 6th largest nation in the world with 179 million people, and Afghanistan has close to 37 million people spread throughout a very harsh and difficult landscape. Hence, one need not be a military expert to know that the size of the population, terrain, and history do not bode well for the success of an American military campaign in Afghanistan (Coll, 2004) or for any kind of military intervention in Pakistan. Obama earned some progressive credentials by getting the ‘‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’’ law repealed in December 2010. But the left’s Obama-blinders prevented them from thinking about this course of action intelligently. Given how many people who supported ending DADT also oppose our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan – or who oppose the military altogether, we should not be celebrating the entry of more people into the military, period. The real issue is Obama’s support for equal rights for gay men and lesbians, and it is clear that this is not a priority for him (he stated unequivocally in 2008 that ‘‘I do not support gay marriage y I consider marriage to be between a man and a woman’’ (Giordano, 2007), albeit lately he has been softening his stand on this matter as the LGBT community has pressured him hard and forced him to the left). Second, I suggested Obama was going to put together a very conservative cabinet. As I predicted, the conservative people who advised him during the campaign became the core of his cabinet. Worse yet, Obama’s intention of mimicking Abraham Lincoln by having a ‘‘team of rivals’’ pushed his cabinet unnecessarily further to the right. His advisers have included Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates (kept on from the G.W. Bush administration), Larry Summers (a Clinton-era holdout infamous for his famous sexist speech at

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Harvard), Paul Volker (who served under Carter and Reagan), and Timothy Geithner (who has followed the interests of Wall Street). Indeed, Obama’s ‘‘team of rivals’’ has been described by independent journalist David Sirota as a ‘‘team of zombies’’ (2009). So far, President Obama does not have a single radical voice in his team except perhaps for Hilda Solis (Secretary of Labor) and, arguably, Eric Holder19 (Attorney General). In the beginning of 2011, Obama has reinforced the rightward bent of his cabinet by replacing Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Director of the National Economic Council Summers with William Daley and Gene Sperling,20 respectively, both Clinton-era advisors (McManus, 2011). Any turnover in staff would be an opportunity to move in a leftward direction, if Obama’s progressive supporters were right that his early centrist talk was setting up a future turn to the left, but instead Obama reinforced ties to previous administrations and financial interests. Lacking progressive people in his cabinet, who will defend the interests of poor and working people in his administration? Who will push Obama to think hard about American interventions abroad? Obama’s cabinet is not as diverse as one would expect (Allen, 2008); and the few people of color in his cabinet are in secondary positions (in most press conferences Obama is flanked by white folks). Third, I suggested Obama was going to compromise on his promise of taxing the rich. He has now definitively done so, most recently extending the tax cuts for those making over $250,000 for another 2 years and revising the estate tax according to Republican demands, in a so-called ‘‘compromise’’ with Republicans. The president claims this compromise was necessary to insure unemployment benefits: in exchange, he won the extension of unemployment insurance benefits (for only one year), and other tax credits designed to stimulate the economy and return money to middle-class Americans. But the small-business benefits Obama has touted as making this ‘‘compromise’’ worthwhile are smokescreens for more trickle-up economics. Two hundred billion dollars in new tax breaks are being offered to small businesses to cover up to $500,000 of their investments in equipment, etc., doubling the previous amount. But some have pointed out that few small businesses spend over $250,000 in a year for equipment in their business and that they need support in other areas such as obtaining credit or paying employees (Clifford, 2010). In truth, the trick here is that the ‘‘small businesses’’ that could potentially be hurt are not really small businesses (Calmes, 2010): 20,000 of the businesses filing in 2011 under this category made over $50 million (Dunmoyer, 2010). In other words, even the liberal policies obtained as ‘‘concessions’’ are primarily going to benefit the wealthy.

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Fourth, I suggested Obama’s health care plan was weak and that his ‘‘pragmatism’’ was going to make it even weaker. Specifically, I argued that Obama’s proposed reform was far off from what the country needed: a universal, single-payer health care plan. This was a bone of contention during the campaign, as independent observers commented that Obama had the weakest health care plan of all the contenders for the Democratic Party’s nomination. Although Obama did pass a health-care reform bill in 2009 that included some fixes, the bill ultimately passed without the ‘‘public option’’ to buy insurance directly from the government. The debate left a bad taste in the mouths of progressives, as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Max Baucus, and other Democrats emphasized that single-payer insurance was ‘‘not on the table’’ (NPR, 2009). Obama tried to exclude members of his own party, including Congressman John Conyers from Michigan, a leading proponent of a single-payer system, from meetings on health care reform. Conyers, after he threatened to picket outside the White House, was invited to the summit and, later on, in a presentation at Thomas Jefferson University, he described the attendees of the meeting as follows: ‘‘‘It was very heavy with corporate health care interests – Big Pharma, insurance companies – the people who don’t want single payer’’’(Vitez, 2009). Fifth, I predicted that because of Obama’s weak stand on race and his post-racial persona and appeal, he was not going to enact any meaningful race-specific policies to ameliorate racial inequality. Obama’s so-called ‘‘middle ground’’ position on race can be examined in Chapter 7 of his book, The Audacity of Hope. There, he insists that although race still matters, ‘‘prejudice’’ is declining, and as proof he heralds the growth of the black elite whose members do not ‘‘use race as a crutch or point to discrimination as an excuse for failure’’ (Obama, 2006, p. 241). He acknowledges the existence of significant gaps between whites and minorities in income, wealth, and other areas, and voices only tepid support for affirmative action, yet he engages in a Bill Cosby-like critique of blacks and states they watch ‘‘too much television,’’ engage in ‘‘too much consumption of poisons,’’ lack an ‘‘emphasis on educational achievement,’’ and do not have two-parent households (pp. 244–245). So what is his solution to deal with racial inequality? ‘‘An emphasis on universal, as opposed to racespecific, programs,’’ which he believes ‘‘isn’t just good policy; it’s also good politics’’ (p. 247). He also discusses the problem of the black ‘‘underclass’’ and chastises those unwilling to accept the role of ‘‘values’’ in their predicament (p. 254). Although he mentions that ‘‘culture is shaped by circumstances’’ (p. 255), his emphasis is on behavior (see pp. 255–257).

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Is there evidence that President Obama’s universalist stand has affected his decisions in office? I believe the $789 billion stimulus package his administration passed in early 2009, which gave control to localities on how to use the funds, is a case in point. Giving money directly to localities without any controls is quite problematic, as localities have historically distributed funds in a way that preserves existing inequities (Katznelson, 2005). Unless one adopts what John Powell labels ‘‘targeted universalism’’ – a perspective that takes into consideration that people are differently situated in the social order and, thus, that some may need more resources than others – ‘‘universal’’ efforts such as this one will not reduce racial inequities (Powell, 2009; see also Tienda, 2008). President Obama’s ‘‘race lite’’ stand was vital during the campaign and remains so. He has avoided any serious discussion on race and, when forced to talk about it, has remained frustratingly vague. For instance, in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, he took seemingly all sides on affirmative action. He talked about the importance of how affirmative action is carried out, mentioned that race still matters, said his daughters probably will not need affirmative action, and hinted at a class-based program (Robinson, 2007). In a comment on Obama’s performance in the interview, Peter S. Canellos (2008) observed in The Boston Globe that Obama rarely deals with the substance of the policies, but focuses on the values, a tactic that seems to go well with his supporters. Further evidence of President Obama’s weak stand on race matters was his decision not to attend the 2009 UN-sponsored World Conference on Racism at Geneva. The reasons he cited for not attending were quite similar to those of his predecessor – concerns about reparations and some attendees classifying Israel as a racist state. And in what should have been interpreted as a sign of disrespect by minority organizations, Samantha Power, Obama’s national security aide, had a conference call with Jewish leaders to let them know how Obama was processing his decision on whether or not to attend this meeting (Stein, 2008) all interested parties should have been consulted. Lastly, in his much-heralded trip to Ghana in July 2009, unlike Presidents Clinton and Bush, who even apologized for slavery, Obama did not contextualize the sad state of much of Africa and excoriated African nations for their problems in ‘‘governance.’’ Sixth, I criticized the progressive and liberal community in America for being in ‘‘silly season,’’ to use Obama’s terminology, regarding the amount of money he raised, how he raised it (bundling), and for ignoring the implications this money would have in his administration (for a good discussion of these matters, see Chapter 6 in Paul Street, 2009). Are we not

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concerned that Wall Street and HMOs support Obama? Do we believe that 700 million dollars in donations will not affect his administration? These were my predictions and arguments about Obama and sadly, many have become a reality and others seem very likely. Obama is clearly not a stealth progressive, but a centrist, pro-market, traditional politician with a quasi-color-blind view about race matters in America. Obama himself has accepted part of this characterization as when, in a meeting with centrist members of his party in April 2009, he described himself as a ‘‘new Democrat’’ and as a ‘‘pro-growth Democrat’’(Martin & Lee, 2009), both clear signifiers of his pro-business stance. To be clear, my characterization of President Obama is political and policy-based rather than moral or personal. I do not believe all of Obama’s policies are wrongheaded. For example, his passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay act; the cessation of so-called ‘‘enhanced interrogation techniques’’ (torture);21 his public statements about wanting to extend a hand to leaders of ‘‘rival nations’’ like Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and Nicaragua; the achievement of a limited reform of our health care system; his support of the ‘‘Employee Free Choice Act’’ which would facilitate workers’ efforts to get unionized (even though Obama has already hesitated and urged workers to find a ‘‘compromise’’ with the business community (Stein, 2009); his new emission and mileage standards (Allen & Javers, 2009); and his legislation to exert some control over the credit card industry (Reddy, 2009), are good for the nation. (However, Obama has further dialed back on some of these things in significant ways.) Like so many Americans, I also believe President Obama is a more capable, dignified, and shining representative of this country in the world platform than his predecessor. There is little doubt that Obama projects to the world community a much better image of this nation and its possibilities. Even before he was elected, international polls showed that up to three-fourths of people in the world believed ‘‘an Obama presidency would see improved U.S. relations with the rest of the world’’(Gharib, 2008).22 This early enthusiasm for Obama has remained high. A post-election poll, for instance, revealed that two-thirds of those surveyed in 17 nations, compared to 47% in 2008, believed America’s relations with the rest of the world will become better (Texeira, 2009). Nevertheless, it is important to have clarity about who Obama is, what his policy stands, preferences, and proclivities are, and what his likely political trajectory will be, as we can use this information to craft a better political strategy for the near future. The contour of such political strategy is what I address in the last section of this chapter.

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‘‘‘TUT, TUT, CHILD!’ SAID THE DUCHESS. ‘EVERYTHING’S GOT A MORAL, IF ONLY YOU CAN FIND IT’’’: LET SOCIAL JUSTICE NOT DIE AT THE ALTAR OF ‘‘PRAGMATISM’’ AND COLOR BLINDNESS During the election, my overall claim was that the Obama phenomenon was not a ‘‘miracle’’ or an event that denotes how far we have come in the arena of ‘‘race relations,’’ but the product of 40 years of racial transition from Jim Crow to the regime I have labeled the ‘‘new racism.’’ As such, instead of signifying the ‘‘end of racism,’’ Obama’s election as president may help bring to the fore a more powerful type of racial domination: a Latin America-like multiracial white supremacy (Rodrı´ guez, 2008). In Obamerica the space for talking about race matters may dwindle, as whites have gained the upper hand symbolically. Although little has changed in the fundamentals of the racial order, having a black man ‘‘in charge’’ gives the impression of monumental change and allows whites to tell those who research, write, talk, and organize against racial inequality that they must be crazy. Whites can now say, ‘‘How can racism be important in a country that just elected a black man as its president?’’ and add, ‘‘By the way, I voted for Obama, so I cannot be a racist.’’ (Racial ideologies are always works in progress; thus, the ‘‘I voted for Obama, soy’’ may join the list of semantic moves I listed in Bonilla-Silva, 2009.)23 I also argued that Obama’s politics and stand on racial matters epitomize the character of America’s racial regime, which, among other things, brought forth the post–civil rights minority politician. Although Obama is the most successful exemplar of this new kind of politician, the Democratic and Republican landscape is dotted with them, and I forecast many will emerge as central political figures in the near future. For example, before Obama, former Secretary of State General Colin Powell could have run for president in 1996. In that year an exit poll conducted the day of the election revealed that had Powell, rather than Bob Dole, been the candidate for the Republicans, he would have won the election (Plissner, 2007). President Obama has emphasized his interest in ‘‘bipartisanship,’’ on not being ‘‘ideological,’’ and on his ‘‘pragmatic’’ approach to politics as policy. But what does this mean and what does it imply? I have argued that Obama’s pragmatism and distaste for what he calls ‘‘ideology’’ betrays his center-right stand on most issues. This argument is not entirely original, as New York Times writer David Leonhardt dissected Obama’s policy views in a piece titled ‘‘Obamanomics,’’ where he described Obama as a ‘‘University

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of Chicago Democrat’’ and suggested that ‘‘Obama simply is more comfortable with the apparent successes of laissez-faire economics’’ (Leonhardt, 2008). More tellingly, Leonhardt wrote that ‘‘[i]nvoking pragmatism doesn’t help the average voter much; ideology, though it often gets a bad name, matters, because it offers insight into how a candidate might actually behave as president’’ (2008). Interestingly, like all Democratic presidents and presidential candidates since Lyndon B. Johnson, Obama depends on strong electoral support from minority communities. If at some point black and Latino supporters, who were crucial for Obama’s victory,24 realize he is not going to enact policies that will benefit them, they may walk out of his electoral coalition. But since there are no other electoral options at this juncture, what political options are there for people of color and progressives to make sure the change they were promised is delivered? ‘‘‘Are you content now?’ said the Caterpillar’’: To-Do List for ‘‘Change’’ to be Delivered Since Obama emerged as a political possibility, I raised concerns about his lack of connection with social movements and about what he was calling a ‘‘grassroots movement’’ – in truth, Obama engaged solely in mainstream work in the party system with a predictably short shelf life. Accordingly, the first thing in the ‘‘to-do list’’ is to work hard in organizing social movements – the plural is important. If Americans truly want Obama’s campaign slogan – ‘‘change we can believe in’’ – to become a reality, they must develop the vehicles and mobilize the people that will allow them to produce it. Unfortunately, progressives have wasted valuable emotions, money, and time in the cultish Obama phenomenon. The more we continue buying into mainstream politics, as we did in 2008 and seem bound to do in 2012, the less likely that we will be able to effect the social change the nation needs. On this, the words of Adolph Reed ring as true today as when he wrote them in 2007: It’s a mistake to focus so much on the election cycle; we didn’t vote ourselves into this mess, and we’re not going to vote ourselves out of it. Electoral politics is an arena for consolidating majorities that have been created on the plane of social movement organizing. It’s not an alternative or a shortcut to building those movements, and building them, takes time and concerted effort. (Reed, 2007)

Second, in the process of building these social movements, we must develop individual and collective practices to resist class, race, and gender domination. These resistance experiences are the political school for those who truly aspire

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to live in an Amerika without the ‘‘k,’’ in an America where democracy is substantive rather than formalistic.25 Far too many of the young (and the notso-young) Americans who participated in Obama’s campaign have not undergone the deep political experience of working with real people and for real causes in real social movements. Thus, I urge liberals, progressives, leftists, and people of consciousness to move away from mainstream Democratic Party politics and engage in social movement-type of work for health care reform, in anti-racist groups and campaigns, in pro-labor and feminist organizations, and in all sorts of anti-systemic political work. These experiences will immunize them against what passes as ‘‘politics’’ and ‘‘political participation’’ in this country and open their eyes and minds forever. Third, liberals and progressives must radicalize the spaces they inhabit no matter where and no matter what. They have become too passive and, for fear of creating controversy, avoid saying or doing much where they work or live. (This problem afflicted – or, perhaps, facilitated – the Obama campaign, as those who participated were not encouraged to study the issues at hand deeply.) The not entirely self-imposed silence of the left has reduced the space for contestation in the public square. Although it is true that the ‘‘public square’’ in America is tilted to the center-right and that the media is not free, as it is owned by corporations, it is also true that progressives have retreated further reducing their already limited corner in the square. Fourth, there is desperate need for critiques of President Obama from the left. We must not stop debate and dissent because the president of the United States is black, Latino, Asian, and/or a woman. Only by organizing movements to oppose and challenge many of the policies President Obama is enacting will we be able to change the trajectory and content of his policies. Unfortunately, far too many people in the American left have avoided any public engagement on Obama – whites, because they think that if they criticize him, they will be called ‘‘racist,’’ and many people of color, because even though Obama is not ‘‘all that,’’ they still think his victory has at least symbolic value. Any true progressive, regardless of their race or gender, should never cease having a deep engagement in political matters. And if through this engagement one concludes a minority politician or a woman of any racial background does not represent the best interest of the people, one must say so loud and clear regardless of the consequences (Do we remember the debate around the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings?). Not engaging in critique is not only a sign of cowardice and accommodation but is also self-defeating. By not criticizing President Obama’s policies and actions now, we are digging our own graves, as it will be even harder to do so in the future.

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Finally, we can apply the pressure the Obama Administration needs from us in creative ways. The progressive community has become somewhat ossified and not caught up with the times. We need new ways of doing politics, organizing, and working with people to help folks see what is truly going on in the world they live in. Some of the strategies of the past (marches, sit-ins, political rallies, etc.) may still be part of our tool kit, but progressives need to listen to folks in the younger generation who can help them reinvent their political praxis. Accordingly, Yes we can use humor, as Michael Moore, the Yes Men, and others have showed, as an effective political weapon; Yes we can be postmodern in style and, on occasion, do truly ‘‘wacky’’ things (would not it be great to do an all-white post-racial rally lampooning Obama’s race views?); and Yes we can dare talk once again about the revolution and the significance of Malcolm X for racial and social change in our America. It is time the American left recovers from the political depression it has been in since Reagan was elected president in 1980. It is time the left takes a strong dose of political Prozac and ends its vote-for-whomever-the-Democratsnominate-for-president political option it has exercised since 1980 – voting for the proverbial ‘‘lesser of two evils’’ always keeps evil in power. If we do these things, we can recover from this maddening moment where things seem upside down. But if we wait until the next election – an election Obama seems to have in his pocket – and limit our political engagement to electoral politics, history is likely to, as Marx wrote, repeat itself: ‘‘the first time as tragedy, the second as farce’’(Marx, 1982, p. 300). But people can always alter the course of history through their actions. People can indeed ‘‘make their own history’’ (Ibid.). A people’s hope should not be attached to a charismatic leader who delivers great speeches from a teleprompter. Historically, hope for the oppressed has come when they have become protagonists of their own history. Therefore, ‘‘We the people’’ should, as Professor Cornel West suggested, ‘‘put some serious pressure’’ (West, 2008) on President Obama to make sure ‘‘the happy summer days’’26 we dreamt about when he became president do not become a continuation of our long racial nightmare.

