Postracial America & Barack Obama

Fall 2009 Speaker Series

INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL STUDIES CERTIFICATE PROGRAM

“Postracial America and Barack Obama as the Postracial Candidate: Perspectives from Asian America and Hawai‘i”

Dr. Jonathan Y. Okamura
Dept. Ethnic Studies, UHM

The Obama presidential campaign and election victory are discussed in relation to two different meanings of postracialism: color blindness and multiculturalism. I also discuss his campaign and election from the viewpoint of Asian America and Hawai‘i insofar as he has been proclaimed as “the first Asian American president” and as a “local” person from Hawai‘i. I argue that in both cases, Obama was assigned these racialized identities primarily because of particular cultural values he espouses or cultural practices he engages in that facilitate his seeming transcendence of racial boundaries and categories generally demarcated by phenotype and ancestry. However, claiming Obama as an honorary Asian American and as a local from Hawai‘i inadvertently lends support to the postracial America initiative and its false assertion of the declining significance of race.

Date: Wednesday, November 4th
Time: 12 pm – 1:20pm
Place: Burns Hall Room 2118

Sponsored by:
The UHM/EWC International Cultural Studies Program
Telephone: 808-944-7593
Fax: 808-944-7070
Office: Burns Hall #2069
Email:culture@hawaii.edu
Website: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~culture

Event Sponsor
International Cultural Studies Graduate Certificate Program, Manoa Campus

More Information
Program Manager: Patricia Hart, 808-944-7593, culture@hawaii.edu, http://www2.hawaii.edu/~culture/

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