Daedalus<\/em>, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published in 1965 two issues on \u201cThe Negro American.\u201d Some 56 years later, in 2011, the journal has published a kind of follow-up, a two-volume issue on race in the age of Obama. The first issue, edited by Washington University\u2019s own Gerald Early, takes a humanities-centered approach. The second, edited by Lawrence D. Bobo of Harvard, features the work of social scientists. Both issues make for fascinating reading\u2014perhaps the most varied and learned discussions of present-day racial issues in America available in one place anywhere. (You can buy the Daedalus \u00a0journals<\/a> for $13 apiece.)<\/p>\n I recently read with particular interest an article called \u201cBarack Obama & American Racial Politics,\u201d by a trio of eminent political scientists, Rogers M. Smith, Desmond S. King, and Philip A. Klinkner. This article framed the history of racial politics and political alliances with great clarity, and its analysis of the current moment struck me as being absolutely correct. Although the authors\u2019 description of President Obama\u2019s political acumen gives me great hope, their larger points about the realities of race in America\u00a0 serve as disquieting reminders of the challenges we face.<\/p>\n The article describes three eras of racial politics in American history, each divided by a transitional period: 1) the era of slavery (1790 to 1865); 2) the era of Jim Crow (mid-1890s to mid-1960s); and 3) the era of race-conscious controversies (1979 to the present).<\/p>\n Most distinctive about our current era, the era of race-conscious controversies, according to the authors, is how neatly racial alliances match up with partisan alliances. Unlike previous eras, in which a variety of positions toward slavery and segregation could be found in either of the two major parties, in our current era, \u201cRepublicans regularly endorse color-blind policies, while Democrats support race-conscious ones.\u201d This partisan division means that even though the racial issues currently at stake may be less dramatic and stark than the issues of slavery and segregation, they seem even more intractable because they are tied to the political fortunes of one party or the other.<\/p>\n As Lyndon Johnson brought an official end to the Jim Crow era of de jure <\/em>segregation, he remarked that he had lost the south for the Democratic Party for a generation. The authors note that \u201che was more right than he knew,\u201d pointing out that no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote since LBJ himself was elected in 1964.\u00a0 Nevertheless, Johnson\u2019s Great Society legislation\u2014e.g, the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Higher Education Act\u2014also led to changes in the electorate overall that eventually made possible the presidency of Obama.<\/p>\n One of the most interesting observations in the article is that \u201cWith the emergence of each new structure of rival racial alliances, members of both <\/em>alliances have professed allegiance to the resolution of the previous era\u2019s disputes.\u201d Republicans accuse Democrats of betraying Martin Luther King\u2019s dream that his children would be judged by the content of their character and without regard to the color of their skin. Democrats, in turn, accuse Republicans of willfully ignoring the enduring inequalities that have been left unchanged by civil rights gains.<\/p>\n The authors note that most white people oppose race-conscious measures to alleviate inequality\u2014and even white Democrats favor them somewhat half-heartedly. So Barack Obama as a candidate had to tread very cautiously in discussing these matters, expressing support instead for policies that would appear race-neutral but actually have a disproportionately beneficial effect for African Americans and Latinos. (Health care reform falls into this camp, as does, interestingly, Michelle Obama\u2019s campaign against obesity.) Meanwhile, John McCain had to be careful about overt race-baiting during the campaign since his party professed an ideology of color-blindness. Yet, as we all remember, issues of race simmered just under the surface throughout the run-up to the election.<\/p>\n