NOTES 1. Throughout this chapter I use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland references. I do this because it fits the case quite well and because as a child this was one of my favorite books. All sections have titles partly derived from passages from the book. 2. For books with interview data on this period that show this change, see Judith Caditz, White Liberals in Transition (New York: Spectrum Publications Inc., 1976)

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and Bob Blauner, Black Lives, White Lives (Los Angeles and Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1989). 3. Two books on this broad subject are Jennifer L. Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) and Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999). 4. Political scientists have been exploring this trend for a while and called it ‘‘deracialization.’’ See, for example, Persons, G. (Ed.) (2009). Dilemmas of Black politics: Issues of leadership and strategy. New York: HarperCollins. 5. On this matter, see Baker, D., & Weisbrot, M. (2001). Social security: The phony crisis. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; and Krugman, P. (2007). ‘‘Played for a Sucker.’’ The New York Times, November 16, Retrieved from http:// www.nytimescom/2007/11/16/opinion/16krugman.html?ex1352955600&ena87e0ffad 19b7b62&ei5090?nerrssuserland&emcrss. 6. Professors Vincent Hutchings and Tom Pettigrew delivered papers at the conference ‘‘Still Two Nations?’’ at Duke in March of 2009 on their survey work on Obama and the 2008 election. The highlights of their findings were the following: (1) Obama’s victory was the result of the ‘‘perfect storm’’ of factors – Obama’s lucky situation in Chicago politics which allowed him to become a senator in 2006, the extraordinarily high levels of black and Latino support for Obama, an economy in shambles, and an ineffective Republican candidate. (2) Despite the hoopla, white support for Obama (45%) in this election was in line with white support for Democratic candidates over the last 40 years. (3) Obama white supporters were not ‘‘beyond race.’’ In answers to questions that have been used over the last 30 years to assess ‘‘racial attitudes,’’ Obama white voters were just slightly less ‘‘prejudiced’’ than other whites. (4) A similar proportion of whites agreed with typical stereotypes of blacks, but Obama voters were more likely to hide this fact (the survey used by Professor Hutchings included an experiment where the mode of administration was varied randomly – face to face or self-administered – which allowed the examination of whether respondents report their beliefs consistently). 7. See AFP, ‘‘Michelle Obama Working Hard on New Image,’’ The Times, June 24, 2008, at http://www.thetimes.co.za/Entertainment/CelebZone/Article.aspx? id789896 8. Transcript retrieved from http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2009/03/president_ obamas_press_confere.html 9. Transcript retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/29/obama-100days-press-conf_n_193283.html 10. History was made based on a snippet of a sermon (or pasting snippets from several sermons) from a reverend, a church, a congregation, and a religious tradition white America knew almost nothing about. On March 21, CNN’s Anderson Cooper exculpated Reverend Wright from most of the charges. Cooper listened to the entire sermon and found that the ‘‘chickens coming home to roost’’ comment was a quote from Edward Peck, the former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and he did not find the ‘‘God damn America’’ statement in this sermon, which suggests someone did a job on Reverend Wright to hurt Obama’s presidential chances. See Anderson Cooper’s blog, ‘‘The full story behind Reverend Jeremiah Wright 9/11 sermon,’’ AC360, March 21, 2008, at http://AC360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/21/the-full-story-behindrev-jeremiah-wrights-911-sermon/

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11. The full text of his race speech in Philadelphia, titled ‘‘A More Perfect Union,’’ can be found at www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-readth_n_92077.html 12. A truly wonderful book outlining the role of race from the moment this country was born through today is Joe R. Feagin, Racist America (New York and London: Routledge, 2001). 13. Obama is cited in Newsweek, after the Wright controversy and the ‘‘race speech,’’ saying the following: Race is a central test of our belief that we’re our brother’s keeper, our sister’s keeper y There’s a sense that if we are to get beyond our racial divides, that it should be neat and pretty, whereas part of my argument was that it’s going to be hard and messy – and that’s where faith comes in.’’ Lisa Miller, July 11, 2008, ‘‘Finding His Faith,’’ Newsweek (accessed at http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/11/finding-his-faith.html on 7/13/2011). 14. A few weeks after this speech, Obama threw Reverend Wright ‘‘under the bus’’ (this expression became very popular in this campaign) and, later on, renounced his affiliation to the Trinity United Church of Christ. And a few weeks after these actions by Obama, a poll by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press indicated that most Americans believed he had handled the controversy well and 48% of whites agreed with this stand (although 45% disagreed). See http:// www.peoplepress.org/report/?pageid1277 15. Many of the arguments I stated early in the campaign were articulated by other commentators. See David Greenberg’s article in The Washington Post, ‘‘Why Obamania? Because He Runs as the Great White Hope,’’ January 13, 2008, at www.washington post.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/11/AR2008011101414.html 16. In his speech in Selma, Alabama, Obama spoke of the Moses generation (the Civil Rights generation) and thanked them for bringing them 90% on the road to equality (this pleased some in the audience, even though it was factually wrong). There he laid claim to the mantel of the Joshua generation, who is charged with bringing his people to the Promised Land. Although he talked of generations, he clearly did not mind the implications of talking in the singular about Joshua. The speech can be found at Lynn Sweet, ‘‘Obama’s Selma speech. Text as delivered,’’’ Chicago Sun Times, March 5, 2007, at http://www.blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007/ 03/obamas_selma_speech_text_as_de.html 17. In late July 2009, Professor Gates, a world-renowned writer, scholar, and public figure was racially profiled in his own house. For details on this story, see Melissa Trujillo, ‘‘Henry Louis Gates Arrested, Police Accused of Racial Profiling,’’ July 20, 2009, at www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/20/henry-louis-gates-jr-arre_n_241407.html 18. Michelle Obama has made some statements as First Lady that may be used against people of color. 19. In an earlier version of this chapter, I stated that the test of Holder’s independence and progressiveness would be his decision regarding the reports that the CIA lied to Congress about plans for various covert operations from 2001 to 2008, given that President Obama had all but said he does not want to prosecute anyone and prefers to ‘‘move forward.’’ Now we have a tentative answer: Although in June of 2010, Holder announced that the Department of Justice had nearly concluded its investigation into the CIA’s destruction of interrogation tapes, its

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conclusions have still not been presented (as of January 2011), conveniently allowing the statute of limitations on the tapes’ destruction to expire in November 2010. See Ryan J. Reilly, ‘‘DoJ Mum as Deadline Passes to Prosecute CIA Torture Tapes Destruction,’’ TPMMuckraker, November 8, 2010 (retrieved from http:// www.tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/doj_mum_as_statute_of_limi tations_passes_on_cia_torture_tapes_destruction.php). 20. Bill Daley, relative of Chicago’s mayoral dynasty and Midwest chairman of JP Morgan, has publicly stated that the Democrats overreached on health care reform and their attempt to create a consumer protection agency (Huffington Post). Obama’s appointment of someone who has publicly disparaged his policies as his public representative, in order to improve his relationship with the financial community, is, unfortunately, in step with his other political decisions. 21. Unfortunately, Obama is already backtracking on his promise of releasing pictures of prisoners who were tortured. See Jennifer Loven, ‘‘Obama seeks to block release of abuse photos,’’ AP White House Correspondent, at news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ 20090513/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_pentagon_abuse_photos. He also reversed himself on the ‘‘military tribunals’’ and has reinstated this Bush-era atrocity. See Lara Jakes, ‘‘Obama to revive military tribunals for GITMO detainees, with more rights,’’ The Huffington Post, at www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/14/obama-to-revive-military_n_203783.html. Just recently, a Wikileaks document revealed that the Obama administration successfully pressured Spain in 2009 to drop its indictments of top Bush officials for torture (David Corn, 12/1/10, ‘‘Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe,’’ Mother Jones, available at http://mother jones.com/politics/2010/12/wikileaks-cable-obama-quashed-torture-investigation). 22. But see also why a crucial segment of the world, the Muslim world, is not likely to be too impressed with Obama in Ala Al Aswany’s piece, ‘‘Why the Muslim World Can’t Hear Obama,’’ The New York Times, February 7, 2009, at www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08aswany.html. 23. Already, experimental psychologists have found an ‘‘Obama effect’’ where, after endorsing Obama, whites are more likely to choose to hire a white person in a fictional job selection exercise (Daniel Effron, Jessica Cameron, and Benoit Monin, ‘‘Endorsing Obama Licenses Favoring Whites,’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (45), 590–593). 24. Ninety-four percent of black voters and 67% of Latinos supported Obama. The latter vote was more crucial as almost all past Democratic candidates in the last elections received upwards of 88% support (e.g., John Kerry received 90% of the black vote in 2004). Furthermore, the Latino vote was decisive in the allimportant battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Nevada. For superb data on the elections, see the report by conservative analyst Joseph Gimpel, ‘‘Latino Voting in the 2008 Election: Part of a Broader Electoral Movement’’ for the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies which can be located at www.cis.org/latinovoting (sometimes the data talks more loudly than the ideology of those who produce it). 25. Political scientists have wasted a lot of time and paper in discussing the contours of democracy, as they mostly focus on the formal (voting, replacing leaders, free speech, etc.) rather than the substantive components of democracy. For an exception, see Joshua Cohen, ‘‘Procedure and Substance in Deliberative

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Democracy,’’ in Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, edited by James Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 407–438. 26. This is the last phrase of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The entire book is online at www.sabian.org/alice.htm.

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BARACK OBAMA AND CIVIL RELIGION Philip S. Gorski ABSTRACT In 1967, Robert N. Bellah famously argued that there existed an ‘‘American Civil Religion,’’ which was distinct from churchly religion and captured the ‘‘transcendental’’ dimension of the American project. In this chapter, I revisit the civil religion concept and reconstruct it along more Weberian lines. Specifically, I argue that the civil religion tradition is one of three competing traditions for thinking about the proper relationship between religion and politics in America; the other two are religious nationalism and liberal secularism. Whereas liberal secularism envisions a complete separation of the religious and political value spheres, and religious nationalism longs for their (re)unification, civil religion aims for a mediating position of partial separation and productive tension. Following Bellah, I argue that the two central strands of the civil religion tradition have been covenant theology and civic republicanism. The body of the chapter sketches out the development of the tradition across a series of national foundings and refoundings, focusing on the writings of leading civil theologians from John Winthrop and John Adams through Abraham Lincoln and John Dewey to Martin King and Barack Obama. The conclusion advances a normative argument for American civil religion – and against liberal secularism and religious nationalism. I contend that liberalism is highly inclusive but insufficiently solidaristic; that religious Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 179–214 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022013

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nationalism is highly solidaristic but insufficiently inclusive; and that only civil religion strikes a proper balance between individual autonomy and the common good.

On March 13, 2008, ABC News broadcast brief excerpts from two sermons delivered by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In the first, Wright suggested that the 9/11 attacks were ‘‘America’s chickens coming home to roost.’’ In the second, Wright condemned the war on drugs as a war on the urban underclass. ‘‘God damn America,’’ he thundered, ‘‘for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.’’ Under most circumstances, Wright’s words would have attracted little attention beyond the four walls of his home church. There is nothing more American, it turns out, than drawing a connection between national calamities and national sins (Young, 2006). The ‘‘jeremiad’’ form, as it is known, has a very long history in the United States (Bercovitch, 1978; Howard-Pitney & Howard-Pitney, 2005; Murphy, 2009; Stout, 1986). Indeed, it has been a reliable staple of American homiletics since the Puritan founding – and remains so even today, not only within the black church but also among white evangelicals. But as we all know, one of Wright’s parishioners had become a candidate for the Presidency – a black candidate for the Presidency, it must be added – and so these two snippets quickly made the leap from DVD to TV, where they ran on endless loop on cable news. Commentators denounced them as ‘‘anti-American’’ and even ‘‘anti-Semitic,’’ evidently unaware or unconcerned about just how ironic and hypocritical these charges really were. (After all, white Jeremiahs like Pat Robertson speak this way all the time.) At first, Wright’s defenders – Obama among them – countered rightly enough that Wright’s remarks were being ‘‘taken out of context’’ and ‘‘blown out of proportion.’’ They had to be seen against the background of ‘‘the black church tradition’’ or balanced against Wright’s lifelong social justice work. But veracity and proportion often matter little in American political discourse these days, and the furor refused to subside. On the evening of March 18, with his polling numbers in free fall and his Presidential prospects suddenly in serious peril, Obama sought to defuse and reframe the debate in his now famous speech on race. The speech was highly successful by most measures. It was widely praised in the media, viewed millions of times on YouTube, and quickly lifted Obama’s polling numbers back to their preWright levels. Some commentators touted it as the greatest speech on race since the days of Martin King.

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What most commentators failed to notice about the ‘‘race speech,’’ however, is that it was not just about race. Consider the setting: not a sacred site of the Civil Rights Movement, such as the Lincoln Memorial in Washington or King’s church in Atlanta, but the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, directly across the street from Independence Hall. Nor did the preamble to Obama’s speech allude to famous perorations on race and rights such as Lincoln’s ‘‘Second Inaugural’’ or King’s ‘‘I have a Dream’’ oration; rather, it invoked Preamble of the U.S. Constitution: ‘‘We the People, in order to form a more perfect union.’’ Why? The answer to this question, and the central argument of this chapter, is that Obama’s ‘‘race speech’’ is best situated in a tradition of prophetic critique and civic discourse that Robert N. Bellah famously dubbed the ‘‘American Civil Religion’’ (ACR), and, moreover, that most of Obama’s major speeches since 2004 can in fact be seen as an effort to revive and refigure this tradition. This tradition includes the Civil Rights Movement, but begins much earlier. Following Bellah (1975, 2005), I argue that the ACR is woven around two central discursive strands: covenant theology and civic republicanism. Breaking with Bellah, however, I also argue that there are two other competing traditions of American religio-political culture, which I will characterize as religious nationalism and liberal secularism. The chapter offers a high altitude overview of the historical development of the ACR, which focuses on several crucial figures and critical junctures, including John Winthrop in the Puritan era; John Adams in the Revolutionary era; Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass in the Civil War era; John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr in the Depression era; and Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in the 1960s. In doing so, my aim is not to provide a comprehensive interpretation of their religio-political visions, but rather to trace key continuities and highlight certain critical innovations in America’s civil religious discourse. Against this background, Obama’s own civil religious rhetoric will hopefully become more intelligible and its creative moments more apparent. In the concluding section of the chapter, I briefly reflect on the present potentialities of the ACR as an indigenous, folk form of critical, social theory.

WHAT IS CIVIL RELIGION? Outside of American sociology, the term ‘‘civil religion’’ is most often associated with the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Book IV, Chapter 8 of The Social Contract, Rousseau famously contended that ‘‘no State has

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ever been founded without Religion serving as its base,’’ but that ‘‘Christian law is at bottom more harmful than useful to a strong constitution,’’ because of its otherworldly orientation and its priestly elite (Rousseau & Gourevitch, 1997, p. 146). Accordingly, he argued in favor of a ‘‘a purely civil profession of faith’’ whose positive ‘‘dogmas y ought to be simple’’ and conducive to good citizenship, to wit: ‘‘The existence of the powerful, intelligent, beneficent, prescient, and provident Divinity, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social Contract and the Laws.’’ ‘‘As for the negative dogmas,’’ he continued, ‘‘I restrict them to a single one; namely intolerance.’’ (Rousseau & Gourevitch, 1997, p. 147). Anyone who refuses a public profession of the civil religion or ‘‘dares to say, no Salvation outside the Church,’’ is to be banished from the state. Robert Bellah is responsible for importing the civil religion concept into American social science, and therefore, it is his conceptualization that is usually more familiar to most American sociologists. In importing Rousseau’s concept, he also modified it. In his enormously influential 1967 Daedalus article (republished in 2005), Bellah (2005) defined the ACR as ‘‘a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals’’ that ‘‘exists alongside of, and rather clearly differentiated from, the churches’’ in the United States. In other words, he conceptualized it not as a replacement for or competitor with churchly Christianity, but as an altogether separate but complementary tradition, albeit one firmly rooted in theistic belief. Later, in his less known, book-length analysis of ACR, The Broken Covenant, Bellah (1992, p. 3) proffered a more general definition of civil religion as ‘‘that religious dimension, found I think in the life of every people, through which it interprets its historical experience in the light of transcendent reality.’’ Note that in speaking of a ‘‘religious dimension’’ and of a ‘‘transcendent reality,’’ he subtly reformulated his original definition along more sociological and phenomenological lines, so as to accommodate the possibility – and reality – of nontheistic forms or variants of civil religion. Thus, while Bellah clearly retained Rousseau’s conviction that a polity is well integrated to the degree that it possesses a religious foundation, he implied that this religion might be of a more Durkheimian and less dogmatic sort, one that involved a shared language of civic purpose, rather than enforced affirmation of a civic catechism, as Rousseau had demanded. Bellah’s vision, then, is much more capacious than Rousseau’s. In principle, at least, it is open to all speakers of America’s inherited language of civic purpose, be they orthodox evangelicals who truly believe in ‘‘American exceptionalism’’ (Reed, 1996) or radical anti-foundationalists who maintain an ironic distance from strong truth claims of this sort but accept the necessity

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for ‘‘shared stories’’ as a framework for civil discourse (Rorty, 1998). In practice, of course, some refuse to speak this language at all, whereas others seek to monopolize it for themselves. For instance, some contemporary liberals prefer a language of ‘‘individual rights’’ or ‘‘material interests’’ and scoff at the very notions of shared values or civic purposes. Conversely, some contemporary conservatives claim to be in possession of revealed truths, political as well as religious, which one must affirm, but not discuss. Unfortunately, Bellah’s neo-Durkheimian theory of civil religion could not easily accommodate the existence of multiple and competing religiopolitical traditions (R. M. Smith, 1997), because it implicitly conceptualized the ACR as a founding myth, indeed, as the founding myth. In later writings such as Habits of the Heart, Bellah (1985) corrected this error, acknowledging that American public culture contained other discourses as well, such as ‘‘expressivism’’ and ‘‘utilitarianism. But he never incorporated this insight back into his theory of civil religion and ultimately disavowed the concept in favor of Walter Lippman’s notion of ‘‘public philosophy’’ shortly thereafter (Bellah, 1986). The purpose of this chapter, and the forthcoming book it summarizes, is to reformulate and rehabilitate the notion of civil religion.

CIVIL RELIGION: A NEO-WEBERIAN REFORMULATION Weber’s theory of ‘‘value spheres’’ provides a promising starting point for such a reformulation, one more attuned to the existence of multiple and conflicting visions of religio-politics than Bellah’s original, neo-Durkheimian formulation. In his famous essay on ‘‘Religious rejections of the world’’, Weber (1958) argues that the appearance of the ‘‘world religions’’ during the ‘‘Axial Age’’ (Eisenstadt, 1986; Jaspers, 1953) – the millennium stretching from the Buddha to the Prophet – cleft a fateful fracture between a higher, supramundane reality and lower ‘‘this worldly’’ one, setting in motion a slow but inexorable process of institutional and cultural differentiation. He further argued that this process took a particularly extreme form in the Christian West, eventually giving rise to no less than seven distinct ‘‘value spheres’’ or ‘‘life orders’’ (religious, familial, political, economic, aesthetic, scientific, and erotic), each organized around a particular set of ‘‘ultimate values’’ and dominated by its own elite or ‘‘carrier group.’’ As the various spheres became more differentiated, the ‘‘logical tensions’’ between the

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‘‘ultimate values’’ at their cores became more and more pronounced and the conflicts between the ‘‘carrier groups’’ ever more severe. Note that Weber uses the word ‘‘tensions’’ (Ger.: Spannungen) and not ‘‘repulsions.’’ For while value commitments tend to push the value spheres apart, practical considerations tend to pull them back together. Thus, in principal, state rulers may be at odds with clerical elites – about the use of organized violence to defend state territory, for instance. In practice, however, the two may also need each other. For example, political elites may be in need of religious legitimation, and religious elites may need help in suppressing dissenters or heretics. The result is often ‘‘practical accommodations’’ of one sort or another, such as the ‘‘organic social ethic’’ of Medieval Christendom, which stipulated a cosmically inscribed division of labor between ‘‘those who pray,’’ ‘‘those who fight,’’ and ‘‘those who work.’’ Or, less grandly, and more contemporaneously, the political alliance between business-oriented and Christian conservative fractions of the present-day GOP. Hence, for Weber, the relation between any two value spheres is historically and culturally variable and influenced by material and ideological factors. What are the various forms which the relationship between the religious and the political value spheres can take? Formalizing somewhat, we may distinguish a vertical axis and a horizontal axis. Along the vertical axis, we may further distinguish three main permutations: dominance of religion, dominance of the political, and parity of the religious and political. We may likewise distinguish three possible relationships along the horizontal axis: separation, fusion, or overlap. Combining these two sets of distinctions yields a three-by-three table that generates nine ideal-typical forms of religio-politics (see Table 1). For present purposes, the middle row comprising ‘‘liberal secularism,’’ ‘‘civil religion,’’ and ‘‘religious nationalism’’ is of greatest interest. There Table 1.

Nine Types of Religio-Politics.

Separation

Overlap

Politics/ Radical republicanism religion (French laicite) Parity

Liberal secularism (early Rawls)

Confessional state (early Modern Europe) Civil religion (e.g., Obama)

Fusion Political religion (20thcentury totalitarianisms)

Religious nationalism (e.g., Dominion Theology) Religion/ Radical sectarianism Two swords (Medieval Clerocracy (Tibet) politics (Mormon fundamentalists) Papacy)

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have been, and still are, some genuine theocrats in the United States; one thinks, for example, of present-day ‘‘dominionists’’ and ‘‘Kingdom theologists’’ (Diamond, 1995; Goldberg, 2006) But they have been, and still are, few and far in between, even if their behind-the-scenes influence is probably greater than most people realize. Similarly, there are some secularists who wish religion occupied a smaller space in public and private life, but they are generally committed to the preservation of religious freedom, even if they regard religion itself as mistaken. In short, most Americans, believers and nonbelievers alike do not wish to see the church subjugated to the state, or vice versa; rather, they prefer parity. What is at issue, then, is the exact form this parity should take. Liberal secularists prefer complete ‘‘separation of church and state.’’ By this, they typically mean not only an institutional ‘‘wall of separation’’ but also a discursive and symbolic one. In other words, they want religious arguments and language banished from the public square (Audi & Wolterstorff, 1997; Rawls, 2005). They insist that the United States was built on a wholly secular foundation of Enlightenment rationalism (Jacoby, 2004; Kramnick & Moore, 2005). Religious nationalists, by contrast, would prefer an organic fusion of the religious and the political communities, in which the American government would not simply ‘‘accommodate’’ religious belief, but actively encourage it, at least in its Christian and Jewish forms, and American churches would likewise preach an uncritical ‘‘patriotism’’ (Barton, 1992; Gingrich & DeSantis, 2010; D. J. Kennedy & Newcombe, 2005; Skousen, 2009). In other words, contemporary religious nationalists view the United States as a ‘‘Christian nation’’ or, somewhat more expansively, as a ‘‘Judeo-Christian nation,’’ founded on ‘‘Christian principles,’’ from which, alas, it has diverged and now must return, if it is to survive and prosper. From the standpoint of the civil religious tradition, these stances seem internally inconsistent and politically impracticable. After all, what kind of liberal advocates restraints on speech of the sort originally proposed by Rawls? Would they not more likely to lead to hypocrisy than neutrality (Eberle, 2002)? Little wonder that the boldest statements of radical secularists have often been followed by revisions and retractions (Rawls, 1997; Rorty, 1999). Likewise, what kind of Christian worships at the altar of national greatness and military power, while refusing Christian charity to his fellow citizens (Balmer, 2007; Hauerwas, 1985)? And what would be the status of non-Christians in a Christian nation? Opposition to an illiberal and uncivil liberalism and a hubristic and exclusivistic nationalism are among the ‘‘negative dogmas’’ of the present-day civil religion. It is to the historical development of its ‘‘positive dogmas’’ that I now turn.

