25. “Remarks by the First Lady at Tuskegee University Commencement Address,” May 9, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/05/09/remarks-first-lady-tuskegee-university-commencement-address.
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26. Lis Power, “Right-Wing Media Accuse ‘Angry’ Michelle Obama of ‘Race Baiting’ in Tuskegee Commencement Address,” Media Matters, May 11, 2015, http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/05/11/right-wing-media-accuse-angry-michelle-obama-of/203609.
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27. Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents (New York: Crown Forum, 2014 ), p. 41.
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28. “Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe of Japan in Joint Press Conference.”
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7. Going Bulworth:
Black Truth and White Terror in the Age of Obama
1. Peter Baker, “Onset of Woes Casts Pall over Obama’s Policy Aspirations,” New York Times, May 15, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/us/politics/new-controversies-may-undermine-obama.html.
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2. Ezra Klein, “If Obama Went Bulworth, Here’s What He’d Say,” Washington Post, May 16, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/16/if-obama-went-bulworth-heres-what-hed-say/; Melinda Henneberger, “If Obama Did ‘Go Bulworth,” What Would He Say?,” Washington Post, May 16, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/05/16/obama-feeling-constricted-longs-to-go-bulworth/. Henneberger quotes Catholic University political scientist Steve Schneck, co-chair of Catholics for Obama in 2012, who said, “He’s done very little for the African American community that went all out for him twice.” Henneberger writes, “Schneck feels sure the community organizer whose idealism got even Washington’s hopes up when he first arrived in the Senate is still in there somewhere, ‘but he’s kept those passions bottled up and out of sight.’”
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3. F. Gary Gray’s brilliant 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton, the story of the irreverent eighties and nineties gangsta rap group N.W.A., impressively mines the same fertile political and cultural territory, except it focuses attention on the plague of police brutality that led to one of the group’s most powerful and controversial hits, “Fuck tha Police,” and thus establishes its relevance to contemporary black and brown struggles against police brutality. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s remarkable 2015 Broadway play Hamilton makes ingenious use of hip hop to explore vibrant political truths centered in the life and death of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, brilliantly fusing the serpentine rhythms of rap and traditional Broadway melodies to engage complicated ideas about democracy, race, class, color, and immigration in America.
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4. Bulworth, DVD, directed by Warren Beatty (1998; 20th Century Fox, 1999).
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5. Teresa Tritch, “President Obama Could Unmask Big Political Donors,” New York Times, March 23, 2015, http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/president-obama-could-unmask-big-political-donors/?_r=0. As Tritch points out, Obama has talked a good game about the corrupting influence of dark money in politics, so fifty public advocacy and good government groups sent him a letter (http://www.citizen.org/documents/2015-sign-on-letter-for-govt-contracting.pdf) challenging him to, in a sense, put his money where his mouth is—or at least to put his political influence there and sign an executive order “requiring full disclosure of political spending by corporations receiving federal contracts, as well as by their directors and officers.”
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6. “Obama Heckled at White House LGBT Pride Event, Tells Heckler: ‘You’re in My House!’ ‘Shame on You!,’” YouTube, June 24, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w71OGC6Jx9w&feature=youtu.be; “President Obama Boots Heckler from White House Event: ‘You’re in My House,’” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 24, 2015, http://www.ajc.com/news/news/national/president-obama-boots-heckler-white-house-event-yo/nmkcs/; Justin Wm. Moyer, “Transgender Obama Heckler Jennicet Gutiérrez Hailed by Some LGBT Activists,” Washington Post, June 26, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/26/transgender-obama-heckler-hailed-by-some-lgbt-activists/.
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7. “Remarks by the President at White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner,” April 25, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w71OGC6Jx9w&feature=youtu.be; “Obama’s Full speech at 2015 White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” Washington Post (PostTV), April 25, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/national/obamas-full-speech-at-2015-white-house-correspondents-dinner/2015/04/25/1ee9a604-ebc1-11e4-8581-633c536add4b_video.html.
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8. “Attorney General Eric Holder at the Department of Justice African American History Month Program,” February 18, 2009, http://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-eric-holder-department-justice-african-american-history-month-program.
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9. Richard Cohen, “Racism vs. Reality,” Washington Post, July 15, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-racism-vs-reality/2013/07/15/4f419eb6-ed7a-11e2-a1f9-ea873b7e0424_story.html.
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10. Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General, et al., U.S. Supreme Court (October term, 2012), http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-96_6k47.pdf.
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11. Richard Benjamin, “Obama’s Safe, Overrated and Airy Speech,” Salon, July 19, 2013, http://www.salon.com/2013/07/19/obamas_safe_overrated_and_airy_speech/.
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12. Danielle Cadet, “Jordan Davis’ Shooter Rants About Killing ‘Thugs’ So They ‘May Take the Hint and Change Their Behavior,” Huffington Post, October 18, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/18/jordan-davis-shooter-michael-dunn_n_4123805.html.
