Obama’s election showed how to bridge those fissures not only in an electorate sick of the incumbent party (even Michael Dukakis might have won this one), but also in local and regional elections where the legacies of race and place can be harder to overcome.Ī large part of Obama’s appeal is his embodiment of a new multiracial generation and of a long history of black “cool,” the hipness that has given us Miles Davis, Sidney Poitier and Jay-Z, argues Jabari Asim in “What Obama Means.”Īsim, editor of the NAACP’s The Crisis and author of “The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why,” offers the weaker of the two books, an unfocused rumination on race and culture. Race still matters, as do gender and class, and they can be crippling hurdles for a politician whose success depends on broad demographic appeal. In “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” journalist Gwen Ifill argues that there’s nothing really “post-racial” about Obama’s election. Two new books explore the moment, from two decidedly different tacks - the political and the cultural. The basic concept is this: Obama’s acceptance by the white mainstream means African Americans have arrived politically - or at least attained something like electoral equality. She also covers up-and-coming figures from across the nation.ĭrawing on interviews with such power brokers as Obama, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vernon Jordan, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and many others, as well as her own razor-sharp observations and analysis, Ifill shows why now is a pivotal moment in American history.In the year since Barack Obama’s remarkable surge to the head of the pack of Democratic presidential candidates, we’ve been hearing a lot about the nation’s new “post-racial” politics.

Ifill offers incisive, detailed profiles of other prominent black leaders, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and U.S. Obama is the leading edge of a sea change in American politics, but his is by no means the only story. Thirty years later, a black man announced his candidacy for president of the United States. It was too risky for a young black reporter to venture onto the grounds of South Boston High School. Gwen Ifill began her journalism career at the Boston Herald in 1977, covering race riots by telephone. A veteran journalist surveys the American political landscape and illuminates the evolution of the African-American politician - and the future of American democracy.

The Breakthrough by Gwen Ifill