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JOHN WINTHROP’S ‘‘CITY ON A HILL’’ With the possible exception of Christ’s own ‘‘Sermon on the Mount,’’ no other homily has had a longer and greater influence upon America life and letters than John Winthrop’s sermon on ‘‘Christian Charity’’ (Bercovitch, 1997; Bercovitch, 2000). Preached to a group of fellow Puritans shortly before they set sail for the New World aboard the Arbella, its most famous passage will be familiar to many readers: Thus stands the cause between God and us, we are entered into a covenant with him for this work y Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath he ratified this covenant y [and] will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it, but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and dissembling with our God, shall fail to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us [and ] be revenged of such a perjured people and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant. (Hall, 2004, p. 169)

What were the terms of this covenant? Nothing less than charity itself, as Winthrop immediately went on to explain: [W]e must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities, we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality, we must delight in each other, make each other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body y . (Hall, 2004, p. 169)

The terms of this covenant were not the limited ones of a legal contract as we would understand it today. The liabilities were unlimited, self-interest subordinated to the common good at all points (Baritz, 1964). But the rewards were unlimited as well, and the success of the project of the greatest possible moment. For if we succeed, concluded Winthrop, then ‘‘we shall be as a city upon a hill [and] the eyes of all people are upon us’’ (Hall, 2004, p. 169). This initial covenant was just the first of many. Like their spiritual forebears, the Ancient Israelites, the New England Puritans reread, revised, and renewed their founding covenant at regular intervals. To these serial covenants, however, the Puritans affixed numerous subsidiary covenants as well. There were, first of all, the ‘‘church covenants’’ that became the hallmark of the Congregationalist way (Cotton, 1645; Hall, 2004; Mather, Hugh, Davenport, & Mather, 1643; Miller 1983, pp. 53–64; Morgan, 1965; Weir, 2004). The civil polity also had need of a founding covenant (Morgan,

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1958, pp. 85–86; Weir, 2004), for in the words of Winthrop, ‘‘No common weale can be founded but by free consent’’ (Winthrop, Winthrop, Winthrop, Winthrop, Winthrop, & Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929, Vol. 3, p. 423). Over time, the covenant idea was symbolically extended first to New England and then to the American colonies more generally. In this vision, America was not so much a New England but a New Israel (Cherry, 1998; Tuveson, 1968). Crucially, many Puritans embraced a version of covenant theology in which God, Himself, was also bound by the Law, foreshadowing a crucial conceptual and institutional innovation of the American Revolution, namely, the vision of a popular government limited by a written Constitution (Miller, 1983).

A REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION During the first half of the twentieth century, the dominant view among American historians and political scientists from Charles Beard (1913, 1915) through Arthur Schlesinger (1949) to Louis Hartz (1955), was that the United States was founded on ‘‘Lockean liberalism.’’ Beginning in the late 1960s, a series of revisionist works by Bernard Bailyn (1992), Gordon Wood (1969), and J.G.A. Pocock (1975) upended the received wisdom by persuasively demonstrating that another political tradition had really been paramount: ‘‘civic republicanism.’’ And this work, in turn, decisively shaped Bellah’s civil religion thesis. What is ‘‘civic republicanism’’? The roots of the republican tradition are to be found in the political thought of the Ancient World, from Plato and Aristotle to Cicero and Polybius. With the rediscovery of Aristotle in the midtwelfth century and of other ancient classics during the Italian Renaissance, civic republicanism became tightly woven into Western theology and political philosophy. It exercised a particularly profound influence on Puritan radicals and English revolutionaries, such as John Milton (Armitage, Himy, & Skinner, 1995; Milton & Dzelzainis, 1991) and James Harrington (1992), was subsequently kept alive in the works of English radicals from Algernon Sydney to the Rockingham Whigs, from whence it migrated to the New World to one day shape the American Revolution (Colbourn, 1965). How does civic republicanism differ from modern liberalism? In terms of basic vocabulary, the answer is very little. Terms such as ‘‘liberty’’ and ‘‘law,’’ ‘‘virtue’’ and ‘‘corruption,’’ ‘‘balance’’ and ‘‘faction’’ figure centrally in both – but with very, very different connotations. In modern liberalism, for example, the root meaning of ‘‘liberty’’ is the absence of physical restraint

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and the ability to do as one pleases (Skinner, 1998). In civic republicanism, by contrast, liberty denotes the absence of economic dependence and the ability to govern one’s passions according to reason. Likewise with ‘‘law.’’ For liberals, law is positive; it is an arbitrary construction of a human community. In the republican tradition, on the contrary, law is natural; it is premised on the goal of human flourishing and the good society that promotes it. Or consider the conceptual pair, ‘‘virtue and corruption’’. In the liberal lexicon, virtue concerns private morality and especially sexual propriety. As such, it is irrelevant to politics. On the republican reading, on the contrary, virtue denotes public mindedness and civic devotion. It is the very foundation of a healthy polity. Contrast this with corruption. In the liberal vocabulary, it means self-dealing, usually for monetary gain. In republican parlance, it connotes a pervasive subjugation of the public good to private interests. Consider, finally, our fourth conceptual couple: ‘‘balance’’ and ‘‘faction.’’ Since Montesquieu, liberals speak of institutional ‘‘checks and balances,’’ as between the three branches of government created by the U.S. Constitution. For republicans, such institutional checks are only one means to maintaining a social balance between different groups. ‘‘The balance of power in a society,’’ argued John Adams, echoing James Harrington ‘‘accompanies the balance of power in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal libery and public virtue, is to make the division of the land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates’’ (letter to James Sullivan in 1776). In liberalese, finally, faction connotes an ideological grouping within a political party. In the republican tradition, by contrast, it refers to a social group that has hijacked the polity for its own benefit. In closing, let us note one final contrast: liberals tend to see historical time in linear terms, as a story of progressive liberation and temporary reversals. Republicans, on the contrary, tend to view time in cyclical terms, as either a story of backsliding and revival (Machiavelli) or, more darkly, of inevitable corruption and decline (Polybius) (Pocock, 1975).

CHRISTIANITY AND REPUBLICANISM Some of the best known Continental republicans, most notably Machiavelli and Rousseau, were openly hostile toward Christianity, as are some of their contemporary champions. But such animosities were less common among the American founders and within the Anglo-American branch of the

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republican tradition as a whole. This is not to say that all of the founders were orthodox Christians; nor is it to deny that some of them were. Rather, it is to assert that most all of the Founders disagreed with Machiavelli and Rousseau, insofar as they viewed Christian morality and civic republicanism as deeply complementary, rather than fundamentally opposed. Even that poster boy of modern secularism, Thomas Jefferson, would have agreed on this point. In recent years, a number of scholars have persuasively argued that the dominant tradition of the revolutionary tradition was not civic republicanism but ‘‘Christian republicanism’’ (D’Elia, 1974; Hatch, 1977; Noll, 2002; Winship, 2006; Winship, 2010). Consider the example of Benjamin Rush. After completing his studies at the College of New Jersey (Princeton), where his evangelical faith was confirmed, he spent several years in Edinburgh, where he encountered Hume and other luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment, and several more in London, where he frequented the Club of Honest Whigs, a circle of republican intellectuals centered around Catherine Macaulay. It was in London that he underwent his second conversion – to republicanism. After returning to Philadelphia, Rush soon became involved in agitation against the Stamp Act and later signed the Declaration of Independence. Rush saw no contradiction between Christianity and republicanism. ‘‘Republican forms of government,’’ he argued, ‘‘are the best repositories of the Gospel’’ (Rush & Butterfield, 1951, Vol I, p. 611), because true religion requires liberty, and religious and civil liberty go together. Conversely, he argued that ‘‘A Christian cannot fail of being a republican’’ because ‘‘the Gospel inculcates those degrees of humility, self-denial, and brotherly kindness, which are directly opposed to the pride of monarchy and the pageantry of a court’’ (Rush, 1786, p. 16). So close was the connection between religion and virtue for Rush that he ‘‘had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mahomed inculcated upon our youth, than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles’’ (Rush, 1786, p. 15). By ‘‘virtue’’ he not only understood the public virtues praised by the ancients but also the private ones promoted by the Puritans: temperance, thrift, diligence, and filial piety. Still, he remained firmly committed to the American tradition of separating civil and religious authority. ‘‘Human governments may receive support from Christianity,’’ he wrote to Thomas Jefferson, ‘‘but it must be only from the love of justice and peace which it is calculated to produce in the minds of men’’ (Rush & Butterfield, 1951, Vol. II, pp. 824–825). The civil theology of the Revolutionary Era also came in less ecumenical forms, some of which bordered closely on religious nationalism. Consider the example of Timothy Dwight, a Congregationalist minister and

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Federalist politician from Connecticut who served in the state legislature and then as President of Yale College. In many ways, his views were remarkably similar to Rush’s. He believed that the endurance of a republic depended above all on public virtue. ‘‘The formation and establishment of knowledge and virtue in the citizens of a Community,’’ he argued, ‘‘will more easily and more effectually establish order, and secure liberty, than all the checks, balances and penalties, which have been devised by man’’ (Dwight 1795, p. 33). Without religion and virtue, he argued, liberty and republican government could not long survive: ‘‘Religion and liberty are the meat and the drink of the body politic. Withdraw one of them, and it languishes, consumes, and dies’’ (Dwight, 1798, p. 18). Accordingly, one of the greatest dangers to republican liberty is ‘‘atheism,’’ to which he reckoned deism, and indeed any creed that denied a personal god. For Dwight, atheists were the fifth column of the Antichrist, the shock troops of the end times. Good Catholics, it goes without saying, could not become good republicans.

THE CIVIC CULT The American Revolution not only transformed the civil theology, but it also transformed the civic cult. In its wake, new civic saints were created, new civic scriptures were appended, and new civic rituals instituted. The first new saint to be created was none other than George Washington. In his personal beliefs, so nearly as we can tell, Washington was more Deist than Trinitarian and more Stoic than Evangelical (Gaustad, 1987). And yet, in his public pronouncements, Washington ‘‘continued to link piety and patriotism, God and country, and divine benevolence with the well-being of the nation’’ (G. S. Smith, 2006, p. 41). In his First Inaugural Address, for instance, Washington (1997, p. 733) skillfully blended the notes of republican virtue and American chosenness into the now familiar chords of the civil theology: ‘‘the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained y [T]he preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are y entrusted to the hands of the American people.’’ And in his famous ‘‘Farewell Address,’’ he insisted that ‘‘of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports,’’ adding that ‘‘reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality in exclusion of religious principle’’ (Washington, 1997, p. 971).

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Already during his life, and even more following his death, Washington became the object of cultic devotion (Albanese, 1976; Kaminski & McCaughan, 1989; Pierard and D. Linder, 1988; Schwartz, 1987). ‘‘Even before he died, people treasured locks of his hair, named their babies for him, and circulated stories about his miraculous feats’’ (G. S. Smith, 2006, p. 41). After his death, the hagiography was loosed of all bonds. But not of all tropes. Two analogies were particularly common. The first was Moses. Like the Dutch and English before them (Gorski, 2000; Gorski, 2006), the Revolutionaries envisioned their own struggle through the lens of the Exodus narrative (Walzer, 1985), as a quest to escape Pharaonic domination and found a ‘‘New Israel’’ (Cherry, 1971) in ‘‘an howling Wildernesse.’’ Washington, their deliverer and lawgiver, was naturally cast in the role of Moses, an analogy that survived at least until the Civil War. The second favored analogy was Cincinnatus (519 BC–438 BC), the patrician farmer who twice served as Roman dictator, and twice resigned once his task was done, returning to his pastoral vocation (Thornton & Hanson, 1999; Wills, 1984). Later generations would praise his humility and civic mindedness. For the Revolutionary generation, steeped as they were in Latin literature and Roman history (Richard, 1994; Sellers, 1994), the biographical and characterological analogies to Washington were self-evident. The successes of the Revolution also brought additions to the canon. To the Puritan ‘‘Old Testament’’ was added a republican ‘‘New Testament.’’ This ‘‘new covenant’’ consisted of two ‘‘books’’: the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. The formation of the American canon, like that of its Christian predecessor, was driven by theological controversy and partisan rancor that lasted for the better part of two generations. Today, the two texts are regarded as equal and complementary, at least in political discourse, and are best remembered for their elegant preambles. In the early Republic, by contrast, these were not the best-known passages and their relationship was a matter of contention (Albanese, 1976; Detweiler, 1962; Maier, 1997). When the Declaration was cited, for example, the focus was typically on the concluding passage renouncing ‘‘all political connection’’ with Great Britain and declaring the colonies to be ‘‘free and independent states.’’ Federalists like John Adams embraced the Constitution for which they had fought so hard and held the Declaration at arm’s length because of their pro-British and anti-French foreign policies. Democratic-Republicans such as Thomas Jefferson remained suspicious of the federal government – and of the British – while embracing the French cause and gradually embraced the Declaration’s principles of natural equality, popular sovereignty, and

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resistance rights as a counterweight to the social, political, and partisan pretensions of the Federalists. With the demise of the Federalists, following the controversy over the Alien and Sedition Acts and the subsequent election of Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic emphasis on the Declaration and its governing relationship to the Constitution was accepted by Henry Clay’s Whigs (Howe, 1979) and gradually became inscribed in the political mainstream. The Constitution, by contrast, became increasingly controversial as the ideological battle over slavery became imbricated with the constitutional question of states’ rights. By mid-century, the Declaration was on public display in the Patent Office in Washington; the Constitution, by contrast, would not be sacralized in this way until the early twentieth century. Given the Federalists’ initial embrace of Independence Day, one might imagine that they would have been strong advocates of civil religion, more generally. Likewise, one might have imagined that the DemocraticRepublicans’ resistance to the one would have extended to the other. In reality, the leading figures of both parties confounded these expectations. By the end of his life, Jefferson had come to see the Declaration of Independence, which he had authored, not only as his greatest achievement but also as ‘‘the fundamental act of union of these States,’’ indeed, as a fuller expression of American principles than the U.S. Constitution itself, in which he, it must be added, as ambassador to France, had had no hand (Jefferson, Lipscomb, & Bergh 1904, Vol. XV, p. 464). More than that, the staid deist had come to advocate a vaguely ‘‘Catholic’’ version of the civil religion in which ‘‘Small things may, perhaps, like the relics of saints, help to nourish our devotion to this holy bond of Union, and keep it longer alive and warm in the affections’’ (Jefferson et al., 1904, Vol. XVI, pp. 122–123). It was Jefferson’s lifelong friend and enemy, John Adams, the orthodox Calvinist and arch-Federalist, who evinced the greater misgivings about the dangers of American idolatry. He ‘‘compared the idolization of Washington and other revolutionaries to the canonization of saints and other ‘corrupt’ practices of a superstitious hierarchical past, and told young Americans that his generation was not better than theirs’’ (Maier, 1997, p. 180). Here, we first glimpse a pattern that will repeat itself again and again from Adams through Lincoln to Niebuhr and on to King: a wizened, Augustinian voice warning against the fateful temptation to national self-worship that is inscribed at the very heart of the ACR (Deneen, 2005; Gregory, 2008), a temptation to which many Americans, like Ancient Israelites flocking to Egyptian fleshpots, would soon enough succumb in the heated carnage of the Civil War (Stout, 2006).

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THE CIVIL WAR: THE CIVIL RELIGION REVISED On July 4, 1826, the jubilee year of the Declaration they had labored over together, Adams and Jefferson both passed from this life, finally and fully reunited only in death. Many glimpsed the hand of providence behind these events. Be that as it may, the ensuing moment of national unity was shortlived, a brief reprieve in the ‘‘sectional conflict’’ that first flared in the heated debate that led to the Missouri Compromise (1820). The decades of the midnineteenth century, especially the years of the Civil War itself, amounted to a third founding, a ‘‘time of trial’’ (Bellah) that would fundamentally alter the ACR. We can track these changes across the evolving views of three men – John C. Calhoun, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass – two of whom would drift further and further apart, and two of whom would move closer and closer together.1 John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) was one of the most influential political and intellectual figures in Antebellum America. In the mid-twentieth century, intellectual historians offered wildly varying interpretations of him ranging from the philosophe of the ‘‘Reactionary Enlightenment’’ (Hartz, 1955) to the ‘‘Marx of the master class’’ (Hofstadter, 1948) to a half-hearted follower of Burke (Kirk, 1953). Although there is some truth to each of these claims – Lockean, proto-Marxian and Burkean themes do figure prominently in his theorizing – recent interpretations have rightly argued that Calhoun was first and foremost a student of classical republicanism (Ford, 1988a; Ford, 1988b; Maier, 1981; Vajda, 2001). A disciple of Madison, Calhoun gradually became disillusioned with his mentor’s view, most fully spelled out in Federalist no. 10, that the size and diversity of the American republic would give rise to so many opposing and cross-cutting ‘‘factions’’ as to guard against any possible ‘‘tyranny of the majority.’’ The new party system and intensifying sectional conflicts showed the limitations of Madisonianism, he thought. An ardent nationalist in his early years, Calhoun evolved into perhaps the most able defender of slavery and states’ rights during the 1830s and 1840s. His ‘‘Disquisition on Government’’ and ‘‘Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States,’’ both published shortly after his death, sought to defend the slave society of the Old South in explicitly republican and Constitutional terms. He began by noting that the classical republics of Greece and Rome were also slave societies and argued that only a slave economy can sustain the disquisitive and disinterested elite that Aristotle and Plato demanded. He also contended that the states preceded the Union and that the Constitution was nothing more than a ‘‘compact’’ between the states, which they might leave if they wished

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(Calhoun and Cheek 2003, p. 62, 68, 74, 152). The opening words of the Constitution, ‘‘We, the People,’’ he opined, refer to the peoples of the states, not the people qua nation, for the United States – plural – are not a nation, but a federation (Calhoun & Cheek, 2003, p. 75, 77). What, then, of the Declaration’s opening gambit that ‘‘all men are created equal’’? Like many of his contemporaries, Calhoun rejected this premise as an outright falsehood that was ‘‘inserted y without any necessity’’ (Calhoun & Cheek, 2003, p. 681). Adam and Eve excepted, human beings are born not created, and they are born dependent, not free. What is more, they are unequal in their abilities and these differences are magnified by society. Like other proslavery intellectuals, he argued that the real ‘‘spirit of ‘76’’ was the right of revolution, not the equality of creation. Thus, while Calhoun defended slavery and states’ rights in republican and Constitutional terms, he was only able to do so by bowdlerizing a key verse of the ‘‘American scripture’’ and renouncing the nationalist vision of his youth. In many respects, Calhoun’s arguments are simply particularly elegant versions of republican arguments for slave society that circulated widely during the two decades before the Civil War (Cooper, 1983). They are somewhat unusual in at least one respect however: they make little appeal to Christian Scripture. Biblical defenses, however, were by far the most common (Faust, 1981; Irons, 2008; Noll & Blair, 2006) – as one would expect: the average citizen was much more likely to know The Bible than The Politics. And such arguments were not difficult to make. After all, the Ancient Israelites kept slaves, and the Apostle Paul urged slaves to obey their masters (Stringfellow, 1841). Southern Christians often portrayed African slavery as a form of missionary work, as well, or as a more merciful institution than the ‘‘wage slavery’’ that prevailed in the Northern states (Holmes, 1851). Conspicuously absent from such defenses, however, was the righteous indignation of the Jeremiad concerning the oppression of the weak by the strong. In sum, proslavery Christianity abandoned the spirit of the covenant for the letter of the text. Until the 1850s, Lincoln’s views were often not far from Calhoun’s, nor Calhoun’s from Henry Clay’s. In 1848, for instance, speaking before the House of Representatives about the War with Mexico and the proper boundaries of Texas, Lincoln (1992, p. 61) echoed the closing paragraphs of the Declaration, arguing that Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,–a most sacred right y Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of that

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people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit.

Could this not be construed as a natural rights justification for Confederate secession? In these years, he followed Calhoun – and presaged Chief Justice Richard Taney (Farber, 2003) – in arguing that the preamble of the Declaration was ‘‘the white man’s charter of freedom’’ and did not apply to blacks (Lincoln, 1992, p. 88). Nor can Lincoln’s views on racial equality at this point be adjudged much superior to those espoused by Calhoun. Like Jefferson before him, Lincoln repeatedly affirmed the racial inferiority of African-Americans during these years, even as he rejected all claims to social or civic equality. He was against slavery, to be certain, but not for integration – or even abolition: whatever the fate of slavery in the new states and territories, Lincoln (1992, p. 286) contended, the Federal government had no authority to abolish slavery in the old states of the South. Beginning in the 1850s, however, Lincoln’s opinions underwent a steadily accelerating process of radicalization, catalyzed by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), the formation of the Republican Party (1854), the Dred Scott decision (1857), and finally, the Civil War, itself (Foner, 2010; Oakes, 2007). As regards the relationship of the states and the Union, Lincoln gradually elaborated a view that was diametrically opposed to Calhoun’s. The Union was not the creation of the states, nor the Constitution a voluntary compact from which individual states could withdraw at will; rather, the states were themselves created by the Union, which the Constitution sought to perfect (Lincoln, 1992, pp. 310–311). Likewise, his interpretation of the Declaration now foregrounded the preamble’s appeal to equality more than the conclusion’s to revolution, so much so that he eventually came to the view that the promises of the preamble governed the articles of the Constitution. The Declaration, with its sacred principle of ‘‘liberty to all’’ is, in his famous metaphor, the ‘‘golden apple,’’ whereas the Constitution is but the ‘‘picture of silver’’ that frames it. It is against this background, and out of his encounters with liberated slaves like Frederick Douglass, that we must understand his eventual espousal of full emancipation and civic equality for American blacks. As Lincoln’s views gradually diverged from Calhoun’s, Frederick Douglass’ (1818–1895) views gradually aligned with Lincoln’s. Following his escape from slavery in 1838, Douglass was first pulled into the orbit of the radical abolitionists around William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. For them, the Declaration’s promise of equality was the founding covenant of the nation, whereas the Constitution’s compromise over slavery

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was ‘‘a covenant with death and an agreement with hell’’(Phillips & Madison, 1845). If the nation were to survive, slavery would have to be abolished and the Constitution and perhaps even the Union along with it. Until the late 1840s, Douglass espoused this view as well (Douglass, Foner, & Taylor, 1999, p. 127). Under the influence of fellow abolitionist Gerrit Smith (1797–1874), Douglass gradually revised his views until he was finally ready, in 1851, to publicly proclaim that the Constitution was not a proslavery document. Like Lincoln a decade later, Douglass became convinced that the meaning of the Constitution had to be read through the Preamble to the Declaration. The Preamble, he explained to a white audience, ‘‘is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny y That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost’’ (Douglass et al., 1999, p. 191). ‘‘It is clearly not because of the peculiar character of our Constitution that we have slavery, but the wicked people, love of power, and selfish perverseness of the American people’’ (Douglass et al., 1999, p. 351). Douglass even rejected abolitionist arguments for secession: ‘‘My argument against the dissolution of the American Union is this: It would place the slave system more squarely more exclusively under the control of the slaveholding States, and withdraw it from the power in the Northern States which is opposed to slavery’’ (Douglass et al., 1999, p. 388). Unlike Calhoun, and to a far greater degree than Lincoln, Douglass also used the metaphor of the covenant and the rhetoric of the jeremiad to make his argument against slavery – and for greater civic equality of all kinds. African slaves, he implied, were as much a part of the founding covenant as the Puritans themselves: simultaneously with the landing of the Pilgrims, there landed slaves on the shores of this continent y We leveled your forests; our hands removed the stumps from your fields and raised the first groups and brought produce to your tables. We have been with you, and are still with you, have been with you in adversity y We are American citizens, and we only ask to be treated as well as you treat aliens y . (Douglass et al., 1999, p.177)2

And yet, Americans had broken that covenant, had broken Winthrop’s promise of ‘‘brotherly affection’’: ‘‘Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World y for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival,’’ Douglass thundered (Douglass et al., 1999, p. 197). Anticipating the activist orientation of the Social Gospelers, Douglass especially singled out an American Church that ‘‘esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness’’ (Douglass et al., 1999, p. 2000). And yet, he remained confident of ‘‘the certain overthrow of

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slavery’’ because of ‘‘the nature of the American Government, the tendencies of the age, and the character of the American people’’ and, more than that, because he believed that human beings are created both free and equal and that slavery is ‘‘an open rebellion against God’s government’’ that cannot possibly persist (Douglass et al., 1999, p. 348). The Civil War, then, catalyzed several important changes in the civil theology: a new civil hermeneutics that read the Constitution through the Preamble of the Declaration; a new civic narrative that wrote African slaves into the American founding; and, perhaps most consequentially, the claim that human beings are created free as well as equal, that human liberty, in other words, is a universal and natural right. This new dispensation was given prophetic voice by Frederick Douglass, and priestly authority by Abraham Lincoln, and would be baptized in blood by Lincoln’s assassin.

