The Black Masculinities of - Am MIT spezialisierte KI-Forschung

The Black Masculinities of
Barack Obama: Some Implications
for African American Men

Alford A. Jung, Jr.

Barack Obama’s presidency has stimulated
thinking about new possibilities for race relations
in America.1 Yet it has also inspired accounts that
question whether his election has been overstated
as a positive factor for contemporary race relations
in this country.2 Indeed, a recent conversation I
had with Ronald, an African American man who
participated in some of my earlier research,3 con-
½rmed the skepticism of the latter perspective.
Ronald and I discussed a number of issues con-
cerning Obama’s election and the possible fate of
the African American community before he ½nal-
ly said, “You know, despite the fact that Obama’s
election is a change for this country, one thing is
the same: everybody who ever held the of½ce of
the president was the son of a white woman.”

Ronald’s remarks did not come from frustration
or anger. Stattdessen, in a matter-of-fact tone, he sim-
ply conveyed his sentiment that what may have
seemed like a radical unfolding to some people felt
more like a moderate shift to him (and possibly
Andere). Since that talk with Ronald, I have been
pondering the potential shifts in the meanings of
race in America around the time of Obama’s elec-
tion. That Obama, like every other president of
Die Vereinigten Staaten, is both male and the son of a
Caucasian woman has led me to think speci½cally
about how race and masculinity converge in Afri-
can American men’s views of Obama, a self-pro-
claimed black man who is, yet is not, like many
African American men. More speci½cally, ich war

ALFORD A. YOUNG, JR., ist der
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and
Chair of the Department of Soci-
ology at the University of Michi-
gan, where he also holds an ap-
pointment in the Center for Afro-
American and African Studies.
His publications include The
Minds of Marginalized Black Men:
Making Sense of Mobility, Opportu-
nity, and Future Life Chances (2004).
He has two books forthcoming
with Rowman and Little½eld:
African American Boys and Men:
Exclusion and Containment and
From the Edge of the Ghetto: African
Americans and the World of Work.

206

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drawn to the various images of Obama
that have been promoted–both through
his own volition and by his administra-
tive team–during and since his presi-
dential campaign.

This thinking has been sustained by
the fact that as a sociologist primarily
focused on studying African American
men, I was both pleasantly surprised
and intrigued by Obama’s election. In
the world of social research and in popu-
lar commentary, African Americans are
often regarded as instigators of danger
and anxiety, illustrations of failure, Und
portraits of malaise. Even many of the
more sensitive and sympathetic perspec-
tives cast African Americans as in need
of extreme remedial intervention.4 Con-
sequently, having a black man assume
the most powerful position in the world
amidst these portrayals gives rise to new
thinking about the prospects and possi-
bilities for other African American men.
Hearing Ronald’s comment about
Obama’s presidency encouraged me
to seek out the views of various African
American men. I turned to the African
American men who have come into my
life either as participants in my research
projects or as relatives, friends, and col-
leagues. I wanted to know what kind of
black man they think he is, and whether
his being black makes any difference in
how they think about themselves and
their life prospects. Darüber hinaus, I wanted
to understand how these views relate to
the kind of black man Obama appears to
Sei, rather than what kind of man he is.
After all, as a political ½gure, his appear-
ance in the public eye may have minimal
connection to the kind of black man he
actually believes himself to be. I still have
much work to do in my quest to better
understand how black men make sense
of the black masculinity of Obama. Wie-
immer, the ½rst step in doing so, and what
I focus on in this paper, is resolving my

own queries about what kind of black
man Obama has been made to be in the
public domain. My own brief connec-
tion to him gives me some insight into
how his appearance has been framed vis-
à-vis who he may actually be and how
other black men make sense of him.

Between 1993 Und 1996, while I was
in graduate school at the University of
Chicago, I shared time on the basket-
ball court with Obama. He could best
be described as an inconsistent regular
at our campus lunchtime game. Ich bin
con½dent that many of the other regular
participants would af½rm my claim that
he was one of the better players (a notch
below the stand-out high school and col-
lege players). Aside from his basketball
skills, Jedoch, he struck some of us as
an extraordinarily intelligent and very
disciplined person. These traits were most
evident in his manner of engaging the
few social issues that the men (and this
lunchtime gathering consisted almost
entirely of men) would raise on the side-
lines while waiting to play. I never had
the opportunity for an extensive one-
on-one discussion with Obama, but I lis-
tened intently when he spoke in group
settings at courtside.

