The historical significance of Barack Obama's triumph in the presidential election of 2008 scarcely requires comment. Yet it contains an irony: he won a victory as an African American only by denying that he should discuss issues that target the concerns of African Americans. Obama's very success, states this book, exacted a heavy cost on black politics. This book puts Obama's career in the context of decades of black activism, showing how his election undermined the very movement that made it possible. The path to his presidency began just before passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, when bl ... More

The historical significance of Barack Obama's triumph in the presidential election of 2008 scarcely requires comment. Yet it contains an irony: he won a victory as an African American only by denying that he should discuss issues that target the concerns of African Americans. Obama's very success, states this book, exacted a heavy cost on black politics. This book puts Obama's career in the context of decades of black activism, showing how his election undermined the very movement that made it possible. The path to his presidency began just before passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, when black leaders began to discuss strategies to make the most of their new access to the ballot. Some argued that black voters should organize into a cohesive, independent bloc to promote both targeted and universal polices; others urged a more race-neutral approach, working together with other racial minorities as well as like-minded whites. Obama made a point of distancing himself from older race-conscious black leaders, such as Jesse Jackson—and leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus—even though, as the book shows, he owes much to Jackson's earlier campaigns for the White House. The social problems targeted by an earlier generation of black politicians—racial disparities in income and education, stratospheric incarceration and unemployment rates—all persist, yet Obama's election, ironically, marginalized those issues, keeping them off the political agenda. Meanwhile, the civil rights movement's militancy to attack the vestiges of racial inequality is fading.