Week 9 - Carissa Fejarang - A02

The theme of this week is politics, relating to the emergence of Asian American representation. In “Barack Obama as the Post-racial Candidate for a Post-racial America: Perspectives from Asian America and Hawai‘i”, Jonathan Y. Okamura talks about Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and his victory in relation to the two understood meanings of post-racialism, which are colour blindness and multiculturalism. Colour blindness refers to how race does not have a role in determining who or what decides the distribution of rights, rewards, and privileges. Multiculturalism refers to the view that the different cultures, races, and ethnicities, especially those that are minorities, deserve acknowledgement.

This article relates to the theme of the week because Obama is known as an honorary Asian American, partially because he was born in and grew up in Hawai’i. The society seemed to become more post-racial once Barack Obama became president. This idea of post-racialism came about as a result of a breakthrough in America’s history of race relations. Obama was known as a post-racial candidate because of the way that he said things in inclusive ways. For example, during the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he said, “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America - there’s the United States of America” (Okamura, 138). This statement touched people because it showed that he was inclusive and wanted to bring diverse groups of people together. About a decade before Obama’s presidency, the United States had been referred to as post-racial by neo-conservatives. Back then, post-racialism had a different meaning though, because it involved denying race in order to maintain the prestige of white power or dominance. It is interesting to see how the idea of post-racialism has changed over the years.

Question: What do you think about Obama being an honorary Asian American?

Sources:

Jonathan Y. Okamura (2011) Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian America and Hawai‘i, Patterns of Prejudice

Tesler, Michael. “Obama's Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America (Chicago Studies in American Politics) EBook: Michael Tesler, David O. Sears: Kindle Store.” Amazon, Amazon, www.amazon.com/Obamas-Race-Election-Post-Racial-American-ebook/dp/B004E9S7US.