Barack Obama 's Presidential Run

Barack Obama’s election as the President of the United States in 2008 was considered by many to be a representation of the huge strides the country has made in terms of race relations. Considering that blacks in America were denied civil rights less than five decades ago, his election certainly indicates that progress has been made. Obama and his election to office is linked to this progress because much of the population considers him to be black, including himself. Yet, Obama has as much “white ancestry” as he does “black ancestry.” This specific example can be related to the convention ‘that considered a white woman capable of giving birth to a black

My pre-adolescent years were spent in a community thick with diversity. My friendships were as diverse as the environment in which I lived. It never struck me that racial and ethnic ideals separated people in society. However, upon moving to a predominately white upper-class community I began to question such racial and ethnic ideas. From my adolescent years through today I began noticing that certain people are viewed differently for reasons relating to race and ethnicity. As a result, the most recent community I grew up in has kept me sheltered from aspects of society. As a product of a community where majorities existed, I found myself unexposed to the full understanding of race and ethnicity. Prior to the class I had never fully dealt with issues of race or ethnicity, as a result I wondered why they would be of any importance in my life.

Meet Rachel, a sophomore studying at Howard University who is also mixed with both black and white. Rachel transferred to the Historically Black University from a Predominantly White Institution because she felt as though she was not “white enough” and Howard would better suit her. Unfortunately upon her arrival, Rachel could not help but feel as though she was not “black enough” to attend Howard University. Rachel’s feeling of not belonging are not isolated, they are shared by millions of biracial Americans who, at one time or another, felt as though they did not belong to either culture. These feelings have been brought on, over time, by the way, America, although believed to be a “melting pot” of cultures, often wants people to categorize themselves as one ethnicity and the pressure placed on Americans to solely identify with one race divides the country more than anything else. The only way to rectify this problem is for Americans to stop separating themselves into racial categories and come together to be classified as simply American.

Our racial ethnicity is influential in what we do in life, whether it would be with school, personal relations, or even job opportunities. There are many Americans today that hold racial prejudice against people of different color and different ethnicity, which as a result narrows many opportunities that minorities can actually have. In the essay “Race in America: “We Would Like To Believe We Are Over The Problem” Maryann Cusimano Love an associate professor of international relations in the Politics Department at Catholic University, addresses “To “get over” racial problems” (Love 387) we need to acknowledge them as well as the history of those racial problems in order to move forward as a multicultural society. Love reveals a study conducted by The University of Connecticut which shows “19 percent of the 14,000 college

Understanding this will help one realize how they are. In the article, ‘Speaking in Tongues,’ Obama mentions a girl name Joyce from college who was part Italian, part French and part Native American and states her struggle with people trying to label her. “I’m not Black… I’m multiracial… Why should I have to choose between them? …They’re the ones who are telling me I can’t be who I am.” (Smith, 2008) In this quote, Joyce tells that she is multiracial, meaning she is accepting all roots. When she says that people are trying to tell her she can’t be who she is, she is not agreeing to make others comfortable. However there are also people that do not want to accept their roots, specifically their genetics. In the previous article, ‘DNA rewrites history for African-Americans,’ Henry Louis Gates Jr. did not want to embrace the fact that he was 50% white and 50% black. ““I’ll never see my family tree in quite the same way,” Gates says on the PBS show program, “I have the blues. Can I still have the blues?”” (Willing, 2006) After discovering his true heritage, Gates did not want to accept his ‘new’ identity, but instead rejects it, unlike Joyce. When he denies his identity it only hurts him because he does not recognize his entire

As we go about our daily lives and interact with all kinds of people, from all kinds of backgrounds and different races, we often do not always stop to think of their skin color and the culture they may be from. We are often too busy to really stop and take notice of what is really happening to the lives of the people around us. Two Nations Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal by Andrew Hacker is remarkable book that spells out Andrew Hackers thoughts about the race and the American people. A question one may ask is, do we simply see people and not their color, or do we see black people and white people and does that play a factor in what we do, how we act, and what we say. Hacker claims that we are a country moving toward being two nations, one white and one black. He feels like we will be “Two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy: who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different time zones, or inhabitants of different planets”(Hacker preface).

America is a melting pot of different people, culture, and religion. Although there are millions of different people from different parts of the world, it 's citizens would like to appear united and patriotic. To foreigners, every person living in the United States is an American; however, within the country, there are divisions among the society through a concept called race. No citizen calls themselves an American to another American. The individual labels themselves "Hispanics, Asians, [or] Africans," (Rodriguez 119). America may appear uniform, yet it’s citizens seem to want individuality. And here is the paradox: those same citizens also detest the concept of race. When one is deemed by society as different because they are unable to be labeled, the individual hates this sense of distinctiveness. Richard Rodriguez 's memoir, Brown: The Last Discovery of America, discusses this peculiar concept of race by appealing to the reader 's pathos and logos in order for one to obtain a greater understanding of the idea.