BETWEEN THE WARS: ‘‘A COMMON FAITH’’? The interwar years (1918–1940) brought another ‘‘time of trials’’ for the United States and another reworking of its civil theology. The trials in question here were less the product of the Great Depression – however great those trials were – than of two concomitant but independent developments: the dissolution of the ‘‘Protestant establishment’’ that had long dominated American culture (Handy, 1991) and the end of geopolitical isolation that had long shielded the American homeland (Sherry, 1995). Although ‘‘oldline’’ churches of the Northeast had been losing ‘‘market share’’ to Protestant sects and Roman Catholics for some time (Newman & Halvorson, 2000) – indeed, on some accounts, since the Colonial Era (Finke & Stark, 1992), their influence within the realms of education, journalism, and even science remained enormous and disproportionate. By the early twentieth century, however, the liberal Protestant establishment was faced with powerful secularist rivals (C. Smith, 2003) and also with a conservative rebellion from within the Protestant world itself (Marsden, 1991; Marsden, 2006). As time would show, it was the Protestant establishment, rather than the Fundamentalist upstarts, who were the real losers in the Scopes Trials. Meanwhile, the diplomatic and institutional failures of Wilsonian internationalism, on one hand, and the successes of Communism and Fascism in Europe, on the other, now made it increasingly difficult to reconcile America’s long-standing policy of disengagement from the Old World with its equally long-standing vision of itself as the ‘‘last best hope’’ for republican self-government. These two momentous developments raised two troubling questions for the ACR:

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Was it possible to articulate a non-Protestant, and indeed, nontheistic, version of the American civil theology? And, was it possible to reconcile the American mission with American power without succumbing to the temptations of collective self-worship? Answers, or at least attempts at answers, may be found in the writings of John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr, two leading public intellectuals of the period who also proved to be innovative civil theologians as well. Dewey’s early years were spent in the very lap of the Protestant establishment. His father was a Civil War veteran and a successful greengrocer in Burlington, Vermont. His mother was a pious Congregationalist, an ardent Social Gospeler, and an active Republican. They sent their second-born son to the local state University, where he imbibed yet more liberal Protestant orthodoxy, along with a sizeable portion of German idealism. Dewey seems to have fallen away from his Protestant beliefs during early adulthood, but he retained a strong faith in ethical culture and social progress, which enduringly colored his philosophical and political views (Rockefeller, 1991). Although Dewey was an avowed naturalist and humanist, who eschewed the notion of a supernatural or personal God, he was neither a materialist nor even a secularist in the strict sense. He forcefully defended the reality of ideality throughout his career and late in life proposed a ‘‘common faith’’ in democracy as a via media between fundamentalist forms of Christianity and atomistic and interest-driven versions of liberalism. He first attempted to formulate this creed in his 1892 address on ‘‘Christianity and Democracy’’ and returned to the problem of ‘‘democratic faith’’ again in the concluding chapter of The Quest for Certainty. But his last and fullest statement on the subject is to be found in his 1934 Terry Lectures, entitled A Common Faith. ‘‘Never before in history,’’ he began, ‘‘has mankind been so much of two minds, so divided into two camps, as it is today.’’ One camp is composed of orthodox believers ‘‘who hold that nothing worthy of being called religious is possible apart from the supernatural.’’ The other consists of radical secularists who ‘‘believe that y not only must historic religions be dismissed but with them everything of a religious nature’’ (Dewey, 1934, p. 1). Dewey’s aim was to chart a via media that is nontheistic without being anti-theistic. To this end, he argued that we can and must distinguish the ‘‘religious’’ from ‘‘religion.’’ The distinguishing characteristics of religion, he says, include a belief in the existence of the supernatural and possession of an absolute truth, on the one hand, with an institutionalized priesthood and an exclusive community. The religious, on the other hand, is a ‘‘quality of experience,’’ which he defines as ‘‘the idea of a whole,’’ ‘‘the unification of the self,’’ ‘‘the conviction that some end should be supreme over conduct,’’ ‘‘morality

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touched by emotion,’’ and ‘‘better adjustment in life and its conditions’’ (Dewey, 1934, pp. 8, 18–22). The religious may also be contrasted to ‘‘the unreligious attitude,’’ which lacks this sense of dependency on others and this ‘‘reverence’’ for the whole and ‘‘attributes human achievement and purpose to man in isolation from the world of physical nature and his fellows’’ (Dewey, 1934, p. 25). If Dewey’s view of the ‘‘unreligious’’ stance of radical secularism is clear enough, his attitude toward the organized ‘‘religion’’ of the churches was more ambivalent. At several junctures, Dewey contends that the churches attempt to monopolize religion stands in the way of a more unified and generalized religious attitude, which could underwrite his expansive vision of democracy(Dewey, 1934, p. 28, 66). Elsewhere, however, he suggests that the churches might contribute to ‘‘the religious’’ by relaxing their claims regarding ‘‘religion’’ (Dewey, 1934, p. 82). On one point, though, Dewey is quite clear: Neither individual interests nor institutional procedures alone will suffice to sustain the democratic faith; rather, a religious attitude of sorts is required, not a faith in a supernatural God, for him, but one in the powers of collective ‘‘intelligence.’’ But what of collective stupidity? Or even collective evil? Awash in the optimism of the American fin-de-sie`cle, secular liberals and Social Gospelers such as Dewey gave little attention to such questions. They were confident that human nature was essentially good and that proper education was sufficient to eradicate political stupidity. As a young pastor in Detroit in the 1920s, Niebuhr had shared this optimism; in the decade that followed, he gradually shed it in favor of a neo-Augustinian realism premised on the notion of original sin, which he regarded as ‘‘the only empirically verifiable aspects of the biblical tradition’’ (Deneen, 2005, p. 247). Niebuhr understood ‘‘original sin’’ in anthropological terms as the ‘‘corruption of the will,’’ a persistent and ineradicable tendency of all human beings to selfishness and pride. This tendency, he argued, inevitably and pervasively infects human actions and institutions and will always do so to some degree. To deny this, he charged, is to convict oneself of naı¨ ve idealism, and he found many secular liberals guilty, Dewey included. While Niebuhr affirmed Augustine’s emphasis on original sin, he rejected the Calvinist theory of ‘‘total depravity’’ and secular variants of it, whether Smithian, Darwinian, or Nietzschean. To deny that human beings are capable of moral goodness, even of selfless love, he insisted, is to convict oneself of another form of naı¨ vete´: naı¨ ve realism. Niebuhr’s efforts to give both propensities their proper due led to a complex system of political ethics, which he dubbed ‘‘Christian realism.’’ Against left-wing isolationists and pacifists and rightwing Fascist sympathizers, for example, he argued forcefully for American

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intervention in World War II. Whatever its failings, he insisted, AngloAmerican democracy was more just than the ‘‘political religion’’ of the Nazis, and evil of great power can only be countered with still greater power. At the same time, he presciently warned against the temptations of self-righteousness and self-worship that would attend an American victory, reminding his fellow citizens that ‘‘political controversies are always conflicts between sinners and not between righteous men and sinners’’ (Niebuhr & Brown, 1986, p. 114). Niebuhr’s Christian realism also led him to a view of American democracy that was a good deal less ebullient than Dewey’s, if also more sanguine than, say, Schumpeter’s. Echoing Madison, he insisted that the U.S. Constitution had been written by men who believed in original sin and knew that human institutions had to be designed for human beings as they are, not as we would wish them to be. By pitting faction against faction, and elite against elite, he argued, the American system placed a check on the worst propensities of the powerful. Elsewhere, he sounds a more lyrical note, with faint undertones of Whitman, arguing that ‘‘we cannot y leave the total human enterprise unredeemed’’ and that the pursuit of justice requires ‘‘a sublime madness in the soul’’ (Niebuhr, 1932). In essentials, Dewey and Niebuhr were not as far apart as they and others after them have claimed. Dewey was much more aware of the pervasiveness of selfishness and conflict than Niebuhr allowed, and Niebuhr was a good deal more hopeful about the possibilities for love and reconciliation than some of his contemporary champions acknowledge. Many of the differences between them were ones of temperament and tone. Dewey was a jovial genius, an optimist who preached a religion of uplift. Niebuhr, by contrast, was an American Jeremiah, who preached a religion of repentance.

MLK/RFK: TRANSCENDING COLD WAR LIBERALISM The civil theology of Dewey and Niebuhr was a ‘‘high church’’ version of ACR, a farewell sermon from the Protestant establishment, more suited for print than the pulpit, replete with philosophical and theological allusions, but short of scriptural citations. However influential Dewey and Niebuhr may have been – and their public influence was indeed enormous – it radiated from university lecture halls and the pages of The New Republic. And by the 1950s, it had ossified into the cautious and satisfied orthodoxy of social reformism and geopolitical containment known as ‘‘Cold War liberalism’’

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(Pells, 1985). It would soon be smelted in the ‘‘fire next time’’ (Baldwin) of the Civil Rights movement and the upsurge of grassroots political activism that followed in its wake. The kindling for that conflagration was a ‘‘low church’’ version of ACR whose Moses was Martin Luther King and whose Jesus was Robert F. Kennedy, a black preacher and a Catholic politician. King was arguably the greatest homilist of the civil theology and is certainly the best known to contemporary Americans. Every American schoolchild has listened to King’s ‘‘I have a Dream Speech’’ and few adults can read it without tears, so deeply does it play on our ‘‘mystic chords of memory’’ (Lincoln), so powerfully does it invoke our sacred scriptures, biblical and civic. Standing before the Lincoln Memorial on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, with the television cameras rolling, King decried the unfulfilled promise of racial emancipation and the American Dream. Two years earlier, he had redefined that dream as ‘‘a dream as yet unfulfilled,’’ as a modern version of Winthrop’s dream, ‘‘a land where men of all races, of all nationalities and of all creeds can live together as brothers,’’ best expressed in the words of the Preamble to the Declaration, which he cited in full (King & Washington, 1991, p. 208). Echoing Dewey’s democratic metaphysics, but in terms of a Biblical metaphor, he argued that ‘‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny’’ (King & Washington 1991, p. 210). Echoing Niebuhr’s political realism, but with a nod to Gandhi, he insisted that ‘‘social progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability,’’ but that ‘‘physical force’’ must be countered with ‘‘soul force’’ and not violence. Finally, echoing the jeremiads of Douglass and other abolitionists, he insisted that ‘‘we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream’’ (King & Washington, 1991, p. 219). As such, King’s speech was itself a might streamy, or rather, a confluence of many streams flowing through the American mind. Nor was it a mere synthesis of preexisting currents: King introduced new streams of discourse and subtly shifted others. To the tradition of individual rights, natural and God-given, he added the Jewish and Catholic ‘‘personalism’’ of Martin Buber and Gordon Parker Browne. To Niebuhr’s dictum that power be met with power, he added Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolent ‘‘soul power.’’ He also subtly recast covenant theology and civic republicanism. To the first, he added a new page, by turning his attention from the making of the covenant to the Exodus from Egypt and the journey toward the Promised Land, thereby linking the ‘‘golden age’’ trope of the Jeremiad to the eschatological narrative of the New Testament and its secular variant, the narrative of human progress. To the second, he added a new inflection, suggesting that the American people were

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composed not of pre-cultural ‘‘individuals’’ but of culturally formed peoples – white and black, Jew and Gentile, and Catholic and Protestant – whom he carefully addressed in their own languages, invoking their own authorities. On April 3, 1968, on the eve of his assassination, with an unnerving premonition of his imminent demise, King announced that he had ‘‘seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land’’ (King & Washington, 1991, p. 286). The following evening, having just learned of King’s assassination from an aide, Robert F. Kennedy clambered atop a parked car in the Indianapolis ghetto to share the news with the unknowing throng that had gathered to hear him speak. A collective moan went up. Kennedy continued, ‘‘in this difficult day y it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are y For those of you who are black y you can be filled with bitterness y We can move in that direction y in great polarization. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love’’ (R. F. Kennedy, Guthman, & Allen 1993, p. 356). After noting that ‘‘I had a member of my family killed,’’ his first public mention of the JFK assassination, he quoted Aeschylus: ‘‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God’’ – that same awful grace of which Lincoln had spoken in his Second Inaugural (R. F. Kennedy et al., 1993, p. 357). Kennedy had not always spoken this way. He began his political career as an anticommunist crusader during the McCarthy years. After managing his brother’s Presidential campaign and following him to the White House, he strongly supported U.S. intervention in Vietnam. He was, in a word, the consummate Cold War liberal. His brother’s assassination pushed him into a period of personal despair and public reclusiveness. During these years, he became increasingly concerned about poverty and inequality and increasingly opposed to the Vietnam War and to the militarization of American society more generally. When he finally reentered the political limelight in the spring of 1968, it was these two issues – poverty and the war – that were the focus of his own Presidential campaign. But the larger message was a call for national unity and a return to American traditions. Like King, he sought to (re)define the American dream in terms of American ideals, rather than in terms of material goods: However important they may be, he argued, ‘‘income and education and homes do not make a nation. Nor do land and borders. Shared ideals and principles, joined purposes and homes – these make a nation. And that is our great task: to make one nation out of

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two’’ (R. F. Kennedy et al., 1993, p. 366). He warned, too, against the folly of trying to export these ideals through the barrel of a gun: John Adams once said that he considered the founding of America to be part of ‘‘a divine plan for the liberation of the slavish part of mankind all over the globe.’’ This faith did not spring from grandiose schemes of empires abroad. It grew instead from confidence that the example set by our nation y would spark the spirit of liberty around the planet y . (R. F. Kennedy et al., 1993, p. 372)

In the final days of his campaign, he called for a ‘‘new politics’’ that would transcend the old divide between liberals ‘‘who wanted to spend more money’’ and conservatives who ‘‘pretend that all problems should solve themselves’’ (R. F. Kennedy et al., 1993, p. 389). He quickly racked up a string of primary victories against incumbent President Lyndon Johnson and Democratic challenger, Eugene McCarthy, and in a diverse collection of states including Kansas, Indiana, and California, demonstrating appeal, not only to urban liberals and African-Americans but also to Midwestern farmers and urban ethnics – in short, the core constituencies of the New Deal coalition. Then, on June 6, 1968, he too was felled by an assassin’s bullet, just moments after his victory speech in the California primary, opening the way for Richard M. Nixon to prise that coalition apart using the wedge issues of race and crime, and initiating 40 years of Republican hegemony in American politics.

THE CIVIL RELIGION OF BARACK OBAMA Commentators have often remarked on Obama’s hybridity, on his ability to bridge some of the deepest divides in American politics through his complex personality and unique life story: black and white, urban and rural, ghetto and penthouse, and secular and religious (Remnick, 2010). A source of anguish in his youth, it became a source of strength in adulthood. But there is also another dimension to Obama’s hybridity, which has gone quite unnoticed up until now: his ability to speak in all of the diverse and accumulated registers of America’s civil theology. This, too, is a result of his unusual, even singular, biography (Kloppenberg, 2010). As a scholar of Constitutional law, he has an almost Talmudic knowledge of American political scripture and its various historical interpretations. As a youthful reader of Douglass and King and an adult convert to the black church, he gained a thorough fluency in the language of covenant and the rhetoric of the Jeremiad. As a student at Harvard in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he

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was deeply influenced by the rediscovery of civic republicanism and its influence on the American Revolution. There, too, he became conversant with Dewey through exposure to Hilary Putnam and other champions of the pragmatist tradition. Later, he would delve deeply into the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. Thus, we should not be surprised to see him blending together the many strands of American civil theology in his political oratory. Following in the tradition of Douglass and Lincoln, for example, Obama frequently cites the Preamble to the Declaration, with its promise of equality and liberty, natural and God-given, as the canonical statement of American ideals. Following in that same tradition, he cites the Preamble to the Constitution, particularly the performative opening, ‘‘We, the People,’’ as an affirmation of national unity, rather than a nod to state sovereignty, often in tandem with the motto, ‘‘e pluribus unum.’’3 And like them and like King and Kennedy after them, Obama treats these ideals, not simply as a social contract, regulating the relations between atomized individuals, but as something more binding, as a founding covenant that the nation must seek to live up to, and to which it must continually return in times of crisis. Throughout his campaign, for example, Obama attacked the policies of the Bush administration first and foremost as a betrayal of America’s founding ideals. Of the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Katrina, he insisted that ‘‘This is not who we are,’’ ‘‘This is not what American means.’’ A gentle Jeremiah, to be sure, one fitted to an era when many Christians no longer believe in Hell, but a Jeremiah nonetheless. The influence of civic republicanism is equally pervasive if perhaps less obvious. It manifests itself, first of all, in the way in which Obama discusses freedom and liberty, not simply as the absence of restraint, as the right to do as we please, so long as it does not harm others, as in the liberal/libertarian reading from Hobbes to Hayek; rather, he treats liberty also as a balance of independence and interdependence, of rights and obligations, as the opportunity to shape one’s one life plan, to be sure, but also as the responsibility to ensure that fellow citizens and future generations enjoy this opportunity as well. It manifests itself, as well, in Obama’s deep commitment to a politics that seeks to transcend party; like the Founders, Obama worries that professional politicians and partisan rancor will undermine the sense of a common purpose and a common good that is essential to a republican polity, as opposed to a liberal one, in which the common good is reduced to a ‘‘Pareto optimal welfare function’’ constituted of individual preferences and utilities. As for the influence of Niebuhrian realism, it is most evident in the recurring contrast that Obama draws between a ‘‘hope’’ that persists despite, and even

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because of, suffering, struggle and failure, and an optimism that rests on a Panglossian picture of historical progress, and, relatedly, in his continual chiding of ‘‘the cynics,’’ the ‘‘children of darkness’’ who deride the naı¨ vete´ of hope. It is also evident in his clear rejection of pacifism and his readiness to use power to confront power, as evidenced, on one hand, in his disquisition on just war theory on the occasion of his Noble Peace Prize and, on the other, on his willingness to escalate the war in Afghanistan, even as he wound down the war in Iraq as well as his readiness to gun down Osama bin Laden, rather than commend him to an international tribunal, allowing concrete considerations of prudence to trump procedural versions of justice. Wherein lies Obama’s contribution to the civil theology? First of all, of course, in his intellectual synthesis of its various strands and his successful deployment of it in national politics. Bellah’s 1976 epitaph for ACR, his claim that it is ‘‘an empty and broken shell,’’ appears to have been premature, now that Obama has indeed put Humpty Dumpty together again. More than this, however, Obama’s contribution consists in subtly rearranging the pieces to yield something both familiar and new. Of particular importance is his attention to religio-cultural pluralism. Whereas King and Kennedy mainly emphasized race and, to a lesser degree, class, Obama again and again refers to the religious mosaic of contemporary America and the divide between religious and secular America. Although many secular liberals were outraged by Obama’s selection of superstar pastor, Rick Warren, to deliver the benediction at his Inaugural, indeed, by the fact that Obama commissioned a benediction at all, few noticed his explicit inclusion of ‘‘nonbelievers’’ in his list of American faith groups. This is no accident. As Obama astutely explained to a gathering of liberal evangelicals led by Jim Wallis in 2006: the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms. Some of the problem here is rhetorical – if we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice. (Call for Renewal, June 6, 2006)

As Todd Gitlin (1995) noted long ago, one of the greatest political handicaps that has limited the liberal left since the late 1960s has been its renunciation of the language of patriotism and national identity. In burning the American flag, both figuratively and literally, the left allowed the right to wrap itself up in the stars and stripes. I would add to this a second limitation: the full-throated embrace of liberal secularism by the intellectual allies of the Democratic party. In my view, this position is both illegitimate

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and misguided. Illegitimate insofar as the insistence that religious reasons be excluded from the public square is at odds with core liberal principles of freedom of conscience and expression. Misguided insofar as America remains, for better or worse, a highly religious country in the conventional sense of that term and a deeply metaphysical country over and above that. For both those reasons, liberal secularism is not the proper rallying cry for a new, Democratic majority. Neither, of course, is religious nationalism. That leaves us with civil religion. And it is Obama’s genius to have recognized and rearticulated it.

