In Black America Podcast: The Persistence of the Color Line with Randall Kennedy
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On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Randall Kennedy, author of The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency. While many hoped Barack Obama’s presidency would usher in a post-racial period in America, Harvard professor of law, and author Randall Kennedy says the reality hasn’t lived up to that expectation. In The Persistence of the Color Line, he explores the racial issues still at play in the presidency and throughout the country.
Kennedy tackles such hot-button issues as the nature of racial opposition to Obama, whether Obama has a singular responsibility to African Americans, electoral politics and cultural chauvinism, black patriotism, the differences in Obama’s presentation of himself to blacks and to whites, the challenges posed by the dream of a post-racial society, and the far-from-simple symbolism of Obama as a leader of the Joshua generation in a country that has elected only three black senators and two black governors in its entire history.
Podcast: Download (26.5MB)
