The Bridge-Builders

Economies of Empathy: Obama, Neoliberalism, and Social Justice

“…What this means is that only certain individuals öthose who have the`right' emotionsöare allowed to pass into the wider communities of the nation or the corporation as fully fledged citizens or employees (Ahmed, 2004). In this respect it is worth noting how, although Obama regularly alludes to histories of inequality, this is offset in his political memoirs and speeches by his ability to position himself against`angry',`outdated' figures from the past (eg, militant' Black nationalists) (McNeil, 2010). This hierarchy of emotions is, in turn, employed to make cultural, moral, and ethical distinctions between communities öthat is, between more or less cultivated and more or less ethical nations and corporations.…”

Not even past: Barack Obama and the burden of race

“…12, 30), but is unable to engage with theorists of Black Consciousness outside the United States. This means that Sugrue pays lip service to Obama's cosmopolitanism but does not note what Obama, as someone who attended anti-apartheid rallies in the 1980s, might have taken from Steve Biko and activists who were willing to offer frank talk on white liberals and a black political identity that was not defined by pigmentation (McNeil, 2010). Even more disconcertingly, Sugrue's first chapter turns black cultural nationalists in the United States into straw men, race-baiting hucksters who enjoyed performative denunciations of whites rather than community building and theoretical analysis (pp.…”