CONCLUSION: THE AMERICAN CIVIL THEOLOGY AS INDIGENOUS CRITICAL THEORY In closing, let me reflect on some possible objections to the idea of an ACR. The first is that it excludes nonbelievers. This is simply mistaken. Since its very inception, America’s civil theology has been tightly intertwined with the classical republican tradition – a tradition that arose well before the advent of Christianity and that can be defended in wholly secular terms (Laborde & Maynor, 2008; Pettit, 1997; Skinner, 1998).4 Moreover, as we saw earlier, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a pragmatist thread was woven into the civil theology as well. Although most of the pragmatists (e.g., Peirce, James, and Whitehead) espoused some form of (usually heterodox) religious faith (Menand, 2001), Dewey’s rested on a nontheistic metaphysics. A second objection is that it divides believers and nonbelievers. This, too, is mistaken. What currently divides believers and nonbelievers in the United States is the hegemony of liberal secularism on the left and religious nationalism on the right, the claim, on the one hand, that religion must be wholly excluded from public life, and the counterclaim, on the other, that an avowed atheist cannot be a good American. One of the great advantages of the American tradition of civil theology is that it provides a shared language in which believers and nonbelievers can potentially speak to, rather than past, one another. A third objection, and one that I want to respond to at greater length is that the American civil theology is a superficial theory that lacks the critical potentials of competing traditions, particularly imported ones, such as Marxian class analysis or Bourdieusian field theory. This objection is likewise mistaken. In reality, the American civil theology is a multistranded

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social theory with profound critical potentials that often go unrecognized, a theory tradition, moreover, which has the additional (political) advantage of being an indigenous tradition with deep popular resonances. Consider civic republicanism. It rests on a view of human agents and political society that lead to a highly critical appraisal of present-day American society. In contrast to the liberal view of human freedom as the absence of restraint – a view that runs across the American political spectrum from secular progressives through libertarian independents to right-wing evangelicals and pro-market business elites – the republican view of freedom emphasizes ‘‘human flourishing,’’ a view, moreover, that has been ably elaborated in the human capacities approach set forth by American thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum (Nussbaum, 1997; Nussbaum & Cohen, 1996) and Amartya Sen (1984, 1999). It also leads to a more communitarian understanding of the polity, in which the overarching aim is the achievement of a common good, not merely the maximization of individual utilities, indeed, to the view that genuine human flourishing is only possible within a certain kind of polity (Etzioni, 2004). Finally, as Eric Nelson has recently shown, the republican tradition from Plato through Harrington to Adams and onward also contains an egalitarian strand that can provide a strong rationale for redistributionist policies, insofar as some measure of material security is seen a sine qua non of the independent judgment required for good citizenship (Nelson, 2004). Furthermore, as Richard Rorty (1998), Hilary Putnam (2004), Richard Bernstein (2005), and others have shown, it is also possible to arrive at similar critiques without making strong assumptions about the nature of the human good – or human evil. No doubt, some readers will still feel uncomfortable with the explicitly religious parts of American civil theology. Secular progressives are more receptive to notions of ‘‘human flourishing’’ and ‘‘the common good’’ than to talk of ‘‘original sin’’ and ‘‘divine wrath.’’ But sometimes discomfort is a good thing, especially if it unsettles our settled preconceptions and opens us to the limitations of our own worldviews. How many of us really believe that Osama bin Laden – or Hitler or Stalin, for that matter – were just ‘‘products of their social environments’’? Can we so easily dispense with the category of evil in their cases? And don’t most of us think that Hurricane Katrina was a punishment of sorts for the persistence of racism and corruption in American society, albeit one visited mainly on innocents? As that great defender of Enlightenment rationality, Ju¨rgen Habermas, has recently reminded us, even for unbelievers, the language of our religious traditions contain ‘‘moral resources,’’ which are still far from ‘‘exhausted’’(Habermas, Pope Benedict, & Schuller, 2006). If he is right, then we

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would be foolish to discard the prophetic strand of our civil theology, the strand so skillfully woven by Winthrop, Douglass, King, and others, insofar as it provides humbling reminders of the limits of human goodness and reason.

NOTES 1. Here, I closely follow the argument in Oakes (2007), but add Calhoun to the mix as a third point of reference. 2. There is, of course, a Lockean undertone in this passage, which emphasizes the connection between labor and ownership. 3. Of course, he is hardly alone in citing the political scriptures these days; perhaps infuriated that their long-standing claim to be the guardians of American traditions is now in dispute, American conservatives have begun waving pocket editions of the U.S. Constitution around as if they were Gideon’s editions of the New Testament. Note, however, that their scriptural hermeneutic is different than Obama’s. Whereas Obama treats the founding documents as a set of ideals whose meaning is gradually disclosed through history and that can never be fully realized in reality, Tea Party conservatives read them as a set of rules whose meaning is self-evident and must be fully enforced without delay. 4. And even against it, as the development of republican thought in contemporary France and Britain well shows.

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CIVIL RELIGION AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING Joseph Gerteis ABSTRACT Philip S. Gorski’s ‘‘Barack Obama and Civil Religion’’ seeks to revive and reform the concept of civil religion. This response addresses two sets of issues raised by the entwined analytic and normative claims in the chapter. The first concerns the definition of civil religion, including how the civil and religious spheres are connected within it and how civil religion differs conceptually from other related models. The second concerns whether a renewed commitment to civil religion will provide a platform for greater openness and pluralism, as Gorski claims.

‘‘The idea of reform is far older than the Reformation and is, in fact, central to Christianity itself’’ says Robert Bellah (1992, pp. 9–10). Philip S. Gorski, like Bellah, aims to reform both the concept of American civil religion and the society in which it may make its mark. Gorski’s main thesis is that Obama’s rhetoric must be understood as existing within the tradition that has been termed American civil religion. But the chapter does not have much to say about Obama. Instead, the larger focus of the project is ‘‘to reformulate and rehabilitate the notion of civil religion’’ (Gorski, 2011, p. 180), to make sense of the interwoven strains of civic and religious

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discourse in American life, and to work out the related tension between republican and liberal understandings of citizenship. I think it is undeniable that the two spheres have been intertwined, that this has been an obvious and important feature in American life, and that it deserves the kind of scholarly attention that Gorski is trying to bring to it again. Indeed it seems vital to focus on the nature of American civic belonging when we have, in Obama, a prominent public and political figure attempting to find a way to talk about it in a meaningful and robust way. It seems important too when we also have among Tea Party adherents and Republican Presidential candidates a very different but equally passionate melange of claims about civic and religious belonging. Because of all this, I read Gorski’s chapter with a great deal of interest, even though I was also left with a number of questions about the connected theoretic, empirical, and normative arguments. In what follows, I want to focus on two issues. The first concerns the definition of civil religion, including how the civil and religious spheres are connected within it, and how civil religion differs conceptually from other related models. The second concerns whether a claim to a stronger American we-ness built around the civil religious tradition is compatible with greater openness and pluralism as Gorski claims. Although some of these questions are beyond the scope of Gorski’s current chapter, I hope they may prove useful to the discussion of the chapter and the larger project.

CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS SPHERES Looking back, Bellah lamented that much of the initial heated debate about civil religion concerned the concept’s definition, while he wished instead that critics would engage what he saw as the substance of his argument. Yet, the definitional problem is important because the concept can be (and has been) understood in different ways, and because not making conceptual sense of the differences confuse what is at stake in the discussion. Gorski offers two kinds of definition of the concept. On the substantive side, civil religion is defined by its discursive contents. With Bellah, Gorski holds that two main threads of this discourse are covenant theology and civic republicanism. On the formal side, Gorski invokes Weber’s discussion of value spheres to define civil religion in relation to other ideal-typical ways that the political and religious spheres might converge, primarily liberal secularism and religious nationalism. I generally agree with both of these

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definitions, and I think the combination of the two is a real strength, providing Gorski’s framework an analytic clarity Bellah’s did not have. ‘‘[M]ost Americans, believers and non-believers alike, do not wish to see the church subjugated to the state, or vice versa,’’ Gorski tells us. Instead, they prefer parity between the two spheres. ‘‘What is at issue, then, is the exact form this parity should take’’ (Gorski, 2011, p. 182). To be sure, and I think it is important to raise two questions about the definition and its relationship with messy empirical reality. First, I think it is worth asking just what combination of the civic and religious spheres must be present in civil religion. For example, does it necessarily involve covenant theology, or religion more generally, or just a more abstract adherence to some spiritual or transcendent reality? Must it be a civil religion, as Bellah seemed to have it, or a civil religion, as Rousseau suggested, and as Bellah seemed to come around to later? For that matter, must religion necessarily be part of the equation at all, or is a sort of ‘‘religion’’ of purely civic belonging possible? Put differently, does the term always refer to the same thing? At least, the emphasis between the civic and religious poles shifts in the different examples Gorski discusses. For John Winthrop and the Puritans, the covenant theology loomed larger than an abstract political belonging. For later adherents of the ‘‘civic cult,’’ the political belonging itself had deep and perhaps primary meaning. With a figure like Dewey, the properly religious side was almost absent entirely; his commitment was to the ‘‘democratic faith’’ (Gorski, 2011, p. 196). All of these are ‘‘shared stories’’ but it is not clear to me whether these are best understood as variants of the same tradition, or as meaningfully different claims. Indeed, there are other ways to view some of the more secular of these figures; Hansen (2003), for example, considers Dewey one of a generation of ‘‘cosmopolitan patriots’’ who drew upon both the liberal and the republican political traditions, while remaining open to religious as well as racial and ethnic difference. Second, what exactly is the relationship between civil religion and other models? Gorski is right to point out that we are not forced to choose just between liberal secularism and religious nationalism, despite the dominance these models can seem to have in politics and public discourse. In America, civil religion stands between them with a long and vibrant history. In the theoretical model Gorski outlines, the distinction comes down to the difference between ‘‘separation,’’ ‘‘overlap,’’ and ‘‘fusion’’ of the civil and religious spheres. This distinction is helpful, but it raises new questions in turn about the exact meaning of these terms. Does overlap indicate that the two spheres

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have independent but equal place in the same public discourse? If so, how does that differ in practice from separation? On the other hand, if fusion means that the two spheres are inextricably connected, where do we draw the line either theoretically or practically between religious nationalism and civil religion, where covenant theology is understood as a central part of one’s commitment to the civic realm? I do not think it is illegitimate to worry about the fuzzy nature of the distinction between civil religion and religious nationalism in particular. This is a theoretical as well as empirical problem. As Gorski says, ‘‘contemporary religious nationalists view the United States as a ‘Chrisian nation’ or, somewhat more expansively, as a ‘Judeo-Christian nation’, founded on ‘Christian principles’, from which, alas, it has diverged and must return’’ (Gorski, 2011, pp. 182–183). By this definition, most Americans seem to be very close to the religious nationalist pole. In a recent national survey, my colleagues and I asked directly whether Americans believe this to be a Christian nation (Hartmann, Gerteis, & Edgell, 2003). Fifty-nine percent of American adults agreed that it was and said in a follow-up question that they thought this was a positive thing.1 Another 17 percent said that they did not think it was a Christian nation, but also indicated that they thought it should be. Taken together, this was the majority position among people in all income levels, all racial groups, and all partisan categories. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most reliable dissenters to this view were religious minorities, including Jews, Muslims, and religious ‘‘nones.’’2 In short, a large proportion of American adults – roughly three quarters – could be characterized as religious nationalists by this definition. Gorksi’s focus is generally on the dangers of liberal secularism. However, such facts suggest either that the political space is not so evenly divided between religious nationalism and liberal secularism as Gorski suggests (indeed, next to religious nationalism, there is little room left over for anything else), or that the line between civil religion and religious nationalism is awfully faint. I think this is the reason that many on the left, religious and secular alike, are hesitant to abandon the bright-line approach of liberalism. There is another connected difficulty, which is that many or even most of those who sound like religious nationalists or assimilationists when they talk about America as a Christian nation may also sound like republicans when talking about civic commitment and like liberal cosmopolitans when talking about diversity generally. This kind of slippage happens all the time even in public discourse. For example, in which of these boxes would we place

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Michele Bachmann, the religious conservative representative from Minnesota and (as I write this at least) Republican presidential contender? While she is clearly more often in the religious nationalist camp than Obama, she and others affiliated with the Tea Party movement have no problem defending individual freedoms in terms of civic traditions or libertarian principles. For that matter, whether we call Obama a liberal secularist or a defender of civil religion depends largely on which statements we chose to parse.

CULTURAL BOUNDARIES AND EXCLUSIONS The above questions are about the relationship between the definition of civil religion and how this connects with messy empirical reality. I also think it is important to bring up a different sort of question about inclusion and exclusion in the American ‘‘we.’’ Is civil religion consonant with greater pluralism and openness, as Gorski suggests? Gorski’s argument about this rests on two points. The first is that liberal secularism is not a good starting place for a more unified America. The second is that his approach to defining civil religion is at least potentially more open to ‘‘multiple and conflicting visions of religio-politics than Bellah’s original, neo-Durkheimian formulation’’ (Gorski, 2011, pp. 180–181). Although not stated explicitly here, Gorski’s argument also seems to be that other potential models for a more unified America (purely civic republicanism and religious nationalism among them) are either less desirable or less historically accessible than civic nationalism. So far, so good. But while I very much appreciate Gorski’s attempt to produce a definition of civil religion on Weberian grounds, I also think that this raises a rather Durkheimian question of solidarity, while sidestepping an examination of the kinds of trade-offs solidarity entails. To put it succinctly, a stronger national ‘‘we’’ involves both stronger bonds of inclusion and clearer kinds of exclusion. A largely secular liberal cosmopolitanism solves the problem in one way, by avoiding strong claims about belonging in the first place. Certain integrative forms of multiculturalism attempt to do so in a different way, by positing a model of commitment much closer to purely civic republicanism, but also by giving up on a fixed notion of what culturally marks that belonging (see Hartmann & Gerteis, 2005). So where exactly does civic religion give way to exclusions

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(either civic, religious, or both)? Where must we make the tough choices between increased tolerance of differences and stronger commitments to shared belonging? I should say very clearly here that this is not Gorski’s problem alone. Bellah’s Broken Covenant outlined many unjust exclusions that marked failures of our democracy. ‘‘The problem of inclusion and exclusion has been especially acute with respect to racial groups,’’ Bellah said, ‘‘but it has also arisen in connection with the national, linguistic, and ethnic groups who have come as immigrants to these shores’’ (Bellah, 1992, p. 88). To Bellah’s list, we should also add religious exclusion; a gradual expansion of the American ‘‘we’’ in the religious sense brought Catholics and eventually Jews tenuously into the fold, but the concept of a single ‘‘Judeo-Christian’’ tradition is still relatively new, and it is often invoked precisely to mark a boundary between those who belong and others (Muslims, nonbelievers) who do not (see Hartmann, Zhang, & Wischstadt, 2005). Clearly Bellah thought that a renewed commitment to civil religion was necessary; yet, he remained vague on exactly who could and could not belong if we were to revive our broken covenant. Gorski’s argument is clearer, mainly because his definition of civil religion itself is more explicit. But at least in this chapter, it remains vague on just this point. Gorski does not think that a renewed civil religion will exclude nonbelievers, rather, he says that it will provide a ‘‘shared language in which believers and nonbelievers can potentially speak to, rather than past’’ (Gorski, 2011, p. 204). I do not think we can have it both ways. If the shared language is the Christian (or perhaps Judeo-Christian) tradition that most Americans think it is, then that certainly leaves out Muslims and others. Even if this is softened to a generally ‘‘religious’’ belonging, I do not see how nonbelievers are included (and neither, it must be noted, do most Americans; see Edgell, Gerteis, & Hartmann, 2006). Finally, if Gorski is calling for the left to simply return to a stronger understanding of ‘‘patriotism and national identity’’ (Gorski, 2011, p. 203) without a religious revival attached to that belonging, why must it be ‘‘civil religion’’ and not simply ‘‘civic republicanism’’? Again, this is not a problem that can be solved by theory alone. Normative arguments are involved here too, as are claims about the possibilities and limits imposed by what shared stories are and are not culturally and historically available to Americans to draw upon. Perhaps the stronger national bond that comes with a renewed commitment to civil religion (whether explicitly Christian or not) is worth such exclusions, and perhaps not. Certainly, as Gorski argues, the civil religion has helped us confront – and partially

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overcome – some of our own most brutal exclusions, especially regarding race. But we should not forget that it comes at a price.

OBAMA AND CIVIL RELIGION Once again, I should say that many of the questions and objections I have raised here are beyond the scope of Philip Gorski’s chapter. The narrower issues, such as how we distinguish between fusion and overlap of the religious and civil spheres, or how to get a better purchase on the different kinds of invocations of civil religion, will likely be answered or at least clarified with Gorski’s forthcoming book and the discussion that will surely grow up around it. Broader issues, like the dialectic of inclusion and exclusion, are not ones that can be solved by any one author, but I think have to be confronted nevertheless. One thing I have tried to point out in this response is that Gorski’s argument weaves together strands of theory and empirical analysis with explicitly normative conclusions. I agree with Gorski on many of the analytic and theoretic points, and even some of the normative ones. However, in the spirit of democratic dialogue, I think it is important to bring the entanglements between those strands out in the open as much as possible. My own commitments are firmly secular, but before Obama’s candidacy, I too felt that Democrats especially needed to find a way to call for renewed commitment to a collective American ‘‘we,’’ and I recall surprising myself during a late night discussion with a friend by saying that Democrats were probably too hesitant to express this in terms of religious as well as civic traditions. My friend remarked that he had been reading Niebuhr and that he thought that the intellectual as well as the public tradition of civil religion was ripe for renewal. Both things have to some extent come to pass in the six or seven years since that conversation, although neither the intellectual nor the practical issues are settled. I would like to conclude by bringing the discussion back to Obama and to the idea of civil religion generally. Has Obama ‘‘indeed put Humpty Dumpty back together again’’? I am not so sure. Certainly Obama has found a way to talk about the importance of civic commitment more directly than many Democrats (or indeed Republicans) have done in recent years. Although he was sometimes derided in the 2008 campaign for it, his rhetorical calls for a stronger, shared belonging clearly struck a powerful chord. And to a great extent, he has put this idea of mutual respect and

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shared sacrifice into practice, often refusing to engage in partisan battles (often to the frustration of many erstwhile supporters on the left). It also strikes me that he has been quite hard to pin down on the boundaries and contents of that belonging. Although he is clearly comfortable speaking in the many registers of civil religion, he also mixes that mode freely with civic republicanism and liberal secularism. When he has ‘‘insisted that ‘This is not who we are’’’(Gorski, 2011, p. 20) has he been meant that we have not lived up to our civic ideals, our covenant with God, or both? It also strikes me that his engagement of civil religion as a way to build a more unified American ‘‘we’’ has had only limited success. Obama himself has been essentially written out of this very ‘‘we’’ by many – on racial as well as civic and religious grounds. It hardly bears repeating that a sizable number of Americans believe that he is a socialist, a Muslim, a foreigner posing as a citizen. Finally, does civil religion constitute a fully-fledged folk theory? Again, I am not so sure. Certainly it is a powerful tradition, one that is widely shared and that has provided a platform for confronting injustice as well as complacency. But it is also slippery. The fact that it has been invoked in such different ways by different figures does not invalidate it. To me, it does however suggest that it is less a coherent theory than a broad idiom, akin to what social movement scholars have termed a master frame. Regardless, it is a tradition that has ‘‘not always been invoked in favor of worthy causes’’ (Bellah, 1967, p. 15) – it has been harnessed in service of both internal and external exclusions (see also Kaufmann, 2004). This seems to me no less true today than it was then, and given what is at stake, it seems an important reminder.

NOTES 1. The wording was as follows: ‘‘In the past, some people have called the United States a basically Christian nation. Would you characterize the United States as a Christian nation today?’’ 2. For a discussion of the latter category, see Hout and Fischer (2002).

REFERENCES Bellah, R. N. (1967). Civil religion in America. Daedalus, 96, 1–21. Bellah, R. N. (1992). The broken covenant: American civil religion in time of trial (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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Edgell, P., Gerteis, J., & Hartmann, D. (2006). Atheists as ‘other’: Moral boundaries and cultural membership in American society. American Sociological Review, 71, 211–234. Gorski, P. S. (2011). Barack Obama and civil religion. In: G. Julian (Ed.), Rethinking Obama (Vol. 22, pp. 177–211). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Hansen, J. M. (2003). The lost promise of patriotism: Debating American identity, 1890–1920. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hartmann, D., & Gerteis, J. (2005). Dealing with diversity: Mapping multiculturalism in sociological terms. Sociological Theory, 23, 218–240. Hartmann, D., Gerteis, J., & Edgell, P. (2003). American mosaic project survey [Computer file] ICPSR28821-v1 (2010-12-16. doi:10.3886/ICPSR28821). Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-Uni versity Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]. Hartmann, D., Zhang, Z., & Wischstadt, W. (2005). One (multicultural) nation under God? Changing uses and meanings of the term ‘Judeo-Christian’ in the American media. Journal of Media and Religion, 4, 207–234. Hout, M., & Fischer, C. S. (2002). Why more Americans have no religious preference: Politics and generations. American Sociological Review, 67, 165–190. Kaufmann, E. P. (2004). The rise and fall of Anglo-America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CIVIL RELIGION FOR A DIVERSE POLITY Andrew R. Murphy ABSTRACT Philip S. Gorski’s ‘‘Barack Obama and Civil Religion’’ offers a number of important contributions to the study of American culture generally, and American Civil Religion (ACR) more specifically. Gorski’s appreciation of the deep diversity in contemporary American society is a welcome development in ACR analysis. I ask whether the term ‘‘civil religion’’ remains most adequate for describing the sort of cultural phenomenon that Gorski, following Bellah, attempts to capture, and offer some methodological and interpretive comments on the promise and challenge of studying ACR in the twenty-first century United States. I close with some more particular remarks on Barack Obama and the contours of ACR as sketched by Gorski.