Some months after ½rst seeing him
on the court, I was told by a fellow grad-
uate student that Obama was a clinical
professor in the law school. I began to
wonder why, given his acumen, he was
not on the tenure track. I certainly did
not know him well enough to consider
asking him about the matter, but I recall
deciding that perhaps he was not dis-
posed to this degree of ambition. Gegeben
what Obama has become today com-
pared with my reading of him ½fteen
years ago, it is fortunate for me that I
chose an academic discipline that usu-
ally does not invest in intimate study
of the individual as the unit of analysis!
Trotzdem, revisiting that experience, aus

Alford A.
Jung, Jr.

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140 (2) Frühling 2011

207

The Black
Masculin-
ities of
Barack
Obama

the perspective of a sociologist and an
African American man, reinforces my
curiosity about Obama’s election and
the signi½cance it has had for African
American men.

From the time he launched his presi-
dential campaign, Obama has navigated
a public identity that carefully balances
contrasting images of black masculin-
ität. That effort rests on the fact that his
life has involved a wide range of circum-
stances, Veranstaltungen, episodes, and patterns,
each of which can be identi½ed with Afri-
can American men at different points
along the socioeconomic spectrum. Said
more simply, Obama’s life-story depicts
each of two highly durable, but also di-
chotomous, representations of black mas-
culinity. The ½rst, best conveyed by the
colloquialism “keeping it real,” promotes
images of blackness that stand in con-
trast to the images and tropes common-
ly associated with mainstream, Mitte-
class America (Natürlich, whether those
images truly exist in regard to that seg-
ment of the African American commu-
nity is another matter altogether). Der
second style of representation, “keeping
it proper,” refers to the social practices
of African Americans (and most often to
those of upper-income or professional
Status) that promote the most sanitized
Und, daher, most acceptable public
faces to both white and black America.
Doing so serves as a means of af½rming
the dignity and humanity of a people
who have often been viewed as inca-
pable of exhibiting these traits. Beide
“keeping it real” and “keeping it proper”
reflect distinct and often contrasting
class-based dimensions of black mas-
culinity (and black American cultural
expression more generally). A remark-
able aspect of the public black mascu-
linity of Obama is found in his incorpo-
ration of these two styles in ways that,
like his being biracial, make him appear

at once different from many black Amer-
ican men yet also seemingly just like one
of them.

The practices and dispositions associ-

ated with “keeping it real” and “keeping
it proper” have been thoroughly docu-
mented and interpreted in the tradition
of urban ethnographic studies of African
Americans. The notion of “keeping it
proper” turns up in W.E.B. Du Bois’s
quandaries about what he saw as the dis-
tinctive cultural traits of lower-income
black Americans living in the seventh
ward of Philadelphia in the last decade
of the nineteenth century.5 In The Phila-
delphia Negro, Du Bois expressed his dis-
dain for what to him was an excessive
display of public improprieties by lower-
income African Americans, einschließlich,
but not restricted to, street corner asso-
ciating, public gambling, and gregari-
ousness in social interaction. Looking at
the presumed industriousness and disci-
pline of the middle and upper classes of
African Americans, Du Bois found much
more to af½rm about proper social con-
duct and comportment.

Such a class-speci½c framing of so-
cial conduct and mores was reinforced
In 1945, when social scientists St. Clair
Drake and Horace Cayton completed the
next seminal community study of black
Americans, Black Metropolis.6 That work
offered a more systematic documenta-
tion of cultural and economic distinc-
tion in the African American communi-
ty. Dabei, it also conveyed more di-
rectly than did Du Bois’s work just how
each class sector of the African Ameri-
can community embraced its own pack-
age of representations and mannerisms
as legitimate (or better yet, as legitimate-
ly black American).

More recently, in introducing a dichot-
omy that is similar in effect to “keeping
it real” versus “keeping it proper,” soci-

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ologist Elijah Anderson has introduced
the terms street and decent as tropes to de-
pict different segments of the African
American community.7 He implicates
class as a critical factor for how and why
certain black Americans are identi½ed as
belonging to one category or the other.
Zusamenfassend, street people are those who
constitute the threatening and profligate
portion of the African American com-
munity that is often referred to as the
underclass.8 However, while the street
is a common reference point in deroga-
tory assessments of certain aspects of
the African American community, es ist
also part of what is taken to be most au-
thentic or genuine about black Ameri-
cans, as the street conjures images of
the intense sociability and publicity
often identi½ed as valued social traits
in the black American community.

