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

Front Cover
State University of New York Press, Mar 10, 2010 - Social Science - 158 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.

From inside the book

Contents

Jesse Jackson Didnt Give a Damn
1
Paving the Way for Obamamania
9
The Soulessness of the New Talented Tenth
25
American Political Philosophy and Black Suffering
43
Americas War on Terror and the Rise of Bushism
57
The New Black Preacher
75
On BET HipHop Cultureand Their Consequences
95
7 Whats Wrong with Us?The Necessary Death of American Romanticism
113
APPENDIX
125
Notes
127
Index
139
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page viii - God give us men! A time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands, Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office Cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not lie...
Page viii - GOD, GIVE US MEN! GOD, GIVE us MEN! A time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands; Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking! Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty and in private thinking...

About the author (2010)

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.

Bibliographic information