I am delighted to have been asked to participate in this forum on Professor Gorski’s essay, which offers a tantalizing sketch of an exciting book that all scholars interested in American religion, culture, politics, and society will eagerly await. Such essay-length overviews are necessarily truncated versions of much fuller arguments, so my comments here may raise points that will be treated in due course, and at greater length, in the book. That said, the essay stands on its own as well, and I will begin by laying out what I see as Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 225–236 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022015

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its main contributions to the study of American Civil Religion (ACR); discuss several intriguing questions of terminology, conceptual analysis, methodology, and interpretation that the chapter raises; and conclude with a more specific consideration of Barack Obama’s role in all of this.

THE ESSAY’S CONTRIBUTIONS: BRINGING CIVIL RELIGION INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY As I see it, Gorski’s reformulation of ACR enriches our understanding of American culture, politics, and religion in a number of ways, all of them stemming from his recognition of the deep diversity that characterizes contemporary American society. Incorporating Weberian categories that acknowledge the multiple value spheres extant in modern life is the first step in such a recognition, and a move away from Bellah’s Durkheimian approach. As Gorski points out, ‘‘for Weber, the relation between any two value spheres is historically and culturally variable and influenced by material and ideological factors’’ [A fuller discussion of Weber’s value spheres might be augmented by a consideration of Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice (Walzer, 1983), which is not explicitly Weberian in its orientation but which does raise some relevant questions]. ACR, then, is not an automatic reflex, some sort of deep, almost unconscious cultural impulse; but rather one constellation of religio-politics among several, a contested position on a matrix of possibilities and a middle ground between those who would subordinate the political community to religious considerations and those who would rule religious elements out of public life. Thus, through the distinction between civil religion on the one hand and liberal secularism and religious nationalism on the other, Gorski’s version of ACR emphasizes the multiplicity and contestation at the heart of Americans’ ongoing efforts to understand the meaning and significance of their collective political undertaking. As such, ACR stands for a space that permits (even encourages) deep communal self-examination while maintaining a sense of the nation’s singular importance as a source of democratic and egalitarian values and, as Bellah put it in the original article, ‘‘a light to the nations’’ (Bellah, 2005, p. 55; see also Jewett & Lawrence, 2003, esp. Chap. 4). Not only does this reformulated ACR attend to the rhetorical and textual bases of American nationhood (the broad consensus on general principles of nationhood, transcendence, and so on, evidenced by political oratory in times of national crisis), but it also focuses on the tensions that arise from practical questions of how those

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general principles are to be interpreted politically, not to mention geopolitically, in specific situations. None of these elements of Gorski’s ACR are entirely absent from Bellah’s classic formulation, of course, but they are laid out more systematically here. Furthermore, Gorski’s matrix (Figure 1 of the original essay) of possible configurations between the religious and the political suggests ways that we might marry the study of ACR with comparative research on religion, politics, and society. This matrix – which will no doubt be elaborated more fully in the book – holds the promise not only of exploring various religiopolitical constellations over the course of American history (e.g., the intriguing but anomalous figure of John C. Calhoun, or the rise of the Tea Party), but also allows for dialogue between analyses of American religiopolitical dynamics and those of other nations. The bridge between ACR scholarship and the literature(s) on nationalism – whether it be in A. D. Smith’s (2003) analysis of ‘‘chosen peoples,’’ Michael Billig’s (1995) attention to the ordinary and everyday manifestations of nationalism, or more general questions of theorizing the nation that continue to animate scholarly discourse (see, e.g., Beiner, 1999; A. D. Smith, 2010) – is an exciting prospective line of research growing out of Gorski’s essay.

CIVIL RELIGION OR PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY? Both Bellah and Gorski note the roots of theorizing about civil religion in Rousseau’s Social Contract, which allows us to pinpoint what is so unique about its role in the interpretation and analysis of American culture. Rousseau saw civil religion as an overt arm of the state, backed by its coercive power: violation of its tenets, he wrote, should lead to banishment or even death. Bellah, on the other hand, pointed to the more informal ways in which ACR in America relied on extra-governmental cultural resources in ways that gave meaning to the American experience from the colonial period down to the present day. As he put it in the original article, the separation of church and state has not denied the political realm a religious dimension. Although matters of personal religious belief, worship, and association are considered to be strictly private affairs, there are, at the same time, certain common elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share y This public religious dimension is expressed in a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals that I am calling American civil religion. (Bellah, 2005, p. 42)1

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In his 1980 work with Philip Hammond, Varieties of civil religion, Bellah emphasized the ‘‘formality’’ and ‘‘marginality’’ of ACR: it was formal, he wrote, ‘‘in the scarcity and abstraction of its tenets [and] marginal in that it has no official support in the legal and constitutional order y Belief in the tenets of the civil religion is legally incumbent on no one and there are no official interpreters of civil theology’’ (Bellah & Hammond, 1980, p. 12). So from the very outset, it has been important to differentiate the ACR from the sort of explicitly coercive, state-centered civil religion such as Rousseau envisioned (or that was valorized by Machiavelli in his comments on Romulus and Numa2). Gorski properly notes that Bellah eventually abandoned the term ‘‘civil religion’’ altogether in favor of ‘‘public philosophy’’ (Bellah, 1986), a term also used by Bellah’s collaborator William L. Sullivan (1982) and later by Michael Sandel (1996) as well. This terminological move – from civil religion to public philosophy – provides an opening for Gorski’s robust defense of the distinctiveness of ACR as both historical-cultural phenomenon and ongoing contemporary analytic category. Although I would affirm the continuing conceptual importance of civil religion, it is certainly worth asking precisely what the term civil religion ‘‘buys’’ us that ‘‘public philosophy’’ does not. What theoretical work is done by including the term ‘‘religion’’ that would be lost by replacing it with ‘‘philosophy’’? Does the specifically religious imagery and rhetoric of civil religion offer something that ‘‘mere’’ philosophy cannot? And if so, what might it be? Especially as religious studies scholars (Cavanaugh, 2009; Shedinger, 2009; W. C. Smith, 1962; J. Z. Smith, 2004) are engaging in searching debates about whether the term ‘‘religion’’ is itself an analytically useful category – and probing the power dynamics that have always inhered in the notion of religion per se, let alone comparative religious studies – some attention to definitions seems in order. In other words, what is religious and what is civil about civil religion? One possible way to approach this terminological question would be to claim that in a situation of deep diversity and pluralism – where the fastestgrowing response on religious affiliation surveys is ‘‘none’’ – public philosophy has become the functional equivalent of civil religion. Perhaps we should think of civil religion and public philosophy not as dueling terms for describing a constant American reality, but as two stages in an unfolding historical process. Gorski brings in recent and important scholarship that has appeared in the years since Bellah’s pioneering work on civil religion, emphasizing the particularly American nexus of Christianity and republicanism in the early national period (Noll, 2002; see also Holifield, 2003).

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This Christian background figured prominently in Tocqueville’s analyses of American religion, though by the time of Bellah’s original formulation the Protestant mainstream had expanded to include Will Herberg’s (1955) famous trinity of ‘‘Protestant, Catholic, Jew.’’ But what conception of ‘‘religion’’ – civil or otherwise – can adequately encompass the deep diversity in contemporary American society as elaborated in the most recent Pew Research Center data (see http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/affiliations-alltraditions.pdf), where a full 12% of respondents answered ‘‘nothing in particular’’ when asked for their religious affiliation? (Indeed, as Gorski points out, Barack Obama was the first president to explicitly include ‘‘nonbelievers’’ in his celebration of American diversity.) Is it perhaps better to imagine the nation’s collective cultural foundations as something other than ‘‘religious’’? Or is ‘‘religion’’ itself capacious enough to somehow take in the enormous range of American belief and practice?

DATA, METHOD, AND INTERPRETATION: FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN THE STUDY OF ACR One of the more exciting questions that Gorski’s essay raises involves methodology and interpretation. If something like an ACR exists (and I think it does), how ought we to go about identifying and interpreting it? Where should we expect to find ‘‘evidence’’ of its principles? How will we know if it has changed in significant ways over time? Gorski builds the case for ACR (both its existence and its main features) from presidential oratory and other expressions of elite opinion (Winthrop’s ‘‘Christian Charity,’’3 speeches and writings of Douglass, Dewey, Niebuhr, and King). Bellah’s essay opened with John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, and both his and Gorski’s casts of characters consist largely of national-level public figures speaking to issues of significant public import, often in times of grave crisis. The ACR literature claims, of course, that these national public figures reflect, in some way, broader cultural, political, and religious aspects of the American populace. And in a democratic society, there is indeed a prima facie assumption that leaders reflect the sentiments of the electorate. (Of course, the views of the electorate may or may not, depending on the issue, mirror the views of the broader public. But I leave this question aside.) But what are the specific mechanisms and pathways – between elite discourse and mass attitudes, between the views of public figures and those of ordinary citizens – by which these interconnections operate? The link

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between such macro-level occurrences as presidential Inaugural addresses and popular attitudes is often difficult to pin down with precision. Lincoln at Gettysburg, for example, certainly gave voice to key elements of the ACR. And yet although the war was popular in the North when framed as a defense of the Union, it was much less so when viewed as a struggle for the freedom of blacks (witness the New York draft riots, which took place while bodies still were piled on the Gettysburg battlefield). Lincoln received not a single Southern electoral vote in the election of 1860, and remained an intensely controversial president well into his presidency. Frederick Douglass’s eventual praise for the sixteenth president, accurately noted by Gorski, was very slow in coming: Douglass expressed deep and bitter disappointment with Lincoln throughout the early years of his presidency, and even supported a Radical Republican effort to replace Lincoln with John C. Fremont as the Republican presidential candidate in 1864. The apotheosis of Lincoln after his assassination (Peterson, 1994) should not blind us to his intensely controversial four years as president. If Lincoln at Gettysburg gave voice to the ACR, what do we then make of the millions of Americans – and their elite leaders – who were in active rebellion against those principles, let alone those who saw the Civil War merely as a defense of Union and not as a crusade against slavery? Were they simply choosing a different box in Gorski’s matrix? Or is the ACR capacious enough to encompass both Lincoln and John C. Calhoun? (And if so, does it still have conceptual or analytical bite?) So we need to further clarify and interrogate the parallelism between incidents in American politics and broader realities of American society. In political science, this has led to a literature on critical and realigning elections, where the collapse of party systems both responds to and yields new issues, candidates, and political and cultural constellations (examples generally include the elections of 1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, and 1932; see Burnham, 1970; Key, 1955; Sundquist, 1983). Even here, though, making a convincing claim that an electoral return (which represents the will of a certain portion of the people, at one particular time, who cast their votes for a wide variety of often idiosyncratic reasons) is tricky; it is perhaps necessary in order to talk broadly about American politics, but also invites a healthy skepticism about grand claims based on imperfect data (see Dahl, 1990). Lincoln, after all, was elected with roughly 40% of the popular vote in 1860. My point here is not to criticize Gorski’s approach, which he accurately compares to a ‘‘high altitude overview.’’ We continue to need such

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overviews. Rather, I am calling for renewed attention to both the macro and the micro level, for the building of a new literature on the ACR that encompasses both the view from high altitudes and more localized and contested ground-level picture. The micro-level of such a renewed literature could take several forms: case studies of the ACR in specific political episodes or crises across American history (e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the War of 1812). analyses of specific rhetorical aspects of the ACR over time (e.g., Chosen Nation, Manifest Destiny, New World Order). [I attempted to do something along these lines with my analysis of the American jeremiad (Murphy, 2009a).] biographical studies that highlight the connections between personal and political in past and present American leaders (e.g., the spate of works on Lincoln during the 150th anniversary of his birth, in 2009).

Such a new literature of the ACR would also ask about the relations between speakers who articulate the ACR in American politics and the many audiences to which they appeal. How might we go about assessing the influence of thinkers like Niebuhr and Dewey – who sought legitimacy in ways other than elected office – in the lives of ordinary citizens? Complicating all this is one of the great challenges of writing about political rhetoric – and especially about politicians who are or were also political thinkers, like Jefferson, Lincoln, Obama, and so on. How should we best approach political speeches, Inaugural and State of the Union addresses, campaign rhetoric, and the like, as objects of scholarly inquiry? To what extent is the language used in them reflective of a deep personal commitment of principle, and to what extent is it appealing to certain constituencies for political support? (And to what extent, if any, does such a distinction matter?) I do not mean to suggest duplicity, though no doubt there is plenty in American politics. My point is just that scholars of civil religion need always to keep in mind that the texts we use to provide insight into these larger, macro-level historical phenomena are voiced, by their speakers, in highly particular contexts and contests, and represent crafted narratives intended to make certain points to certain constituencies, often with very narrow political aims in mind. When we say that Obama’s speeches since 2004 represent ‘‘an effort to revive and refigure th[e] tradition [of American civil religion],’’ do we mean that Obama is intentionally taking on such a task; that his rhetoric has, intentionally or not, had such an effect (for some Americans, to be sure, though hardly for all); or that, in order to be elected president, certain themes simply must be sounded?

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ENTER OBAMA These methodological or interpretive caveats are in evidence when we arrive at Barack Obama. Here we see the great potential of ACR analysis to shed light on contemporary American society, as well as the challenges of studying a figure so much a part – and so polarizing a part! – of our contemporary discourse. Gorski rightly suggests a biographical component to Obama’s syncretic political thinking, echoing James Kloppenberg’s account in Reading Obama (Kloppenberg, 2010). No doubt a full-fledged biographical treatment of Obama, along the lines suggested in the previous section (third bullet point), will trace these connections and the ways that the feed into Obama’s role in the tradition of ACR; we await such a work. But with Obama, we also see some of the difficulties of attempting scholarly analyses of our contemporaries. For example, did then-Senator Obama, during his 2008 campaign for the presidency, really provide a ‘‘jeremiad’’ against the Bush administration? ‘‘A gentle Jeremiah, to be sure y but a Jeremiah nonetheless.’’ Or did he rather, in the midst of a hard-fought political campaign, simply offer a critique of the incumbent administration? If ACR rightly claims that somehow American political rhetoric is more than ‘‘mere’’ rhetoric, is it also sometimes ‘‘just rhetoric’’? As candidate and president, Obama has exhorted the nation to rise above partisanship, denounced the shrill tone of American politics, and sought a way between polarized extremes: but hasn’t every president spoken in such a way (even while actually behaving in highly partisan ways, see Skinner, 2006)? A continuing engagement with Obama – such as is promised in Gorski’s book – holds the key to bridging the historical study of ACR and its ongoing role in shaping and reflecting American cultural politics into the twenty-first century. I also want to draw special attention to footnote 3 on p. 208, on the issue of political scriptures and the clash between rival hermeneutics for disclosing their meaning. Obama, on this account, is the most recent, and surely one of the most compelling, exemplars of what I have called the ‘‘progressive jeremiad’’: a way of looking to the American past for insight into the crises of the present, without expecting those answers to be found ready-made in the concrete specifics of our predecessors; and understanding that past insights will need to be rethought for new times and new challenges (Murphy, 2009a, 2009b). One might also look at Vincent Crapanzano’s intriguing book Serving the Word (Crapanzano, 1999) for further insight along these lines. I suspect that there is an entire article, if not a book of its

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own, to be written on Obama’s hermeneutic of the nation’s civil religious scriptures (for a start on these issues, see Kloppenberg, 2010, Chap. 3).

A FEW CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS I am less convinced than Gorski of the utility of drawing a sharp distinction between liberalism and republicanism, at least insofar as such a distinction is presented as descriptive of early Americans. He is surely right to point out the divergent tendencies of these two schools of thought in twentieth- or twenty-first-century America, and my own home field of political theory was consumed with the liberalism-communitarianism-republicanism debate for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Having said that, though, thinkers like Locke and Jefferson show how an emphasis on individual rights need not come at the expense of a concern for the health of communities, and it is unclear whether early modern thinkers understood these traditions to be distinct, let alone competing. Nor should we assume, either, that contemporary liberalism entirely eschews moral talk (Berkowitz, 1999; Dagger, 1997; Galston, 1991; Kloppenberg, 2000). The important challenge going forward, I think, is to find a way to bridge the theoretical analysis of ACR and the concrete details of American politics and society. It may be true, theoretically speaking, that ‘‘opposition to y a hubristic and exclusivistic nationalism’’ is one of the negative dogmas of the ACR. But what does this statement about ACR tell us about American electoral politics? We are, after all, just three years out from the Bush administration, where hubristic and exclusive nationalism – from ‘‘Bring ‘em on!’’ to ‘‘Mission Accomplished!’’ – ruled the day. Barack Obama may indeed have ‘‘put Humpty Dumpty together again,’’ in terms of providing sound arguments against religious nationalism and liberal secularism and synthesizing the various elements of the ACR; but politically speaking, such a reconstruction seems fragile at best, given the deep cleavages that his administration has brought to light. So we are left with the difficult relationship between past, present, and future, and the question of how to make sense of the present moment: is the conservative Republican resurgence (from the Tea Party to the legal challenges to the health care legislation; Gorski’s ‘‘political alliance between business-oriented and family values fractions of the present-day GOP’’) evidence of a protracted standoff between civil religion and religious nationalism? Bellah wrote that ‘‘the civil religion has not always been

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invoked in favor of worthy causes (2005, p. 51),’’ but as I understand the account presented in this essay, Gorski would deny that such ‘‘unworthy causes’’ (John Birchers, Know-Nothings, and the like) were in fact employing the ACR, but rather represent religious nationalism masquerading as ACR. Are we left then with standoff? Or are there elements of the ACR – which Gorski rightly characterizes as ‘‘a multistranded social theory with profound critical potentials that often go unrecognized’’ – that might encompass aspects of liberal secularism, or religious nationalism? Does the ACR represent some sort of Rawlsian ‘‘overlapping consensus’’? If so, where might those points of intersection or overlap be, and how might we build on them toward a common American future? In sum, then, I found myself repeatedly challenged and intrigued by Professor Gorski’s essay and anticipate reading the argument in its fuller form. By offering a more complex account of civil religion, as well as its chief competitors, Gorski has laid the foundation for a searching analysis of American culture in the book-length study to come.

NOTES 1. And, in The Broken Covenant, as Gorski points out, Bellah defined civil religion as ‘‘that religious dimension y through which [a people] interprets its historical experience in the light of transcendent reality’’ (1975, p. 2). 2. Despite Romulus’s singular importance in founding Rome, Machiavelli argued that the real author of the city’s glory was not its famous founder but rather his successor Numa, who ‘‘wanted to train [the Romans] to live a sociable life and to practice the arts of peace. So he turned to religion because it is essential for the maintenance of a civilized way of life, and he founded a religion such that for many centuries there was more fear of God in Rome than there has ever been anywhere else’’ (Discourses, I, Chap. 11). 3. Winthrop’s ‘‘Model’’ is at once vital to any account of the ACR and elusive as a primary source. It is unclear when, in what circumstances, by whom, and even whether it was delivered; its existence was largely unknown well into the nineteenth century; its provenance remains dubious in many ways; and the first transcription, published in 1838, was pronounced ‘‘very inaccurate’’ by the venerable scholar Samuel Eliot Morison. And yet it does clearly articulate much of what we know about the aspirations of the Puritan leadership of early New England. For a fascinating account of these issues, see Dawson (1991). I have only one objection to Gorski’s use of Winthrop, and I think it actually reinforces his argument about the centrality of ACR. Gorski states that, in Winthrop’s view, ‘‘if we succeed y then ‘we shall be as a city upon a hill [and] the eyes of all people are upon us’.’’ In fact, Winthrop’s point was that, regardless of whether they succeeded or not, they would be that city on a hill, visible to all around. Thus faithfulness was important, not only because of its consequences for New

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Englanders’ own spiritual and civic health, but also because faithlessness would bring New England and their God into disrepute. The full passage is instructive: For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God y and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

REFERENCES Beiner, R. (Ed.) (1999). Theorizing nationalism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Bellah, R., & Hammond, P. (1980). Varieties of civil religion. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Bellah, R. N. (1975). The broken covenant: American civil religion in time of trial. New York, NY: Seabury Press. Bellah, R. N. (1986). Public philosophy and public theology in America today. In: L. S. Rouner (Ed.), Civil religion and political theology. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Bellah, R. N. (2005). Civil religion in America. Daedalus, 134, 40–55. [Reprinted from Daedalus 96 (1967): 1–21]. Berkowitz, P. (1999). Virtue and the making of modern liberalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage. Burnham, W. D. (1970). Critical elections and the mainsprings of American politics. New York, NY: Norton. Cavanaugh, W. J. (2009). The myth of religious violence. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Crapanzano, V. (1999). Serving the word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit. New York, NY: The New Press. Dagger, R. (1997). Civic virtues: Rights, citizenship, and republican liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dahl, R. A. (1990). Myth of the presidential mandate. Political Science Quarterly, 105, 355–372. Dawson, H. J. (1991). John Winthrop’s rite of passage: The origins of the ‘‘Christian Charitie’’ discourse. Early American Literature, 26, 219–231. Galston, W. (1991). Liberal purposes: Goods, virtues, and diversity in the liberal state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herberg, W. (1955). Protestant, Catholic, Jew. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Holifield, E. B. (2003). Theology in America: Christian thought from the age of the Puritans to the civil war. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Jewett, R., & Lawrence, J. S. (2003). Captain America and the crusade against evil: The dilemma of zealous nationalism. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Key, V. O. (1955). A theory of critical elections. The Journal of Politics, 17, 3–18. Kloppenberg, J. T. (2000). The virtues of liberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kloppenberg, J. T. (2010). Reading Obama: Dreams, hope, and the American political tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Murphy, A. R. (2009a). Prodigal nation: Moral decline and divine punishment from New England to 9–11. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Murphy, A. R. (2009b). Longing, nostalgia, and the golden age: The American jeremiad and the power of the past. Perspectives on Politics, 7, 125–141. Noll, M. (2002). America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Peterson, M. D. (1994). Lincoln in American memory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Sandel, M. J. (1996). Democracy’s discontent: America in search of a public philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press. Shedinger, R. J. (2009). Was Jesus a Muslim? Questioning categories in the study of religion. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Skinner, R. M. (2006). The partisan presidency. In: J. C. Green & D. J. Coffey (Eds.), The state of the parties: The changing role of contemporary American parties. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Smith, A. D. (2003). Chosen peoples: Sacred sources of national identity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Smith, J. Z. (2004). Relating religion: Essays in the study of religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Smith, W. C. (1962). The meaning and end of religion: A new approach to the religious traditions of mankind. New York, NY: Macmillan. Smith, A. D. (2010). Nationalism (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. Sullivan, W. M. (1982). Reconstructing public philosophy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Sundquist, J. C. (1983). Dynamics of the party system: Alignment and realignment of political parties in the United States (Rev. ed.). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Walzer, M. (1983). Spheres of justice: A defense of pluralism and equality. New York, NY: Basic Books.