The extreme depictions exempli½ed
by street and decent have been captured in
the works of other contemporary schol-
ars. Anthropologist John L. Jackson, Jr.,
has explored how black American resi-
dents of Harlem engage in the social pol-
itics of racial authenticity across class
lines (and in doing so, de½ne each other
as real and proper, or insincere and im-
proper, depending on which side of the
class spectrum they stand on and how
they view those standing on the other).9
Sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy, in her
book Black Picket Fences, discusses how
some younger African Americans’ efforts
“to keep it real” are reflected in their suc-
cumbing to a “ghetto trance,” a preoccu-
pation with the cultural artifacts (solch
as music and clothing) and public inter-
active styles presumably embraced by
lower-income African Americans (Die
often overdetermined media prolifera-
tion of such images notwithstanding).10
She asserts that the allure of the street
by some of the so-called decent African
Americans keeps this historical divide

in the African American community in
play.

Street and decent can be inflammatory
Bedingungen (both inside and beyond academ-
ic circles), yet they remain pivotal con-
structs in all kinds of considerations
of African American public conduct
(whether within academia or outside
davon). They also appear somewhat less
inflammatory when transformed into
the notions of real and proper and, sub-
sequently, into the nomenclature of
“keeping it real” and “keeping it prop-
er.” Obama’s balance between keeping
it real and keeping it proper relies upon
a careful interplay of street and decent
in his past and present public behavior.

Obama’s various efforts to keep it real

are made evident in his autobiographical
writings and in the various publications
about his life.11 This body of work pro-
vides ample testimony to his somewhat
wayward youth: by his own admission,
he consumed illegal substances and was
aimless and misguided throughout a good
portion of his adolescence. His inconsis-
tent performance in school and his use
of illegal substances reflect a common
(but by no means universal) portrait of
urban-based African American males.
Yet Obama’s youthful behavior has not
½rmly positioned him on the prototypi-
cal street side of African American mas-
culinity. This outcome is in part because
he had to learn much about African Amer-
ican urban communities while already
into adulthood; his community of rear-
ing was in Hawaii, a place that, despite
having pockets of deep poverty, escapes
the imagination of many as the kind of
place where black Americans come from,
especially those who appear to be “from
the streets.” Still, Obama’s youthful in-
discretions have allowed him to draw
selectively from his past to situate him-
self as having not always been the tradi-

Alford A.
Jung, Jr.

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140 (2) Frühling 2011

209

The Black
Masculin-
ities of
Barack
Obama

tionally decent political ½gure. He can
Dann, vielleicht, appear more “real” than
other contemporary political ½gures such
as George Bush or Bill Clinton. If not true
street credibility, Obama’s past has given
him social credibility of another sort–
enough for him at least to appear to have
been keeping it real.

Obama also (and quite conscientious-
ly) maintains a public image of proper
professional and personal conduct that
is consistent with the social desirability
engendered by “keeping it proper.” Evi-
dence of this image is found in a num-
ber of his pre- and post-election speech-
es to African American organizations, In
which he emphasizes a personal respon-
sibility thesis. Perhaps the most notable
of such talks are the address delivered to
the National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People (naacp) während
its annual convention in 2009 and his
2008 Father’s Day address delivered at
the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago
on June 15, 2008. In both cases, Obama
seemed consciously to de-emphasize or
ignore structural factors such as high un-
employment in discussing the outcomes
associated with African Americans men’s
underachievement in various societal are-
nas as well as their consistent failures in
the family. The accentuation of personal
responsibility and agency appears as well
in his talks about education and the Afri-
can American community. Hier, he has
stressed the so-called acting white thesis
as a durable factor in the underperfor-
mance of African American students,
especially males.

This pattern of assessing the African
American social condition, in general,
and the state of African American males,
insbesondere, reflects more than what
some may regard as mild social conser-
vatism. Eher, it serves as a clear exam-
ple that those who aim to keep it proper
campaign for respectability (to borrow a

term from Elijah Anderson) as much as
street people do. Obama’s efforts to cam-
paign in this way, Jedoch, do not come
across as socially conservative rhetoric
to serve practical political ends. He avoids
this charge largely because he addresses
these topics from the perspective of hav-
ing been directly victimized by the kinds
of problematic men he talks about (Oba-
ma’s father was a minimal part of his
early life) or as having been the kind of
individual (an underachiever, for one)
who he is challenging to be better. Er
strives to keep it real, Dann, at the same
time he aims to keep it proper.

