What's Wrong with Obamamania?: Black America, Black Leadership, and the Death of Political Imagination

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SUNY Press, Jun 5, 2008 - Social Science - 144 pages
Barack Obama s sudden arrival on the national scene has created a wave of excitement in American politics, a phenomenon that has been dubbed Obamamania. In What s Wrong with Obamamania?, Ricky L. Jones places Obama s run for the presidency in the context of deep and often disturbing shifts in black leadership since the 1960s. From Charles Hamilton Houston to Thurgood Marshall to Jesse Jackson, from prosperity preachers to megachurches, from W. E. B. Du Bois s Talented Tenth and civil rights advocates to Black Entertainment Television and hip-hop culture, Jones paints a picture of lowered expectations, cynicism, and nihilism that should give us all pause.

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Contents

A Series of Unfortunate and Unsavory Events
9
Sorry Du Bois Doesnt Live Here Anymore The Soulessness of the New Talented Tenth
25
The Witch and the Devil
43
Black Hawks Down
57
I Dont Care What Jesus Would Do Ive Got to Get Paid
75
Before and Beyond Don Imus
95
Whats Wrong with Us?
113
Chronology
125
Notes
127
Index
139
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About the author (2008)

Ricky L. Jones is Associate Professor of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville and the author of Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities, also published by SUNY Press.

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