The election of Barack Obama gave political currency to the (white) idea that Americans now live in a post-racial society. But the persistence of racial profiling, economic inequality between blacks and whites, disproportionate numbers of black prisoners, and disparities in health and access to healthcare suggest there is more to the story. David H. Ikard addresses these issues in an effort to give voice to the challenges faced by most African Americans and to make legible the shifting discourse of white supremacist ideologyincluding post-racialism and colorblind politicsthat frustrates black self-determination, agency, and empowerment in the 21st century. Ikard tackles these concerns from various perspectives, chief among them black feminism. He argues that all oppressions (of race, gender, class, sexual orientation) intersect and must be confronted to upset the status quo.
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Redistributing power in a post-racial society
David H. Ikard is Professor in the Department of English at the University of Miami and author of Breaking the Silence: Toward a Black Male Feminist Criticism and (with Martell Lee Teasley) Nation of Cowards: Black Activism in Barack Obama's Post-Racial America (IUP, 2012). His blog Nation of Cowards (nationofcowards.blogspot.com) takes up contemporary racial topics and engages a wider intellectual and activist community.
Sadly, the issues here are as old as race in America, though Ikard's survey of their contemporary forms is instructive. . . . Recommended.
Ikard's incorporation of autobiographical moments . . . to show the intersections of the personal and the political, . . . his candid discussions of his father's sexual abuse of a young female relative, and the various teachable moments he has had with his own daughter and son on a range of issues related to being black in America are quite profound as concrete evidence to support his overall argument [that] white supremacist ideology . . . continues to inform Alód
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