Week 9 - Carson Ho - A04

Carson Ho
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Barack Obama was one of the most intriguing, charismatic, and talked about politicians when I was growing up through elementary through middle school. Back when George W. Bush was president, all I could remember hearing about him were bad things going on in the country, the war going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an overall sense of despair whenever politics came up, even while I was just in elementary school. I even specifically remember doing a fake ballot activity in 2nd grade where a Muslim classmate of mine told me not to vote for Bush because "he hurts my people." When Barack Obama was running for president, I saw a lot of hope in my diverse, multicultural community of Oakland. I especially saw the change in atmosphere and morale in the lower-income community and Black community, who saw Barack Obama as a representative of not only their color, but they saw him standing for their cause. While reading Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian America and Hawai'i, I never considered the idea of Barack Obama being considered a member of the Asian American Pacific Islander community. I faintly remember his origins as being from Hawaii, so I found it remarkable that he claimed his Pacific Islander-ness but it was interesting to see how the general public reacted to it. It's interesting to see how the Asian American community believed that Obama's election would lead to the "end of racism," but the answer to the end of racism is not so easy as to simply electing a man of color into our presidential office. The roots of racism are tied too deep into our society's history, but Obama's election is a right step forward to tackling the problem.

?: How would other minorities react if there was a full Asian American running for the presidential office?

Okamura, Jonathan Y. Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: 

          perspectives from Asian America and Hawai'i. Routledge. 2016.

Fairley, Shepard. “Barack Obama Hope.” 

         https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/Barack_Obama_Hope_poster.jpg