‘A curious relationship’: Barack Obama, the 1960s and the election of 2008

Ward, Brian (2011) ‘A curious relationship’: Barack Obama, the 1960s and the election of 2008. Patterns of Prejudice, 45 (1-2). pp. 15-42. ISSN 0031-322X

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Abstract

Ward explores the diverse ways in which memories, understandings and misunderstandings of the 1960s were mobilized during the 2008 election cycle. At the time, Barack Obama's campaign and triumph were hailed by many as marking a series of a decisive breaks with the past, notably with the culture wars and fiercely ideological political partisanship unleashed in the late 1960s. Others suggested that Obama represented a new kind of candidate who somehow transcended, or might even heal, the racial divisions in the United States, in a fanciful vogue for ‘post-racialism’ that Ward argues was also connected to popular conceptions of the 1960s and, in particular, to a misreading of the social philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr and his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. While some commentators stressed rupture and discontinuity with the past in interpreting Obama's victory, others—friend and foe alike—were keen to stress continuities with the past, often explicitly with a 1960s routinely, if simplistically, parsed into ‘good’ early and ‘bad’ later periods. Thus Ward considers Obama's connections to the civil rights and black power movements, as well as to other 1960s organizing traditions, charismatic leaders and conceptions of federal government, arguing that the decade continues to offer an important, if ambiguous touchstone in contemporary American politics and social memory.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1960s, 2008 US presidential election, Barack Obama, post-racialism, race, the Sixties
Subjects:	L200 Politics V100 History by period
Department:	Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Humanities
Depositing User:	Ay Okpokam
Date Deposited:	21 Jun 2013 09:10
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 19:22
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/13062

Downloads