Getting Used to a Black President!

Political scientist Melissa Harris-Lacewell examines how Barack Obama may affect Americans’ conceptualization of race and the Presidency, should he be elected to the position. Barack Obama’s success so far in the 2008 election cycle has fostered optimistic rhetoric in mainstream media about race relations in the United States, but does Obama’s candidacy transform Martin Luther King Jr.’s American dream into a reality?

A recent New York Times/CBS poll found that Americans are sharply divided by race on their views of Senator Obama and the state of race relations. In addition, with an increased presence of other minority groups, issues regarding race in political and social life are no longer black and white. What role does race play in the 2008 election and beyond? Can America ever truly be a color-blind society?

Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell is an American writer and political scientist and Associate Professor of Politics and African American studies at Princeton University. She received her B.A. in English from Wake Forest University, her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and an honoris causa doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School.She is the author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought on the methods African Americans use to develop political ideas through ordinary conversations in places like barbershops, churches, and popular culture.

The work was awarded the 2005 W.E.B. DuBois book award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Harris-Lacewell’s writings have been published in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Crain’s Chicago Business and Newsday. She has provided commentary for NBC News, Fox News, Showtime, HBO, Black Enterprise, National Public Radio and other radio and print sources.