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13. Brendan Connor, “Here Is What Appears to Be Dylann Roof’s Racist Manifesto,” Gawker, June 20, 2015, http://gawker.com/here-is-what-appears-to-be-dylann-roofs-racist-manifest-1712767241.
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14. “Statement by the President on the Shooting in Charleston, South Carolina,” June 18, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/06/18/statement-president-shooting-charleston-south-carolina.
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15. Jaeah Lee and Edwin Rios, “Obama to US Mayors on Guns: ‘We Need a Change in Attitude. We Have to Fix This,’” Mother Jones, June 19, 2015, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/obama-mayors-charleston-gun-violence-speech-video.
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16. “Hillary Clinton: U.S. Conference of Mayors Speech,” San Francisco, June 20, 2015, http://www.shallownation.com/2015/06/20/video-transcript-hillary-clinton-u-s-conference-of-mayors-speech-san-francisco-ca-june-20-2015/.
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17. Campbell Robertson, Monica Davey, and Julie Bosman, “Calls to Drop Confederate Emblems Spread Nationwide,” New York Times, June 23, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/south-carolina-nikki-haley-confederate-flag.html.
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18. David Sims, “The President’s Candid Garage Interview,” The Atlantic, June 22, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/obama-wtf-marc-maron/396488/.
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19. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010).
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20. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at the NAACP Conference,” July 14, 2015. Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/14/remarks-president-naacp-conference.
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21. At a July 2015 press conference on the Iranian nuclear deal, Obama fielded a question from American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan about whether the president would revoke Cosby’s 2002 Medal of Freedom. Obama replied:
“With respect to the Medal of Freedom, there’s no precedent for revoking a medal. We don’t have that mechanism. As you know, I make it a policy not to comment on the specifics of cases where there still might be, if not crim
inal, then civil issues involved. I’ll say this: if you give a woman, or a man, for that matter, without his or her knowledge, a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape. And I think this country, or any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape.” See Kia Makarechi, “Obama’s Striking Response to Bill Cosby Rape Allegations,” Vanity Fair, July 15, 2015, http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/07/obama-bill-cosby.
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22. See Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005), p. 20; Bruce Alpert, “Transcript of President Obama’s Katrina Speech,” NOLA.com/Times-Picayune, August 28, 2015, http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2015/08/transcript_of_president_obamas.html.
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23. Alan Borass, “Obama’s Decision on Denali Strikes a Blow for Decolonization and Respect,” Alaska Dispatch News, September 6, 2015, http://www.adn.com/article/20150906/obamas-decision-denali-strikes-blow-decolonization-and-respect.
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24. David Smith, “12 Things We Learned from Obama’s Historic Trip to Africa,” The Guardian, July 31, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-trip-to-africa-kenya-ethiopia-2015-7.
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8. Amazing Grace:
Obama’s African American Theology
1. Chris Cillizza, “This Was the Best Week of Obama’s Presidency,” Washington Post, June 26, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/26/this-was-the-best-week-of-obamas-presidency/; Eugene Scott, “Obama Describes ‘Best Week Ever,’” CNN, June 30, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/30/politics/obama-best-week-ever-press-conference/; Nick Gass, “Barack Obama’s Best Week Ever (It Wasn’t Last Week),” Politico, June 30, 2015, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/obama-best-week-ever-marry-michelle-119594.html. In typically humorous and self-deprecating fashion, Obama, while acknowledging the historic character of the seven-day stretch, named three superior candidates for the best weeks of his life: when he married wife Michelle Obama, when his daughters Sasha and Malia were born, and when he scored twenty-seven points in a basketball game. For a fascinating portrait of Obama as hoopsman—as a figure whose identity basketball helped to shape, the same game that permitted him to impress his future wife and define himself as a political leader—see Alexander Wolff, The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015).
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2. Less than a week after Dylann Roof, on June 17, killed the nine members of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston—known as the Emanuel 9—Governor Nikki Haley called, on June 22, for the South Carolina state legislature to remove the Confederate flag from its grounds; a little more than two weeks later, on July 9, she signed legislation for the flag to be removed, and it came down on July 10, 2015, at a little after 10:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. In calling for the flag to be taken down, Haley made an impassioned speech in which she stated, in part, that for many South Carolinians, “the flag stands for traditions that are noble. Traditions of history, of heritage, and of ancestry.
“The hate filled murderer who massacred our brothers and sisters in Charleston has a sick and twisted view of the flag. In no way does he reflect the people in our state who respect and, in many ways, revere it. Those South Carolinians view the flag as a symbol of respect, integrity, and duty. They also see it as a memorial, a way to honor ancestors who came to the service of their state during time of conflict. That is not hate, nor is it racism.
“At the same time, for many others in South Carolina, the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past. As a state we can survive, as we have done, while still being home to both of those viewpoints. We do not need to declare a winner and a loser here. We respect freedom of expression, and that for those who wish to show their respect for the flag on their private property, no one will stand in your way.
