A Note on Race and Politics in the United States

Sherrow O Pinder

doi:10.4172/2332-0761.1000e102

Abstract

The impetus for this brief commentary derives from the idea that the politics of race in the United States continues to be a public affairs issue. Given that it is important for political scientists to debate race and politics in the United States, as a multifaceted area of American politics, the Journal of Political Science and Public Affairs provides an open forum for different methodological approaches and diverse perspectives and positions on race and politics. In fact, we are witnessing a time where race, in terms of its metonymic intensifications, is analyzed and discussed through a variety of coded signifiers such as culture and class. Hence, any effort to stage a standoff that race matters or not in the United States would have to recognize the ontology and epistemology of race and its modalities of visual performance, that is, not what race is, but what race does. Race is something that is ascribed to blacks and other nonwhites. Whites, on the other hand, are unraced and unmarked, which positioned whites as members of the dominant group.

Highlights

Obama, in his political campaigns for presidency, was well aware that race matters in the United States and of the racist forces at work
Pinder* Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, California State University, Chico, USA. The impetus for this brief commentary derives from the idea that the politics of race in the United States continues to be a public affairs issue
Given that it is important for political scientists to debate race and politics in the United States, as a multifaceted area of American politics, the Journal of Political Science and Public Affairs provides an open forum for different methodological approaches and diverse perspectives and positions on race and politics

Summary

Introduction

Obama, in his political campaigns for presidency, was well aware that race matters in the United States and of the racist forces at work. The impetus for this brief commentary derives from the idea that the politics of race in the United States continues to be a public affairs issue. Given that it is important for political scientists to debate race and politics in the United States, as a multifaceted area of American politics, the Journal of Political Science and Public Affairs provides an open forum for different methodological approaches and diverse perspectives and positions on race and politics.

Results

Conclusion