The keep-it-proper dimensions of
his public persona are supported by
what Stanford University law profes-
sor Richard Thompson Ford explains
as Obama’s ability to reflect none of
the rage, alienation, and self-doubt that
were strongly identi½ed with the previ-
ous generation of African Americans
(particularly African American men).12
Obama appears to reject a prototypical
African American ultra-masculinity in
favor of what Ford and others have re-
ferred to as a post–civil rights era pub-
lic style.

Interessant, Obama’s capacity to
break with the more traditional imagery
of African American masculinity arises,
at least in part, by the public role his
Gattin, Michelle Obama, has performed,
½rst on the campaign trail and now as
½rst lady. In recent scholarly assessments
of her public style, Michelle Obama has
been viewed as upholding some tradition-
al notions of the African American wom-
an vis-à-vis depictions of her as the “angry
black woman.”13 Accordingly, literary
scholar Elizabeth Alexander attributed
part of Michelle Obama’s role in the cam-
paign to be the voice of the angry African
American man in lieu of her husband,
who could not afford to be portrayed in
such a way while campaigning for the

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White House.14 Moreover, political sci-
entists Valeria Sinclair-Chapman and
Melanye Price discuss Michelle Obama’s
appropriation of what historian and po-
litical scientist Manning Marable has
called the black messianic leadership
style often attributed to black men,
thus making it safe for Obama not to
have to do so.15 Hence, at least some
of Obama’s capacity to keep it proper
in the public domain is contingent on
his wife’s efforts to keep it real in her
own public engagements.

While it is far too early to tell, the pub-

lic black masculinities of Barack Obama
may amount to much more than an op-
portunity for public consideration of the
extent to which his public identity mir-
rors his private sense of self. For black
Americans, there are more practical po-
litical stakes involved. This is in no small
way due to the fact that many African
Americans became increasingly atten-
tive to the electoral process at some point
after Obama declared his candidacy. ICH
am careful here to say attentive to the
electoral process, rather than simply poli-
Tics, because whether or not they vote,
black Americans have consistently been
politically aware.16 Political expression
for many black Americans emerges in
the barbershop, beauty salon, bar, Und
other spaces that constitute the public
sphere for black America. As scholars
have documented, that expression is
rooted in sarcasm, irony, and cynicism,
fueled by a consistently held sentiment
that the American political arena has
never fully embraced African Americans
as citizens, nor has it made the issues
and concerns most important to them
a central part of American politics (als
indicated by reference to such matters
as special interest politics). Somit, African
Americans have a long-standing histo-
ry of being political. What is different

about the present moment is that Afri-
can Americans are now attentive to elec-
toral politics and curious about, if not
convinced of, the possible goods it may
deliver, whether tangible or symbolic.
The mere presence of an African Amer-
ican man in the White House validates
many black Americans’ dreams and hopes
for American society; and it is in this
sense that Obama functions most effec-
tively as a symbol.

For African American men (and black
Americans more generally) who have
never before been able to connect with a
president along racial lines, their sense
of closeness to Obama is not as transpar-
ent or simplistic as it may seem. Aside
from what is most apparent–that black
Americans are experiencing someone
like them occupying the White House–
Obama’s presidency may be most inter-
esting sociologically for the diversity of
Reaktionen, particularly across class divi-
sions in black America, that it produces.
Lower-income black American men
may simply hope that the Obama presi-
dency will usher in improvements to their
life condition. Perhaps, as some such dis-
advantaged men who I have researched
in the past year have said, because Obama
knows a little more about the lives they
lead he may do more for them than other
presidents did. Natürlich, many others
believe that Obama is today so enmeshed
in the social world of the privileged that
he no longer has to devote signi½cant at-
Aufmerksamkeit, save for a few speeches, to the
plight of the most downtrodden and
marginalized.

Another dimension of the Obama phe-
nomenon with substantial bearing on
the African American class divide relates
to how his public persona encourages re-
newed thinking about what it means to
be “legitimately” black. In den vergangenen Jahren,
there has been substantive discussion
about how blackness has been construed

Alford A.
Jung, Jr.