No idea in America has been as lasting as race. Unlike the 19th century notion that anyone could move out west and become rich by mining gold, the notion of race persists and continues to deceive people into believing in its authenticity (Morgan 1982). Those in power in the United States, seem determined to stay in power. They continue to marginalize minorities and keep dark-skinned persons in a position

Furthermore, the researchers divide white racial consciousness into two: achieved and unachieved. A person who has achieved white racial consciousness has explored and developed some sort of belief system when it comes to racial issues. Conversely, those with unachieved white racial consciousness have not grasped their own racial identity and its link to other minority groups, which may stem from either intentionally avoiding dialogue surrounding race or depending on family members to form an ideology. In his book Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Bell argues that this relatively loose grasp of white racial identity creates an environment that serves a significant detriment to advancing racial progress in the country, as “few white people are able to identify with blacks as a group –the essential prerequisite for feeling empathy with, rather than aversion from, blacks’ self-inflicted suffering” (Bell, 4).

The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States has generated a lot of discussions and debate on the current racial affairs in the United States. Many assume that Obama's presidency ushers a new era post-racial America. So, I decided to read a few recent articles on the topic. The first was by Time Wise where he reflects on "denial and reality" in response to the question "what is post-racial?" (Wise, 2012). Wise's article is depressing because not only because he leaves no doubt, by bringing up strong qualitative and quantitative arguments, that the whole idea of post-racial America is a chimera, but because he makes it hard to believe post-racial America can be achieved at all.

We select the 2008 US presidential election is because president Obama is the first African American president. Panel B of Table 1 reports results of arbitrage computation for the 2008 US presidential election. As we can observe from Panel B of Table 1, we do not see any positive return both from USD to GBP and from GBP to USD. Only one positive return appears in 3 months’ forward rates for both USD to GBP and GBP to USD. When we look at the average arbitrage opportunity for different maturities, the average arbitrage opportunity of USD to GBP is smaller than that of GBP to USD in 3 out of 4 different maturities.

When Barack Obama ran for President in 2008, he was a considerably new and unknown politician. The campaign poster he used, with its stylized, tricolor stencilization of a photograph taken of him by Associated Press photographer Mannie Garcia and the word "hope" (or less commonly "change" or "progress") printed in all capital letters beneath, soon became iconic.

From the beginning of time, race has seemed to be a topic of discussion. There has always been occurrences in history about racial problems and skin tone issues. Many thought the Civil Rights era would bring an end to race issues in America, but that was just a pseudo. By reading , Dreams From My Father , one can get the sense of the struggle for identity and finding a place of belonging. The United States cannot escape the historical legacy that it has built over the years when dealing with race. Obama’s famous quote in the book proclaims , “My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there (Obama 111). This famous quote signifies Obama need to know more about him; he is proclaiming that although race

At the conclusion of President Barack Obama’s historical consecutive terms in office there is going to be a large number of candidates that are vying for the nominations of the respective parties. Due to the constitutional term limits imposed on the President, Obama is barred to seek re-election in 2016. While there are about 10 candidates running for the republicans, there are only two still in the running for the Democratic Party. The way candidates are recognized by their respective parties to become a candidate for the United States Presidency is first by receiving an invitation to compete in the primaries, then being included in the nationwide polls, as well as being on the ballot for at least 75% of all states. At the conclusion of the February 1st caucus there were 3 Democrats and 10 republicans who were still in the Presidential race, since then one Democratic candidate had dropped out.

Barack Obama’s path to presidency was extremely difficult and one of the best executed political strategies in recent memory. In a country still ripe with racism and bigotry, a black man of mixed heritage was able to become the 44th President of the United States of America, an incredible accomplishment that many didn’t think was possible. For most politicians with career goals set towards lofty government positions like the Commander in Chief, there is a well worn path that many choose to take that leads up to running for such a high office. One part of that path is that somewhere along the way you need to write a book or memoir of some sort, this can help establish early how people feel about you and can start generating a buzz among voters, especially if you are already in a position in Congress. President Obama did the same thing in 1995 when he began his quest to join the Illinois Senate by writing his memoir, Dreams from My Father and later republished the same book in 2004 when he was running for the U.S. Senate.