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To locate and assess the significant variables in Obama’s victories and provide a theoretical framework of racism and the racial problematic that explicates why the Obama presidency has been animated by racism and the race problematic.

A demographic profile of Obama’s election is developed in order to assess the results, how different cohorts voted, and explain the critical nuances of why Obama won. A theoretical framework of racism and the race problematic is developed in order to illustrate how racism and the racial problematic function and situate the Obama phenomenon within the critical processes of the American discourse on racism and the fallacy of a post-racial moment. An examination is also made of some of the current trends in how racism continues to define the responses to the Obama public policy agenda.

While Obama was elected and reelected with broad-based support from nearly every voting cohort, racism and the race problematic played out in the campaigns and the general elections, and opposition to Obama’s public policy agenda has been animated by racism.

This assessment argues that a post-racial moment is a fallacy and calls for a rethinking of the theories and approaches to the study of Black politics.

Numerous commentators have suggested that Barack Obama represents a new “post-racial” politics in the United States, distinct from a pre-existing 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.

The purpose of this paper is to indicate how place making and belonging are still largely governed by race in Brazil and South Africa. As such, it engages with debates about the postracial informed by the study of two urban settings that are discernible by their relationship with race issues: Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and Johannesburg’s townships.

The study provides a brief account of post-racial discourses in each country: Brazilian racial democracy and South Africa’s self-imagination as rainbow nation. Subsequently, these two major national self-understandings are probed using data gathered in the fieldwork (participant observation and in-depth interviews) carried out in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and Johannesburg’s townships between 2013 and 2015.

The main accomplishment of the study is to approach debates about senses of place, understood here as place making and belonging, from the everyday experiences of favela and township inhabitants. The study suggests discrepancies between the racialized senses of place in Brazilian and South African urban milieus and any sort of post-racial rhetoric. Despite the existence of norms and institutions promoting equal rights of citizenship in Brazil and South Africa, place making is still largely encumbered by the legacy of racial domination in both countries.

By adding new evidence to the research on everyday racism, the study explores the mutual influences between senses of place and the persistent patterns of racial segregation in two urban contexts of the global South. Beyond this, it offers a comparative approach that connects micro-level social dynamics and macro-level discourses.

Purpose – Using a framework of intersectionality, this chapter makes visible the realities of women of color who try to form relationships through the use of personal advertising.Methodological/approach – A discursive analysis of race and social class in personal ads using Phrase Tokens, and in-depth interviews with 14 women of color who participated in various forms of personal advertising, present the synergism of race and racism, sex and sexism, and sexuality and heteronormativity, and how these systems continue to pervade interpersonal relations.Finding – Patterns found in both texts and narratives illustrate how establishing relationships among women who are members of heterogeneous collectivities continues to be located in systems of inequality. These data also illustrate how ad placers are unique individuals whose markers of race, class, gender, and sex identity, produce commonalities, yet how their narratives reflect diverse goals, experiences, and responses to those experiences. Women of color convey how personal advertising remains rooted in modern society where people choose their individual affiliations and continue to be defined by their group affiliations.Originality/value of chapter – Though the structural factors and social processes involved in personal advertising are relevant to the formation of interpersonal and social relationships, the phenomenon of personal advertising as a form of courtship has received relatively little attention by sociologists. In rethinking the intersections of race, gender, and social class in personal advertising this chapter includes participants’ voices to more fully understand the motivations for personal advertising, how women ‘do’ identity, and how they experience personal advertising.

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. 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.