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140 (2) Frühling 2011

211

The Black
Masculin-
ities of
Barack
Obama

as authentic to the extent that it reflects
patterns of discourse and public appear-
ance often associated with hip-hop cul-
ture or some variation of styles express-
ing an oppositional or counter-main-
stream orientation (keeping it real).17
Adorned in business suits and well versed
in the lexicon of mainstream profession-
al America, Obama represents none of
the oppositional or counter-mainstream
styles. Jedoch, many would argue that
there are aspects of his interactive styles
that reflect an urban, African American
cultural flavor: recall, Zum Beispiel, Die
celebratory ½st-bumps he shared with
Michelle following his primary and elec-
tion-day victories–not the kind of pub-
lic demeanor usually associated with
African American white-collar profes-
sionals and politicians. In terms of cul-
tural styles, Obama may appear to stand
squarely between the class divides in
black America.

Letzten Endes, the balance between keep-
ing it real and keeping it proper rests
somewhere on the continuum between
low-income black Americans, who have
been unfairly circumscribed by the un-
derclass label and its attendant imagery,
and post–civil rights era black American
Profis, who have access to social
and private places that distinguish them
from less-privileged African Americans.
Various sociologists and social scientists
have examined the chasm between these
class-de½ned cohorts of black Ameri-
cans.18 Public reaction to Obama’s life
Erfahrungen, and to his behavior as pres-
ident, situates him as a potentially piv-
otal ½gure in determining the state and
signi½cance of that chasm in the future.

Barack Obama has lived a life very dif-

ferent from many Americans. Sales of his
books and the positions he has attained
in government have made him a wealthy
and prominent man. Yet he has encoun-

tered forms and types of disadvantage
that have never been a part of the lives of
many other wealthy, prominent people.
He is a black American, but he has lived
in places that do not resemble the social
words often associated with black Amer-
ica. His parentage (a white American
mother and a Kenyan father) nicht
immediately conjure up thoughts of the
typical black American family.

Although only time will tell the extent
to which African Americans ultimately
believe in his capacity to do so, Obama
appears to be uniquely positioned both
to keep it real and to keep it proper. His
quest to maintain that balance allows
many middle-class African Americans
who strive to do the same to feel a sense
of connection with him. As a middle-
class professional who now lives in a col-
lege town, but who has direct roots in
the kind of economically disadvantaged
milieu where many black Americans
live, ICH, sowie, have a vested interest in
working to keep it both real and proper.
More speci½cally, my spouse and I aim
to raise our two sons to be proper, bei
least according to our de½nitions of the
Begriff. But we also try to raise them to
keep it real. In unserem Fall, achieving this
balance means that they do not develop
a snobbishness or elitism with regard to
less-privileged black Americans who do
not often share social space with us. Es
means consistently exposing them to
Detroit (where my oldest son commutes
from Ann Arbor to go to school), Harlem,
Brooklyn, and other places where Afri-
can Americans who are not as fortunate
as we are have carved out lives for them-
sich selbst, so that these people are not exoti-
cized, vili½ed, or despised.

Just as important, obwohl, it means
strongly encouraging our sons to resist
the romanticizing that is all too common
today on college campuses (among other
places), where middle-class African

212

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American youth assume the posture of
many urban, low-income residents in
order to foster some crude demonstra-
tion of how “real” they happen to be.
One of the most potent effects of the
Obama presidency may not have much
to do with his policies, but with how his
image serves to resolve or proliferate
class-based tensions in black America:
how he negotiates what it means to be

Alford A.
Jung, Jr.

black and how people classi½ed as such
should function in social spaces. Klasse
divisions in the African American com-
munity will exert a strong influence on
how blacks read and react to varied as-
pects of Obama’s identity and social
conduct. Im Gegenzug, these divisions will
shape African Americans’ sense of
either closeness or distance to him.

