Title: Two: Race, Immigration Reform, and Heteropatriarchal Masculinity: Reframing the Obama Presidency
Abstract: In the United States especially, race is a constitutive element of our common sense, and thus is a key component of our taken-for-granted valid reference schema, through which we get on in the world.-A. Shultz and T. Luckman, Cultural Theory, 1974Respect was what I heard over and over when talking with men..., especially black men. I interpret this this type of respect to be a crystallization of the masculine quests for recognition through public achievement, unfolding within a system of structured constraints due to class and race inequities.-Michael Messner, Politics of Masculinity, 1979I argue that identities are grounded in social locations, and I make use of resources from hermeneutics and phenomenology to explicate the epistemic, the metaphysical and politically relevant features of identities...in social theory and practice.-Linda Alcoff, Visible Identities, 2006Immigration policy has long been controversial in the United States and has at times been used in openly racist ways. It has become even more controversial in the new century, as a plan proposed in Congress to both tighten border security and provide a path to citizenship for estimated 11-12 million undocumented aliens already present in the United States failed in 2007 amid opposition from both sides... Afterwards, for the first time, the United State began to construct a fence along with Mexico to keep people out its border.-John E. Farley, Minority-Majority Relations, 2012IntroductionRace, ethnicity and social identity are complex phenomena in the United States and the rest of the world. The discourse over race, heteropatriarchal masculinity and immigration policy, like other critical political issues makes racial analysis for the American presidency novel in the minds of many scholars. Yet, the lack of agency for race in President Obama's deliberations and immigration policy, tend to puzzle many socio-political observers. Recent antagonisms against undocumented immigrants of color, especially Latinos, have pushed the conversation over race and immigration beyond the Blacks/Whites paradigm. The euphoric prognosis about the Obama presidency, post-racialism, and the politics of change subsided in Obama's second year of office.Even though many Americans were and are in denial, race was and still is a major conversation piece and the elephant in the room, when the President interacts with the United States Congress or engages in any public space. The issues of Obama's electability, reelection, respectability, masculinity, leadership style, policymaking and implementation and approval rating are all submerged in a convoluted discursive consciousness of the American people. The interlocutors of race, immigration narratives, and racial matrix of domination have reached a new level of contumacy, perhaps because of the President's racial identity and background. On January 27, 2010 after President Obama's State of the Union Address, Chris Matthew, MSNBC host, had this characterization of the President, He is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour (Matthews 2010). Does this statement by interlocutors of race and racial issues in the United States such as Mathews mean anything to the racial narrative of the country? What has happened to racial categorization and group political consciousness of racial issues since Obama became president? Has White privilege, an unearned advantage for Whites because of their skin color and status, changed or have Blacks gained any privilege in recent times because of race? In order to answer these questions one has to interrogate racial history, racial group dynamics, identity politics, and group prejudice plus institutional power with reference to policymaking and implementation. Even though the President intentionally avoided the race question for the first six years of his presidency and had episodically made statements involving race, in his interview with the New Yorker magazine he impugned:There's no doubt that there's some folks who just really dislike me because they don't like the idea of a black president. …
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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