Free Your Mind: Contemporary Racial Attitudes and Post Racial Theory

In November 2008, the United States elected its first African Amer ican president. Preceding the election, pundits, academics , and the candi dates themselves, debated whether Barack Obama (or any African American for that matter) could potentially become the first Black presi dent of the United States . Central to these arguments was the role of race in politics and society at large. If race remained a significant cleavage in American society (many argued) , it seemed unlikely that any member of a racial minority group would be able to win in a majority white America. In the days and weeks following the 2008 presidential elec tion, it was frequently suggested that Obama' s success was some indica tor that Martin Luther King Jr' s "dream" of a society that did not use race as its dominant predictor of character was actualized (see Thern strom 2008) . Since Obama' s election, both scholars and political pundits have engaged in arguments over whether America has in fact moved toward a point where race is no longer the defining cleavage in American society (e .g . ; Piston 201 0; Steele 2008 ; Teasley and Ikard 2010; Thernstrom 2008) . On the one hand, events such as the election of President Obama as well as that of Michael Steele as chair of the Republican National Committee may very well indicate that Americans place less emphasis on race when voting for their political leaders. However, there still re mains evidence to suggest that we are not in a new phase of post-racial politics and a post-racial America. During Obama' s first campaign there was an emphasis on his race to designate distinction, deviancy, and fear. For example, the image of Michelle and Barack Obama on the cover of the New Yorker displayed, among other things , racism and xenophobia. In this image not only was the fist-bump displayed, (that previously had been denoted as "terrorist" by the McCain-Palin camp), but also a depic-