“But the statehouse is different and the events of this past week call upon us to look at this in a different way . . .
“But this is a moment in which we can say that that flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state. The murderer now locked up in Charleston said he hoped his actions would start a race war. We have an opportunity to show that not only was he wrong, but that just the opposite is happening.
“My hope is that by removing a symbol that divides us, we can move forward as a state in harmony and we can honor the nine blessed souls who are now in heaven.” “Transcript: Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina on Removing the Confederate Flag,” New York Times, June 22, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/22/us/Transcript-Gov-Nikki-R-Haley-of-South-Carolina-Addresses-Removing-the-Confederate-Battle-Flag.html. On July 10, 2015, the flag finally came down. See Richard Fausset and Alan Blinder, “Era Ends as South Carolina Lowers Confederate Flag,” New York Times, July 10, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/us/south-carolina-confederate-flag.html.
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3. Hans A. Baer and Merrill Singer, African American Religion: Varieties of Protest and Accommodation, 2nd ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), pp. 10–11 [first edition published under the title African-American Religion in the Twentieth Century: Varieties of Protest and Accommodation]; Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), pp. 62–63.
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4. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney,” College of Charleston, Charleston, S.C., June 26, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/06/26/remarks-president-eulogy-honorable-reverend-clementa-pinckney. For a brilliant reading of Obama’s eulogy, one that explores “Obama’s gifts of language and empathy and searching intellect,” and the use of those gifts “to talk about the complexities of race and justice, situating them within an echoing continuum in time that reflected both Mr. Obama’s own long view of history, and the panoramic vision of America, shared by Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as a country in the process of perfecting itself,” see Michiko Kakutani, “Obama’s Eulogy, Which Found Its Place in History,” New York Times, July 3, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/arts/obamas-eulogy-which-found-its-place-in-history.html. For another brilliant reading of Obama’s eulogy, one which says that by “singing a spontaneous congregational song at the end of a sermon—the traditional emotional apex of the ritualized event—Obama performed a familiar trope that united his immediate audience—mostly black church-goers—with their history, that joined himself to that history, and that staged social solidarity among the musicians and the singing congregation,” see Guthrie Ramsey, “Obama’s ‘Amazing Grace’ Is a Sign of Music’s Powerful Role in Black Churches,”The Guardian,June 30, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/30/obama-amazing-grace-charleston-eulogy.
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5. Ira Berlin, The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations (New York: Viking, 2010); Peter A. Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996); Bernard E. Powers, Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822–1885 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999); Steve Estes, Charleston in Black and White: Race and Power in the South After the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Thanks to Henry Louis Gates Jr. for suggesting that I probe this historical dimension of Charleston.
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6. Peter H. Wood, “‘More Like a Negro Country’: Demographic Patterns in Colonial South Carolina, 1700–1740,” in Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies, ed. Stanley L. Engerman and Eugene D. Genovese (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 131–145.
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7. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at a Campaign Event in Roanoke, Virgini
a,” July 13, 2012, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks-president-campaign-event-roanoke-virginia.
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8. See Libby Nelson, “The Confederate Flag Symbolizes White Supremacy—and It Always Has,” Vox Identities, June 22, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/6/20/8818093/confederate-flag-south-carolina-charleston-shooting.
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9. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1949; repr., New York: Touchstone, 1995), pp. 44, 45.
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10. When President Obama was on the Marine One helicopter flying from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base to take his flight to South Carolina for the funeral, he mentioned to White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Mrs. Obama that he was thinking of breaking into song. “When I get to the second part of referring to ‘Amazing Grace,’ I think I might sing,” Jarrett recalls Obama saying to them. Her response was “Hmm,” while Michelle Obama pointedly asked, “Why on earth would that fit in?” President Obama replied: “I don’t know whether I’m going to do it, but I just wanted to warn you two that I might sing . . . We’ll see how it feels at the time.” Jarrett later said that she and the first lady eventually “both encouraged him to do whatever the spirit moved him to do.” After Obama sang and made a hugely positive impression, Jarrett wondered about the pauses. “So later I said to him, ‘Were you thinking about whether or not to sing?’ He said, ‘Oh no, I knew I was going to sing. I was just trying to figure out which key to sing it [in].’” Jarrett relayed the story at the 2015 Aspen Ideas Festival in a session with Walter Isaacson, the Aspen Institute president. See Peter Baker, “When the President Decided to Sing ‘Amazing Grace,’” New York Times, July 6, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/07/06/obamabaker/?_r=0; and Chuck Ross, “Valerie Jarrett Says Michelle Obama Was Skeptical of Husband’s Plan to Sing ‘Amazing Grace,’” Daily Caller, July 7, 2015, http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/07/valerie-jarrett-says-michelle-obama-was-skeptical-of-husbands-plan-to-sing-amazing-grace-video/.
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