Endnoten
1 See Jabari Asim, What Obama Means . . . for Our Culture, Our Politics, and Our Future (Neu
York: William Morrow, 2009); Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “For Obama, Nuance on Race Invites
Questions," Die New York Times, Februar 9, 2010; Kevin Alexander Gray, The Decline of
Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama (London: Verso, 2008); Adia Harvey Wing-
½eld and Joe R. Feagin, Yes We Can?: White Racial Framing and the 2008 Presidential Cam-
paign (New York: Routledge, 2009); Manning Marable and Kristen Clarke, Hrsg., Barack
Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black America’s New Leadership (Neu
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); and Gwen I½ll, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the
Age of Obama (New York: Doubleday, 2009).
2 Zum Beispiel, Manning Marable, “Racializing Obama: The Enigma of Post-Black Politics
and Leadership,” Souls 11 (1) (2009): 1-15.
3 Ronald is a pseudonym. The research project he participated in, nearly a decade ago, Ist
culminating in a manuscript entitled “Black Men Rising: Navigating Race, Engaging Mo-
bility.” In this work, I explore the views of a small group of African American men in
their late-teens and twenties who were born into poverty but engineered paths toward
high-skilled blue-collar or white-collar professional careers. I have remained in contact
with Ronald over the years since we ½rst worked together.
4 See Elijah Anderson, Code of the Streets (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999); Ronald B. Mincy,
Hrsg., Black Males Left Behind (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press, 2006); Staff of
The Washington Post, Being a Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril (New York: Public
Affairs, 2007); and Alford A. Jung, Jr., The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense
of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Drücken Sie, 2004).
5 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899; Philadelphia: Universität
Pennsylvania Press, 1996); this classic study is replete with documentation and analysis
of lower-income African Americans.
6 St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City
(1945; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
7 Elijah Anderson, Streetwise: Race, Klasse, and Change in an Urban Community (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1990).
8 Anderson, Code of the Streets; Robert Aponte, “De½nitions of the Underclass: A Critical
Analyse,” in Sociology in America, Hrsg. Herbert Gans (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990);
Herbert Gans, The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Anti-Poverty Policy (New York:
Basic Books, 1995).
9 John L. Jackson, Jr., Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

140 (2) Frühling 2011

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The Black
Masculin-
ities of
Barack
Obama

10 Mary Pattillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

11 See I½ll, The Breakthrough; Marable and Clarke, Barack Obama and African American Empow-
erment; Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York:
Three Rivers Press, 2004); and Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaim-
ing the American Dream (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006).

12 Richard Thompson Ford, “Barack is the New Black: Obama and the Promise/Threat of

the Post-Civil Rights Era,” Du Bois Review 6 (1) (2009): 37–48.

13 See Maureen Dowd, “Mincing Up Michelle," Die New York Times, Juni 11, 2008; Tran-
Skript, FOX News Watch, Juni 14, 2008, fox News, http://www.foxnews.com/story/
0,2933,367601,00.html; Scott Helman, “Reaching Back to Her Chicago Roots, Obama
Tells an American Story,” The Boston Globe, August 26, 2008, http://www.boston.com/
news/nation/articles/2008/08/26/reaching_back_to_her_chicago_roots_obama_tells_
an_american_story; Jonathan Mann, “A First Lady of a Different Kind,” cnn, Mai
23, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/23/mann.michelleobama; Adam
Nagourney, “Appeals Evoking American Dream Rally Democrats," Die New York Times,
August 26, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/us/politics/26dems.html?scp
=6&sq=Michelle%20Obama&st=cse; Brian Naylor, “Interpreting Michelle Obama’s
Speech,” National Public Radio, August 26, 2008, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/
story.php?storyId=93981261; Abdon M. Pallasch, “Michelle Obama Celebrates Chicago
Roots,” Chicago Sun-Times, August 26, 2008, http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/
obama/1126753,CST-NWS-dem26.article; Michael Powell and Jodi Kantor, “After At-
tacks, Michelle Obama Looks for a New Introduction," Die New York Times, Juni 18,
2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/us/politics/18michelle.html?.

14 Untitled presentation at Duke University as part of a roundtable discussion for the Schol-
ars Network on Masculinity and the Well-Being of African American Men, Marsch 15, 2008.

15 Valeria Sinclair-Chapman and Melanye Price, “Black Politics, Die 2008 Election, Und
Die (Ich bin)Possibility of Race Transcendence,” Political Science and Politics (Oktober 2008):
739–745.

16 See Michael Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African American Political
Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Michael Dawson, Behind the
Mule: Race and Class in African American Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Drücken Sie, 1995); and Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday
Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006).
17 Zum Beispiel, Prudence L. Fuhrmann, Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); and Jackson, Harlemworld.

18 See Anderson, Streetwise; Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro; Drake and Cayton, Black Metrop-
olis; Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politik, and Culture in the Twentieth
Jahrhundert (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Jackson, Harlemworld;
John L. Jackson, Jr., Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 2005); Pattillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences; and Mary Pattillo, Black on the
Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

214

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