From black power to Barack Obama by Peniel E. Joseph - Essay Example

From Black Power to Barack Obama In the book, From Black Power to Barack Obama by Peniel E. Joseph gives a new perspective of the president Obama’s relationship to black power and civil rights movements. He manages to show readers that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was not the end of antiracism activism but only a beginning to the actual activism. The author suggests that the Election of 2008 is the first time Americans had an honest conversation about race since the Kerner Commission Report in 1968. This paper aims at discussing the book, From Black Power to Barack Obama by Peniel E. Joseph. Joseph attributes president Obama’s presidency to activities from the black power movement. According to the author, the black power movement had over the years fought for racial equality being driven by their imagination of how life would be if institutions were managed by black men. The author gives details on the activities of various black power movement activists and their indirect contribution to Obama’s presidency. He puts much focus on two activists by the names Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and Malcolm X. He specifically asserts that these two activists were responsible for the nation’s journey from Black Power to Barack Obama. Joseph also argues that the black power movement was highly diverse and points out that more radical leader and nationalists, like Amiri Baraka, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), and Malcolm X, despite their different excesses and failures, also helped the black freedom struggle in a manner that changed the American consciousness (Joseph 56). As much as it was frequently reduced to the ruthless, violent match of civil rights, black power had a much broader reach. The movement incorporated intellectuals, students, artists, and even politicians. They were able to spark political change globally. The book goes into the finer details of the Black Power movement that are rarely talked about, and shows how it has been poorly interpreted over the years. Joseph goes back to its exact origins among scholars as well as working class and the farmers; he shows the cosmopolitan politics adopted by the movement, revealing the motivation and reasoning that triggered its combative stance. The day president Obama won the presidential elections in 2008 was a very essential landmark in the history of the United States of America. This is because he had made history by becoming the first African American president of the United States of America. This remains to be an important part of the USA history especially for the African Americans. This was also a breakthrough to the year’s struggles of black power and civil rights movements (Alexander 66). This basically comes in because of the belief that they had in black people’s capability in running institutions too (Hall 18). Despite the breakthrough, it also altered the way in which people viewed African Americans in the United States of America. This might be the reason as to why the author refers to this presidency as the beginning of liberation in the United States of America. The presidency disapproved the various stereotypes that have always been linked to the black people in America. Stereotypes linking African Americans to intellectual incapability highly been disapproved by Barack Obama’s presidency. It is also through this presidency that the black power movement assertion of black people’s ability to run institutions has been proved to be viable. It can never be doubted that Rev. Jesse Jackson’s two historic campaigns for President in 1984 and 1988 played a very big role in the democratic developments in the United States of America. It was not only his presidency, but his general contribution to the civil rights movements that are considered to be highly beneficial to the democratic developments in the United States of America. However, there are several campaign differences that can be noted between his presidential bid and that of President Barack Obama. For instance, it was noticed that a greater percentage of officials in president Obama’s presidential bid were white American. This is completely the opposite of rev. Jesse Jackson’s which were mainly individuals from the black American communities a fact that had really made him unpopular with the white American population. The other difference is the campaign strategy that both presidential candidates adopted. Obama opted for a generalized approach in which issues of national interests were prioritized. As much as Rev. Jesse Jackson’s campaign discussed national issues, they are mostly inclined towards attending to the problems of the African American population. The Jackson campaign was not a single shot at higher office by an already established politician. Rather, it was a continuous, expanding, open-ended activity to establish a movement for the political empowerment of all participants. In the beginning, Rev Jackson identified his primary constituency as the most "dispossessed and disaffected" American citizens of all, the African Americans of the Northern ghettos and the rural South, citizens who seemed permanently deprived of citizenship and thus denied entrance into the system of privileges and rewards that are every citizen’s right. Despite the fact that president Obama was still a child during the era of Black Power movement and the Civil Rights Movement, he can still be considered to be a fusion of the two. First it would be because of the fact that he is the biggest depiction of the belief by the Black Power movement that even African American could make equally good or even better leaders than the white American. For the period he has held the office of the president of the United States of America, he has been able to prove the legitimacy of this belief. It was as a result of the activities of the Civil Rights Movement that the United States of America got to the democratic level that the nation had attained by the year 2008. Higher levels of democracy in the United States of America in the year 2008 can be said to be one of the most essential contributing factors to the election of Barack Obama as the president of the United States of America. It is undoubtedly that Obama’s presidential election was highly influenced by the Black Power movement and the Civil Rights Movement. This book thus brings to light the contribution of the Black Power movement and the Civil Rights Movement to the democratical advancements in the United States of America. This is contrary to the view that most American citizens have of the black power movement. Most people associate the black power movement with unruliness and violent demonstration. As much as agreeing with the author’s point of view might be a hard task, the manner in which the author presents and gives evidence to his claims makes disagreeing with his assertion even harder. Work Cited Alexander, Jeffrey C. The performance of politics: Obama's victory and the democratic struggle for power. Oxford University Press, 2010. Hall, Simon. "Framing the American 1960s: A historiographical review." European Journal of American Culture 31.1 (2012): 5-23. Joseph, Peniel E. Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama. New York, NY: BasicCivitas Books, 2010. Print. Read More