Obama Discrimination Case Study

On the run up to the 2008 election, the picture on whether the American white voter would (e.g. Reeves, 1997) or would not (e.g. Highton 2004; Voss & Lublin 2001) discriminate against a black candidate was rather inconclusive. In which case what made Thernstrom (2008) proclaim that the election of Barak Obama hailed a new era in American history, where black parents can tell their children that colour no longer matters? This ideal or hope that Obama ushered in an end to the past racial injustices, had support amongst many Researchers (Curry, 2008; Schneider 2008; Steele, 2008), with some Researchers suggesting that Obama represents a counter to the black stereotype and therefore helped to diminish prejudice amongst the white voter (Columb & Plant, 2011; Welch & Sigelman, 2011). The suggestion was that Americans had signalled the dawn of a new postracial era (Thernstrom, 2008) where Americans could put racial prejudice behind them in the search for something better. This led to Curry (2008) and Gibbs (2008) suggesting that for the first time Americans realised that race was no longer a valid judgement of a candidate, and the poor state of

This nervousness that some whites have with a black President has revealed itself in a process of ‘othering’, the general process of demarcating an out-group and thereby reaffirming in-group membership, in particular labelling of an individual as a member of a potentially threatening out-group (Schwalbe et al. 2000). In Obama’s case this has, across both terms of office, manifested itself in labels of Muslim and a noncitizen, even though Obama has time after time addressed both rumours (Barreto at al.,