THE UNFINISHED COVENANT Michael P. Young and Christopher Pieper We should begin with making clear our limitations in responding to Gorski’s article. We are not experts in the debates about American civil religion. Like most sociologists of religion we are familiar with Bellah’s (1967) Daedalus article and its great influence. We have not followed closely the empirical work that sought to test whether a civil religion actually exists in America or elsewhere, and only casually followed the more theoretical debates surrounding the concept itself. We are actually better versed in Gorski’s work and from that perspective we think his article on Obama and civil religion can be usefully read as a continuation of a line of reasoning he launched more than 10 years ago with his American Sociological Review article on historicizing secularization. In that article he claimed that it was probable that ‘‘Western society has become more secular without becoming less religious’’ and explained why (Gorski, 2000, p. 138). Barack Obama’s invocation of an American civil religion and its popular reception by liberal Americans fits well with this line of reasoning. In the heady days of 2008, many liberal Americans seemed to have found (civil) religion with Obama – a surprising turn of events in need of explanation. Before exploring this line of reasoning let us take a step back and ask why even attempt to reformulate and rehabilitate the notion of American civil religion (ACR)? After all, seven years after introducing the concept, Bellah (1975, p. 142) announced it was ‘‘an empty and broken shell.’’ He then walked away from the term altogether, if not the conception. After a flurry of work by social scientists in the 1970s and into the 1980s on the concept, general academic interest in ACR also waned (Mathisen, 1989), and many Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 237–244 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022016

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sociologists of religion thought ACR should be put to rest. Demerath and Williams (1985, p. 166), for example, said the more basic question was not whether ‘‘there is any longer a civil religion’’ but ‘‘whether the United States is any longer a civil society.’’ In anticipation of the culture war debates, Demerath and Williams thought the cultural center on which an American civil religion would have to rest was dissolving and so thoroughly fragmented that the tradition Bellah so lovingly and anxiously described should be pronounced dead. Wuthnow (1988), at roughly the same time, surveying American society and faith since World War II identified at least two civil religions in America and found them to be seriously at odds. The attempt to rehabilitate ACR now more than 40 years after the Daedalus article therefore is a surprising move by Gorski, but his reformulation of the concept may hold the key to explaining another surprise: the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. At the heart of the conception of ACR is what Bellah described in the introduction to a volume he wrote with Hammond on cross-national comparisons of civil religions as the ‘‘ubiquitous religio-political problem.’’ In no society can religion and politics ignore each other. Faith and power must always, however, uneasily, take a stance toward one another. The polity, more than most realms of human action, deals obviously with ultimate things y. Religion, on the other hand, claims to derive from an authority that transcends earthly powers. The possibility of conflict between these potentially conflicting claims is always present, yet collisions are not necessarily constant. At various times and places politics may be little more than the pragmatic art of getting things done and religion may confine itself to ‘‘spiritual’’ matters. Or religion and politics may be two different pragmatics concerned with distinct spheres of existence. One area of overlap and potential conflict is what sociologists call the problem of legitimacy, which includes among other things the question whether existing political authority is moral and right or whether it violates higher religious duties. Most societies have institutionalized ways of dealing with this potential tension. Whether we wish to call all such forms of institutionalization civil religions or confine that term to only some of such forms, it is here that we must locate the problem of civil religion. (Bellah & Hammond, 1980, pp vii–viii, emphasis added)

We reproduce this long passage because we think it aptly describes the problem Gorski successfully tackles in his article. Drawing on a neo-Weberian approach, Gorski has provided a framework to think through these ‘‘potential conflicts’’ (tensions in Gorski’s language) and ‘‘overlaps’’ between religion and politics in modern societies, the particular kind of articulation of them that ACR promises, and how Obama tapped that promise and furthered it. The quote also shows Bellah sounding rather more Weberian than

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Durkhiemian, and if we relieve ACR of some of its Durkheimian and Parsonian burden of providing a sacred canopy of symbols under which all Americans can unite to think about the transcendent meaning of their nation, as Gorski does, civil religion may remain an important concept in thinking about the ubiquitous religio-political problem, the American experience with that problem, and a possible new turn for the political and spiritual influence of liberals in America. In Gorski’s (2000) ASR article, he forcefully argued that theories of secularization remain important to understanding and explaining religious phenomena in modern Western societies. In that article, he made an important intervention in a debate that was drawing a lot of heat but little light. The debate pitted advocates of a new rational-choice paradigm in the study of religion and defenders of secularization theories. The new paradigm supporters argued that since they could find little evidence for the historical decline of religion the term secularization ought be dropped from the current debate and replaced with theories of religious change (see e.g., Stark & Iannaccone, 1994). Gorski (2000) was right to point out that their equation of theories of secularization with theories of religious decline was not entirely correct. Only some secularization theorists argue for the historical decline of religion. What most secularization theories do hold in common is a thesis of differentiation (Gorski, 2000; Smith, 2003; Tschannen, 1991). The central question or puzzle addressed by this family of secularization theories is the impact of social differentiation on religious and nonreligious spheres. The religio-political problem as described above by Bellah is part of this same puzzle. It was in the social space between church and state that Americans articulated and re-articulated their civil religion from the late-eighteenth through the twentieth century. Gorski’s recovery of the strands of discourse brought together in this articulation and re-articulation – civic republicanism and covenant theology – accord with much of the historical narrative Bellah (1975) set down in The Broken Covenant. Gorski makes clear, however, why this tradition steeped in civic republicanism need not exclude nonbelievers. Moreover, his inclusion of liberal secularism and religious nationalism as competing ‘‘solutions’’ to the religio-political problem avoids the functionalism of Bellah’s earliest Durkheimian formulation and helps explain how American civil religion might survive even as the cultural cohesion of civil society show signs of fragmentation and even polarization. Gorski’s neo-Weberian alternative helps makes sense of this possibility. In his 2000 call to theorize and historicize secularization anew, Gorski argued that Weber’s analysis of the rationalization and differentiation of

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value spheres in the essay ‘‘Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions’’ should be the taking-off point for a new theory of the processes of secularization – one that could explain how society could become more secular but not necessarily less religious. Gorski uses this same take-off point for his reformulation of ACR. In the terms of Weber’s historical sociology of religion, the first momentous differentiation of value spheres comes from the salvation religions with their distinction of the worldly and other-worldly. Across these salvation religions, a distinction of meaning domains comes in the form of rejecting the world in favor of a transcendent realm. Weber attributed to the Calvinist and sectarian forms of Protestantism a decisive push in the rationalization of this distinction between the worldly and the other-worldly. In particular, Puritanism with its inner-worldly asceticism prosecuted a relentless criticism of magic and ritualism and a rational organization of ethical life in an effort to transform the world. Rationalization within the differentiated spheres, Weber argues, gives rise to increased tension among spheres. This tension emerges not simply because of an incompatibility, although certainly this is involved, but also because of competing forms of salvation or ultimate value offered by the rationalization of each sphere. As Gorski emphasizes, tension does not mean repulsion and tension can lead to creative interactions or overlaps. One effect of the rationalization of the political sphere can simply be disenchantment triggering a search for deeper meaning in other life orders or value spheres. According to Weber (1946), [b]y virtue of its depersonalization, the bureaucratic state, in important points, is less accessible to substantive moralization than were the patriarchal orders of the past y . In the final analysis, in spite of all ‘social welfare policies,’ the whole course of the state’s inner political functions, of justice and administration, is repeatedly and unavoidably regulated by the objective pragmatism of ‘reasons of state.’ The state’s absolute end is to safeguard (or to change) the external and internal distribution of power; ultimately, this end must seem meaningless to any universalist religion of salvation. (p. 334)

As both Bellah and Gorski argue, politics needs legitimacy that eludes this disenchanted realm and politicians often draw this needed legitimacy from religion. In a religious country like America that politicians would look to religion to find deeper meanings for ‘‘reasons of state’’ is not surprising but also not the only possible source for legitimacy. There are secular sources for legitimacy. Gorski’s inclusion of liberal secularism is an important addition to the discussion here. In his recent book on secularization, Charles Taylor (2007) argues that a crucial aspect of secularization, linked to but not identical with the separation of political structures from religion, is the changing conditions for religious belief and

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unbelief, conditions that go beyond the institutional differentiations of church and state and delve into personal and societal-level changes in ultimate values. Religious belief now appears in many societies as an option, and in some places as an embattled option. A ‘‘purely self-sufficient humanism’’ which accepts no ultimate value ‘‘beyond human flourishing’’ is an increasingly plausible and in some places taken-for-granted world view. Believers and nonbelievers alike confront this secular reality when making sense of their own ultimate political values (Taylor, 2007, p. 18). As Casanova (1994) has convincingly argued, institutional differentiation of temporal authority and religion has in many western societies led to the marginalization of religion. (America may be exceptional in this regard.) Marginalization or more precisely privatization of religion does not, however, necessarily mean diminishment. The privatization of religion often deepens and disperses religious meanings in ways that are indispensable for understanding religion’s current political resurgence in many countries, not just America. In these contexts of secular transvaluation, religious political resurgence has come largely in the form of ‘‘life politics,’’ to use Giddens’ term, or new religious social movements defending the ‘‘lifeworld’’ from secularizing ‘‘systems rationalization’’ in Habermas’ terms (Giddens, 1991; Habermas, 1987). In this sense, secularization has brought a degree of reflexivity to religious belief. ‘‘Naı¨ ve acknowledgement of the transcendent, or of goals or claims which go beyond human flourishing’’ is ‘‘now unavailable to anyone, believer or unbeliever alike’’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 21). A radical shift in the background, in the framework of the taken-for-granted, effects religious believers was well as nonbelievers. This radical shift marks the political resurgence of religion in characteristic ways. It can be seen in Obama’s creative and reflective reformulation of ACR and possibly the voting behavior of so-called religious ‘‘nones.’’ Weber (1946) also argues that politics may at decisive points come into direct competition with religion. For example, he claims that ‘‘war creates pathos and a sentiment of community’’ so deep and meaningful that ‘‘only those who perish ‘in their callings’ are in the same situation as the soldier who faces death on a battlefield’’ (Weber, 1946, p. 335). Massive economic dislocations and populist millennial political responses to them present another example of competition where a political-economic ethic of brotherly love may rival the pathos of religious community. Bellah (1975) argued, and we think Gorski would agree, that in America, the creative tension between ‘‘party’’ and ‘‘church,’’ the fact that neither can monopolize the meaning of ultimate values, has saved the country from the often ugly consequences of a polity sanctifying itself in a sacrificial nationalism. It may

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also, as a consequence, help make ‘‘socialism taboo’’ in America (Bellah 1975, Chap. V). When the Civil War came, Lincoln spoke to the national conscience about the transcendent meaning of the massive deaths on the battlefield in a way to heal both sides and not to sanctify the victor. And during the Great Depression, Dewey and Niebuhr were spiritual and political guides holding the center with democratic promise and introspective guilt. Of course parity and overlap between religion and politics have not always been the American course and it may not be the future course. Gorski argues that liberals ought to celebrate Obama’s rehabilitation of this tradition. In the wake of a resurgent religious right that at times steers dangerously close to a religious nationalism that would scuttle parity and overlap, liberals seem to have found in Obama’s civil theology a more popular alternative to liberal secularism. Obama is undoubtedly an adept of the ACR tradition – however deep the tradition it runs in the everyday lives of Americans (and we think that remains an open question). But liberals should not be too giddy. The common faith Obama brings to life follows a Deweyian idea: the experience of unification in times of trial can never be fully realized, but the hope of it remains a real and powerful guiding experience so long as it leads to creative and collective adjustments to the trial. In Obama’s own words from Philadelphia in March of 2008: In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand-that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well y This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.

Will this generation inspired by Obama continue that run and show that it can ‘‘always be perfected?’’ America is facing a very serious trial: economic strength, influence abroad, and integration at home are all under pressure. Social and cultural experiences of fragmentation among the American people may actually strengthen the spiritual and political communitarian-pull of Obama’s reformulated American civil theology. In Bellah’s historical narrative, the American civil religion developed through times of trial. The trials were met with conversion and new covenants. In the past when the civil religion was not an empty shell, Americans under trial were collectively convicted by sin and converted. Coming out of the trial always required a new obligation, a new covenant. In Dewey’s terms, it demanded a collective adjustment.

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Bellah cautions that if a new covenant is to be formed, if we are to renew ourselves as a covenant people, conversion alone will not do it. ‘‘If we are to transcend the limitations of American culture and society it can only be on the basis of an imaginative vision that can generate an experience of inner conversion and lead to a new form of covenant. Liberation without any sense of constitution will surely be self-defeating’’ (pp. 85–86). Obama’s rhetoric acknowledges this. As Gorski notes, his civil theology mixes the hope of Dewey’s ‘‘collective intelligence’’ with the cautious understanding of Niebuhr’s ‘‘original sin.’’ In 2008, Obama provided an imaginative vision that bound millions of Americans together in the hope for change. He did so through a brilliant reformulation of the American civil religion, but has it led to a renewed moral commitment of a convenant people willing to reorder its life? Of course, the application of the vision must fall short of the aspiration, but from the vantage point of 2011 the application appears very weak. So much hangs in the balance with the outcome of Obama’s presidency. Americans are facing a trial. Obama’s soaring rhetoric provided the imaginative vision generating a feeling of change for many Americans, but what of the new covenant? Has a new obligation to reorder our national life to the highest standards has followed? National crimes against our economy have occurred that deserve national punishment or at least atonement but none has come. Thousands of families of children born on American soil who live the American civil religion in their everyday lives have been ripped apart by Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of a failure to reform immigration – a failure to apply the reformulated vision of a more perfect union Obama offered. And Americans continue to die on foreign battlefields without an exalted purpose to make these deaths meaningful. We are not asking about a national covenant beyond all the parties, but much more modestly about a moral discipline within one party. The promised but unfulfilled change articulated in Obama’s civil theology could leave liberal Americans with hardened hearts. If so, ‘‘the full-throated embrace of liberal secularism by the intellectual allies of the Democratic party’’ bemoaned by Gorski will once again drown out the civil theologians of liberalism.

REFERENCES Bellah, R. N. (1967). Civil religion in America. Daedalus, 96, 1–21. Bellah, R. N. (1975). The broken covenant: American civil religion in time of trial. New York: The Seabury Press.

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Bellah, R. N., & Hammond, P. E. (1980). Varieties of civil religion. San Francisco: Harper and Row, Publishers. Casanova, J. (1994). Public religions in the modern world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Demerath, N. J., III., & Williams, R. H. (1985). Civil religion in an uncivil society. Annals of the American Academy, 480, 154–165. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gorski, P. (2000). Historicizing the secularization debate: Church, state and society in late medieval and early modern Europe, ca. 1300–1700. American Sociological Review, 65, 138–167. Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative action, vol. 2. Translated by T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Mathisen, J. A. (1989). Twenty years after Bellah: Whatever happened to American civil religion? Sociological Analysis, 50, 129–146. Smith, C. (Ed.) (2003). The secular revolution: Power, interests, and conflict in the secularization of American public life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Stark, R., & Iannaccone, L. R. (1994). A supply-side reinterpretation of the ‘secularization’ of Europe. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 33, 230–252. Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tschannen, O. (1991). The secularization paradigm: A systematization. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30, 395–415. Weber, M. (1946). Religious rejections of the world and their directions. In: H. H. Gerth & C. W. Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in sociology (pp. 323–359). New York: Oxford University Press. Wuthnow, R. (1988). The restructuring of American religion: Society and faith since world war II. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press.

REJOINDER: WHY CIVIL RELIGION? Philip S. Gorski ABSTRACT This essay is a response to comments made by Gerteis, Murphy, Young, and Pieper. The question of ‘‘why civil religion?’’ is further clarified. Also discussed are the conceptual and normative challenges of civil religion and the potentialities, limitations, and pitfalls of civil religion. As I write these words, both houses of the United States Congress are preparing to vote on the 10-year $2.5 trillion austerity program which the Republican House extracted from the Obama Administration as the political price for lifting the debt ceiling until 2012. The driving forces behind this political showdown are well known: the large cohort of ‘‘Tea Party’’ freshmen swept into office during the 2010 mid-term elections, the grass roots movement of tri-corn sporting ‘‘small government’’ activists who door-knocked for them, and, last but not least, the financial backing of wellheeled, anti-tax libertarians such as the infamous Koch brothers via ‘‘Freedom Works’’ and other astro-turfing front groups. For better or for worse, most observers concur, the final legislation would not have been tilted nearly so far to the right – to the right even of what many GOP voters would have preferred, the surveys tell us – had it not been for the ideological intransigence of the Tea Party, whose willingness to engage in a perilous Rethinking Obama Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 22, 245–258 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2011)0000022017

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game of legislative chicken seriously threatened to drive the American economy over the proverbial cliff. Although a suicidal crack-up has been averted, at least for now, the left is still feeling steamrolled. The liberal commentariat, from the New York Times to ‘‘Daily Kos’’ has focused much of its ire on President Obama, who stands accused of being a closet moderate and a weak negotiator. In short, we are now a very long way from the heady days of the 2008 campaign which originally inspired me to revisit the civil religion concept in the first place, so far, in fact, that some may wonder whether it is still worth revisiting at all. I will return to this question in the conclusion to my rejoinder. Before doing so, however, I will first try to address the insightful questions raised by the three commentators. As I understand them, these questions fall into three categories: conceptual, ethical, and political. Specifically, they call concern conceptual clarification, moral justification and practical feasibility.

WHAT IS CIVIL RELIGION? FURTHER CLARIFICATIONS In my chapter, I defined civil religion in both formal and substantive terms: formally, as a situation of parity and overlap between the religious and political value spheres and substantively as the weaving together of covenant theology and civic republicanism. Young and Pieper rightly intuited that the formal aspect of my definition grew directly out of my earlier work on the secularization debate. But my views about secularization have changed significantly over the last decade. Although it will involve a brief historical detour, explaining how they have changed will enable me to further clarify what I do, and do not mean, by the term ‘‘civil religion,’’ and what is, and is not distinctive, about ‘‘American civil religion,’’ as I understand it. In ‘‘Historicizing the Secularization Debate,’’ I sought a via media between the orthodox paradigm of secularization and the supply-side critique (Gorski, 2000). In most versions of the orthodox theory, it is argued that the Protestant Reformation and the Wars of Religion had powerful secularizing effects.1 They are variously said to have resulted in a ‘‘separation of church and state,’’ the ‘‘privatization of religious practice,’’ or even in a decline in religious belief (Berger, 1969; Bruce, 1996; Philpott, 2001). The supply-side critique focuses on the third claim, ignoring the other two. Far from undermining belief, argued Rodney Stark and his collaborators, the fragmentation of Latin Christendom had the inverse effect: it actually ‘‘Christianized’’ Europe for the first time; before this period, they suggest, Europe was still ‘‘pagan’’

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(Stark, 1999; Stark & Iannaccone, 1994). In contrast, I argued that the early modern era witnessed a ‘‘de-differentiation of religion and politics,’’ and a ‘‘rationalization’’ of religious life. A re-differentiation of church and state, I concluded, would not occur until the modern era. Over the past decade, the literature on secularization has grown exponentially (Asad, 2003; Casanova, 2006; Taylor, 2007) . And today, I would only defend my concluding claim. In retrospect, the plotline of that article – ‘‘differentiation, de-differentiation, re-differentiation’’ – appears misleading and crude. Misleading, insofar as it implied a golden age of religio-political unity, when church and state were as yet undifferentiated. Crude, insofar as it tacitly conceptualized differentiation in purely quantitative terms. This is not to deny that there have been periods of close cooperation between the Christian church(es) and temporal power(s); one thinks, for instance, of the closing centuries of the Roman Empire, post-Constantine (MacMullen, 1984), or the era of ‘‘confessional states’’ in Western Europe, following the Reformation, which I explored in The Disciplinary Revolution (Gorski, 2003). But there have also been periods of greater autonomy, as in the heady days of the Jesus movement, when the Christian communities took root in the interstices of the Roman Empire (Meeks, 2003), the heyday of Latin Christendom, after the ‘‘Papal Revolution’’ had largely freed the Roman Church from lay control (Berman, 1983), and, of course, our own ‘‘Secular Age,’’ with its constitutional ‘‘separation of church and state.’’ Alas, it is difficult to fit these historical oscillations into a linear narrative of everincreasing ‘‘differentiation.’’ Nor can we adequately describe them in simply quantitative terms, as oscillations in the degree of differentiation. This is not to say that we should abandon the concept of differentiation altogether; I doubt we can do without it. Rather, it is to insist on the need for a more sophisticated theory of differentiation. One possible starting point is Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, which sensitizes us to qualitative shifts in the underlying principle governing religio-political relations (Luhmann, 1989, 1997; Luhmann & Kieserling, 2000). Functional differentiation, as Luhmann understands it, organizes society into heterogeneous systems, economic, political, religious, and so on. A social system, in his framework, is a system of ‘‘communication,’’ that produces and reproduces itself and its ‘‘environment’’ via a binary ‘‘code.’’ The modern religious system, for example, employs an ‘‘immanent/transcendent’’ binary. Luhmann argues, rightly in my view, that functional forms of social differentiation do not really become fully dominant until the modern era, even if they are foreshadowed much earlier – in Martin Luther’s doctrine of the ‘‘two kingdoms’’ (Bornkamm, 2005), for example, or Marsilius of

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Padua’s theory of the ‘‘two swords’’ (Marsilius & Nederman, 1993). In the Middle Ages, argues Luhmann, the dominant principle of social differentiation was ‘‘stratification.’’ The stratification principle structured relations both within and between the religious and political systems. Both had their own ‘‘aristocracies,’’ priests in the one case, warriors in the other. And the authority of the Church generally trumped the authority of the princes, not only in principle, but often enough, in practice as well. In the early modern era, I would argue, the dominant principle governing religio-politics was ‘‘segmentation.’’ Latin Christendom was divided up into three competing and homologous ‘‘confessions’’: Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist (Klueting, 1989; Schilling, 1988; Zeeden, 1985). Now, however, it was generally the princes who claimed final authority over the churches, inverting the Medieval situation. In early modern legalese, appropriately enough, ‘‘secularization’’ referred to the seizure of church properties or prerogatives by the worldly authorities, not to ‘‘differentiation’’ or ‘‘privatization’’ (of which, in fact, there was precious little) (1984). Against this backdrop, we can now distinguish three different historical forms of civil religion within Western political discourse: (1) a classical form, exemplified by Ancient Rome and Greece, in which there was as yet no clear differentiation between ‘‘state’’ and ‘‘church’’ or between ‘‘temporal’’ and ‘‘sacerdotal power’’ and participation in the civic cult was obligatory for all citizens (Scheid, 2003). (2) an early modern form, inspired by the Roman example and championed by Machivelli and Hobbes, in which the state would have final authority over church teachings, which would be instrumentalized by sovereign rulers for political purposes (Beiner, 2011); and (3) a modern form, premised on a partial separation of the religious and political, with principled parity between them. When I speak of civil religion, I am referring only to the modern form. In the United States, as Bellah rightly recognizes, partial separation has meant ‘‘separation of church and state’’ but not ‘‘separation of religion and politics.’’ Church/state separation involves organizational autonomy and role differentiation. The church is not a ‘‘department’’ within the state, as it still is in many European countries, and it never has been, not even in the New England ‘‘theocracies’’ of the 17th century. Likewise, clerics are not state officials qua clerics, as they often were in the state churches of Western Europe. But religion and politics have always been connected through civil and political society, and continue to be so today via social movements, nonprofit groups, parachurch organizations, political parties, and so on. In practice, principled parity has meant an ongoing effort – not always successful, to be sure – to balance the sometimes conflicting goods of religious

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freedom and civic equality. Many of the most vexed and controversial judicial decisions of the last half century involve efforts to square this circle. In Employment Division v. Smith, for instance, the Supreme Court considered the question of whether a Native American citizen could be denied unemployment benefits for using peyote in a religious ritual; it answered in the affirmative. In Warner vs. Boca Raton, a Florida court had to decide whether a local cemetery’s regulations requiring ‘‘discreet’’ grave markings violated the religious freedoms of grieving relatives who erected special memorials to their loved ones (Sullivan, 2005). Not surprisingly, given the conflicting goods that are at issue – namely, religious freedom and civic equality – the courts have had great difficulty in establishing a consistent and unified set of standards for deciding such cases. Many observers feel that they have failed. And a few have even gone so far as to propose that the ‘‘civil religion’’ concept itself might provide a better starting point! (Davis, 1997; Mirsky, 1986). For all these reasons, I believe that civil religion is more consistent with the social organization and cultural traditions of the United States than are either liberal secularism or religious nationalism. Liberal secularists rightly insist that the United States was premised on a ‘‘separation of church and state,’’ but they wrongly understand this to mean a separation of religion and politics, such that religious actors and arguments would be banished from the public square (Audi & Wolterstorff, 1997; Rawls, 1971; Rorty, 1999).2 Religious nationalists, meanwhile, are right to insist that the United States was once a ‘‘Christian nation’’ – if we understand ‘‘nation’’ in terms of demographic and political dominance – but they are wrong to claim that it was ‘‘founded’’ as such in terms of its ideals or laws. The drily deistic rhetoric of the Declaration and the fully godless language of the Constitution provide no ‘‘scriptural’’ warrants for this assertion. What do I mean, though, when I refer to civil religion as a ‘‘tradition’’? First, let me be clear about what I do not mean. I do not mean political incrementalism in the Burkean or De Maistrean sense. Tradition, as I understand it, can also be radical in the sense of critical, even revolutionary, in its implications. Nor do I mean a lifestyle traditionalism of the sort that many religious conservatives champion. Tradition, as I understand it, is not firm and fixed but open-ended and subject to revision. Finally, by tradition, I do not mean a social consensus, nor even a majority opinion. Tradition, in my view, involves argument. Rather, the American civil religion is more like a ‘‘tradition of moral enquiry’’ in MacIntyre’s sense (MacIntyre, 1981; MacIntyre, 1990). It is an ongoing argument about how we should order our lives in common whose parameters are set by the language and authority of certain sacred texts and certain canonical interpreters but subject to revision in

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light of experiment and experience. Among other texts, America’s ‘‘Old Testament’’ includes Winthrop’s Arbella sermon, its Gospels are the Declaration and the Constitution, its ‘‘Book of Acts’’ the writings of the Founders, its Epistles include the ‘‘Gettysburg Address,’’ the ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech, and, perhaps one day, Obama’s race speech as well. And its leading theologians include, not only the authors of these texts and the various other figures treated in my chapter but other politicians, pastors, philosophers and activists as well.3 But is it still a tradition worth defending? It is to this question, that I now turn.

WHY CIVIL RELIGION? CONCEPTUAL AND NORMATIVE CHALLENGES Let us assume, for the moment, that this tradition of moral enquiry actually exists. Why call it ‘‘civil religion?’’ Why not call it ‘‘public philosophy’’ as Murphy and others propose (Bellah, 1986)? Or just plain ‘‘civic republicanism’’ as Gerteis would prefer? There are other possibilities as well, such as ‘‘public theology’’ (Stackhouse, Hainsworth, & Paeth, 2010; Thiemann, 1991) and ‘‘public religion’’ (Casanova, 1994). Would not one of these conceptualizations be preferable? After all, the ‘‘civil religion’’ concept does tend to make a lot of people feel a little queasy. Nonbelievers are apt to recoil at the word ‘‘religion.’’ Believers may shrink from the adjective ‘‘civil.’’ The underlying worry is that politics will be contaminated by religion, or vice versa. I think there are good reasons for sticking with ‘‘civil religion.’’ One is interpretive adequacy. If Bellah and I are right in arguing that the substance of the civil religion tradition consists in a tight synthesis of covenant theology and civic republicanism, then ‘‘public philosophy’’ and ‘‘civic republicanism’’ obscure or leave out the religious strand of the tradition. ‘‘Public theology’’ is equally problematic. Civil religion, after all, is not just a theology, it is also a liturgy. Its ritual calendar includes saints days (President’s Day, MLK Day), birth days (July 4th) and death days (Memorial Day), and its history includes a long series of ‘‘great awakenings,’’ national revival movements that mobilized a significant portion of the citizenry. ‘‘Public’’ or ‘‘civil theology,’’ in other words, is only one component of civil religion. As for ‘‘public religion,’’ Jose Casanova has already given it a very specific meaning. For him, public religion refers to the political engagement of religious

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communities, usually on behalf of a particular goal. This is not the same as a tradition of moral enquiry. Of the various concepts on offer, then, civil religion still seems to me the most accurate. Is it also the most politic? It is true that civil religion is an irksome term. But that can be an advantage if it irks people to reflect (Connolly, 1999, 2005). Perhaps it will remind nonbelievers that they, too, may have certain kinds of ‘‘transcendent’’ commitments, that go beyond the ‘‘individual rights’’ and ‘‘material interests’’ that comprise the liberal creed. It might even help some die-hard liberals to see that their worldview is not neutral as to the human good (Asad, 2003; MacIntyre, 1988; Sandel, 1982Sandel, 1996), as some clearthinking liberals have already acknowledged (Beiner, 2011; Holmes, 1993), insofar as it tacitly presumes human flourishing consists (solely) in personal autonomy and maximal utility. The civil religion concept also contains a reminder for the many religious believers who do not believe in incivility and intolerance, and recognize that they are contingent and fragile accomplishments which must be protected. It might even compel some unrepentant Christian nationalists to face up to the deep pluralism of American society. Let us now set aside terminological questions and focus on normative ones. Gerteis’ comments raise a common objection to the civil religion tradition, namely, that it is potentially ‘‘exclusive’’ and in two senses, one generic, the other specific. The generic concern is that all strong forms of solidarity produce and indeed require social or cultural ‘‘others.’’ A stronger ‘‘we’’ leads to an othered ‘‘them.’’ He therefore wonders whether a weaker and more universalistic form of ‘‘we-ness’’ such as ‘‘secular liberal cosmopolitanism’’ might not be preferable. The specific concern is that the American civil religion is just too religious and, in particular, just too Christian to accommodate ‘‘secularists’’ such as himself. So, if we really do want a stronger form of solidarity than liberal secularism can provide, perhaps we should ground it in civil republicanism instead – as is the case in contemporary France, for example. Let me address these two objections in turn. Gerteis is of course correct that there is a potential trade-off between solidarity and inclusiveness, that more solidaristic worldviews such as Christian nationalism often lead to stronger exclusions, whereas more inclusive worldviews such as liberal secularism often lead to weaker solidarity. I would simply counter that the civil religious tradition seeks to balance the competing goods of solidarity and inclusion while guarding against their corresponding vices of anomie and othering. It is able to do so, because its ‘‘DNA’’ is composed of intertwining theological and philosophical strands that mirror one another in positing a genetic connection between individual flourishing and

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republican self-government. It therefore aims for a via media between the radical moral subjectivism and political individualism that characterizes strong forms of secular liberalism,4 on one hand, and the extreme moral absolutism and political collectivism that typifies religious nationalism, on the other. I would further add that the civil religious tradition, as it has developed, avoids the worst forms of exclusivity. Insofar as it is premised on a civic understanding of national identity and a prophetic form of Christian theology, it does not employ (explicitly) racial or cultural markers of exclusion and inclusion, but political and ethical ones, and can evolve into the sort of integrative multiculturalism that Gerteis advocates – indeed has already evolved in this direction in Obama’s rendering. Of course, civil religion does still exclude certain ethico-political orientations, but it does so on prescriptive rather than ascriptive grounds. In other words, nobody is excluded from the tradition ex ante by their (ir)religious orientation or birth. Is civic republicanism nonetheless more inclusive? There is good reason to doubt it. Consider again the case of France, where an antitheistic form of civic republicanism inherited from the Revolution serves to legitimate the complete exclusion of religious symbols from public life and creates a huge stumbling block for the integration of French Muslims. In the United States, by contrast, where public expressions of religion in civil society are widely accepted, there has been no ‘‘headscarf affair.’’ Anti-Sharia demagoguery notwithstanding, American Muslims have achieved a much greater degree of social integration and cultural acceptance than their French counterparts. Far from increasing divisions, I would argue the theistic thread of our civil religion facilitates inclusion. Following Patrick Deneen, I would further argue that the Augustinian coloration of that thread helps to temper the hubristic propensities of republican politics, while the civic focus of republicanism tempers the sectarian propensities of Augustinian realism. That said, Gerteis is surely also correct that most Americans will apprehend the civil religion through a Christian lens, whether out of a personal commitment to the Christian faith or because they are unfamiliar with civic republicanism. Does this mean that the tradition excludes avowed secularists such as him? I do not see why this should be the case. As Murphy rightly observes, the American civil religion as I interpret it is a bit like an ‘‘overlapping consensus’’ a` la Rawls. In Political Liberalism, to recall, Rawls argues that democratic citizens can reach agreement about basic principles of ‘‘political justice’’ even if they do not share the same ‘‘comprehensive worldview’’ (Rawls, 2005). Their ethics thus ‘‘overlap’’ without being fully coterminous. So, an avowedly secular civic republican could agree with a

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social justice Christian about a great many things – about the world historical significance of the American project, about the centrality of religious freedom and representative government to that project, about the admirable virtues of John Winthrop, Abraham Lincoln and Martin King, and so on, and so on, without thereby agreeing about the existence of God or a human telos. As these examples indicate, however, the sort of ‘‘overlapping consensus’’ I have in mind here is also somewhat different from Rawls’, in that it extends beyond abstract principles, to include political scriptures, civic saints, national parables, and so on. It provides a focal point for an ongoing debate, not foundational principles of political justice, which is why I refer to it as a ‘‘tradition of moral enquiry’’ rather than, say, a tradition of ‘‘public reason.’’

WHITHER CIVIL RELIGION? POTENTIALITIES, LIMITATIONS, AND PITFALLS If there were ever any doubts about the political potentials of civil religion in the United States, then surely they were laid to rest during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Obama’s success in capturing the Democratic nomination and then the White House itself was obviously due to many factors: his ‘‘fifty-state’’ strategy with its focus on party caucuses, for example, and McCain’s choice of a running mate, not to mention the propitious timing of the financial crisis. But one of these factors was certainly the soaring rhetoric of Obama’s campaign, a rhetoric, I have argued, that seized up the central stands of the civil religion tradition and rewove them into a multicultural tapestry. Another was the ‘‘collective emotions’’ unleashed by the campaign itself, which had many of the characteristics of a modern-day religious revival: sports stadiums filled with fainting, cheering, and weeping Americans, joyfully unburdening themselves, in this case, of the national sins of the Bush Administration. For a time, it appeared that the ‘‘culture wars’’ and political polarization that had riven America since the late 1960s might finally be over. But only for a time. Within one short year, the soaring rhetoric had given way to sausage making, and another year later, to divided government and political gridlock. Once again, there were numerous factors at work: the unanticipated depth of the ‘‘great recession,’’ the precipitous rise of the Tea Party, Obama’s decision to expend most of his political capital on healthcare reform, and so on. Historians and social scientists will no doubt be busy

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dissecting these events for many years to come. But part of the problem was surely Obama’s failure to effectively connect his campaign rhetoric to his governing strategy. Was this a personal failure on Obama’s part? Or is it a genetic defect in the civil religion itself? Did Obama simply fail to translate the poetry of his campaign into the prose of policy? Or is the civil religion itself untranslatable? Some liberal commentators seem to incline towards the latter view. For example, a recent blog by Paul Krugman – never a great fan of Obama’s – was entitled ‘‘Hope is Not a Plan’’ (NYT, 08/03/11). The implication of the title (if not the point of the article) is that the shibboleths of the campaign do not translate into a plan for governing. Other observers are more apt to find fault with Obama himself. At a forum on James Kloppenburg’s recent book, Reading Obama, one audience member astutely suggested that Obama’s greatest weakness as a politician was that he lacked a ‘‘middle register’’ in between the ‘‘high register’’ of the civil religion and the ‘‘low register’’ of the ‘‘policy wonk.’’ As a result, he is able to articulate general principles and outline specific policies, but unable to give principled defenses of these policies. In my view, both criticisms contain some truth. Translating the overarching ideals of the civil religion into actual proposals for social reform and defending them against partisan opponents requires a kind of political casuistry and verbal jiujutsu that Obama, for all his talents, has clearly not (yet) fully mastered. Should we expect him to? Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh frequently (half) jokes that he has been ‘‘proven to be right 99.6% of the time.’’ Although some might argue that these numbers are upside down, Limbaugh’s charge that many Democrats viewed Obama as ‘‘the messiah’’ is not entirely wrong. After eight years in the wilderness, many progressives were indeed hoping for a political savior. In his Inaugural Address, Obama tried to tamp down the expectations he himself had helped create, but without success. The moral of this tale, as I read it, is that prophecy and pragmatism are hard to square. Even Moses eventually needed an Aaron. Perhaps Obama needs a (new) Jeremiah. One of the great ironies of American politics today is that most ‘‘Liberal’’ Democrats are actually civic republicans at heart, while an increasing number of ‘‘Conservative’’ Republicans are actually radical libertarians. If workaday Liberal Democrats spent as much time reading and talking about Aristotle, Tocqueville and Sandel as Republican foot-soldiers spend on Smith, Hayek and Rand, they would probably be better able to articulate a genuinely republican vision of the United States. There, they would find powerful arguments for socio-economic equality as a precondition of

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healthy self-government, and powerful critiques of the moral and political corruption that currently infects American democracy. I would add that secular activists would do well to familiarize themselves with the prophetic style of the Old Testament, the way that their African American counterparts do. Of course, civil religion is not without its pitfalls. As Gerteis warns, and Murphy has shown at length, there are certain variants of civil religion that are close cousins of religious nationalism. Claims concerning the historical significance of American ideals can readily devolve into boasts concerning the exceptional character of the American nation. Winthrop’s urgings that America be a ‘‘city upon a hill’’ and a ‘‘light to the nations’’ too often mutate into empty boasting that ‘‘America is the greatest country in history’’ and therefore has a right to impose its will on other nations. Thus, it is important to know just where the boundary lies. Rhetorically, it is clearly marked – with blood: the blood of racial belonging and the blood of the ‘‘ultimate sacrifice.’’ And however influential liberal secularism may be amongst the scribbling chattering classes, the mass appeal of religious nationalism is undoubtedly far greater.

CONCLUSION: STRONG TEA, WEAK TEA Liberals love to scoff, and the Tea Party Movement certainly provides a ‘‘target rich environment.’’ Teabags dangling from ball caps, knee-socks with white sneakers, misspelled placards and misdirected slogans – who can resist a chuckle or two in the end? Not me certainly. And yet perhaps we can also learn a thing or two from the Tea Party. Its libertarian and Christianist version of American history may be wildly partisan. Its reading of the Constitution may be highly selective. Its political demands may run counter to the material interests of its followers. But it does have a highly focused political agenda rooted in a particular reading of American history that has a considerable degree of popular resonance. Compared to this, I think contemporary liberalism is pretty weak tea. For one thing, it lacks narrative depth. The Great Society and the New Deal are its primary historical reference points. Its connection to the national foundings is tenuous at best. For another, it eschews ritual expressions. In this regard, it merely brings the anti-sacramentalism of liberal Protestantism to its logical conclusion. It is weak tea, in short, because it is not steeped enough in national history, and not sweetened enough with civic ritual.

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It need not be that way. It is possible to construct a narrative of American history that reconnects the New Deal and the Great Society with earlier episodes of social reform, such as Reconstruction and, of course, the Revolution itself, particularly when they are viewed as successive efforts to achieve the ideals of civic equality and ‘‘brotherly affection’’ set forth during the foundings. There is, for example, a persistent concern about the corrupting potentialities of the ‘‘money power’’ that now seems remarkably prescient. There was, as well, a deep awareness that excessive inequality would undermine civic virtue and distort self-government, this too, a contemporary concern. Having bought into the consumerist materialism and moral relativism that define the liberal-utilitarian worldview, many Americans, including sadly, Obama himself at times, often find it hard to articulate a full-throated critique of these ills that will resonate beyond the seminar rooms of elite universities and the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. And so we carp instead. But you cannot undermine a powerful narrative of collective purpose simply by poking holes in it through factual criticisms. Rather, you have to set forth a different and better story. Liberal secularism is not that story. It is a story of individual liberation, not collective purpose. I think civil religion is the counter-story, a story that weds human flourishing with collective purpose. Drink up.

NOTES 1. For an absolutely devastating critique of this argument, see Chapter 2 of Cavanaugh (2009). 2. Interestingly, Rawls and Rorty substantially revised their positions in Rawls (1997). Rorty (1999). 3. Of course, liberal secularism and religious nationalism are also traditions in this sense, even if they deny it. The universal rallying cry of American secularists is Jefferson’s bon mot ‘‘a wall of separation.’’ Religious nationalists originally imagined the U.S. as a Protestant nation, then a Christian nation, and now, increasingly, as a Judeo-Christian nation. 4. I would further note that many self-identified ‘‘liberal secularists’’ are not really serious liberals, if by liberalism, we mean the Anglo-American tradition running from Locke through Bentham to Hayek and on to Friedman. Most liberal secularists are actually the descendants of liberal Protestantism or Reformed Judaism. They are ‘‘liberal’’ in the sense that this term acquired among American social reformers during the early 20th century: they believe that the power of big government is the only counter-balance to the power of big business, and that the transition from an agrarian society of yeomen small-holders to an industrial society of urban wageearners requires the creation of a social safety net and the institution of market regulations so as to (re)create a secure and independent citizenry.

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