John Kenneth White - Barack Obamas America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family, and Religion Ended the Reagan Era

John Kenneth White

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
ANN ARBOR

Copyright by the University of Michigan 2009
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Printed on acid-free paper

2012 2011 2010 2009 4 3 2 1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

White, John Kenneth.
Barack Obama's America : how new conceptions of race, family, and religion ended the Reagan era / John Kenneth White.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-472-11450-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-03391-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-02179-6 (ebook)
1. FamilyUnited StatesHistory. 2. CoalitionsUnited States History. 3. United StatesSocial conditions1980 4. Obama, Barack. 5. Reagan, Ronald. I. Title.

HQ535.W47 2009
306.8509730905dc22 2009018645

For
REVEREND DOUGLAS J. SPINA, PH.D.
Pastor, Counselor, Friend

Yesterday's strangest dreams are today's headlines, and change is getting swifter every moment.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON, NOVEMBER 7, 1967

DOING A BOOK OF SUCH VAST SCOPE means that my list of debts is unusually large. I especially thank Phil Pochoda, director and executive editor of the University of Michigan Press, who guided this book to production and spurred its author to tell him (and you) more about the vast changes taking place in contemporary politics. I am also indebted to Jim Reische, former acquisitions editor at the Press, who commissioned this project and followed it through with helpful advice. I also thank the Press's Contemporary Political and Social Series editor, Alan Wolfe of Boston College, for his unwavering and steadfast support, helpful feedback, and continuous encouragement. Anne Lesher, reference librarian at the Catholic University of America's Mullen Library, fielded innumerable requests for books and documents. Carol Therese Young served as my initial research assistant and ably provided the information I sought (and much more). Stergos Kaloudis became my second research assistant and cheerfully handled a barrage of queries. Anne Roan Thomas of Catholic University compiled the index. Ann Kasprzyk, formerly of the Life Cycle Institute at Catholic University, also cheerfully assisted in a number of research tasks. My colleagues at the Life Cycle Institute and in the Politics Department at the Catholic University of America listened to drafts of these chapters and gave plenty of good commentary. I am also indebted to my students at Catholic University, who heard various versions of these chapters in my classes and whose questions helped sharpen my thinking.

I am especially beholden to my family, especially my wife, Yvonne, and my daughter, Jeannette. The period in which this book was written was an Page x especially difficult one, and without their love and constant support, you would not be reading this now.

John Kenneth White
Washington, D.C., April 2009

Shall we be a great nation? That is the question for the third century.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON, NOVEMBER 20, 1967

AT PRECISELY 7:46 A.M. on October 17, 2006, the United States passed an important milestone. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. population exceeded the magic 300 million mark.

But when it came time to honor the arrival of the 300 millionth American, the rejoicing was muted, a sharp contrast to the celebrations that Page 2 greeted the birth of the 200 millionth American on November 20, 1967, when loud cheers rang through the lobby of the Commerce Department and applause repeatedly interrupted President Lyndon B. Johnson's speech marking the occasion. Johnson extolled the greatness of America, a splendor that he claimed was unequaled in world history: Today we see a nation that is ready to fly to the moon and ready to explore the depths of the ocean. We see a nation fiat, having begun its own climb up the mountain, [that] has neither forgotten nor has it forsaken those people throughout the world who want to grow and who want to prosper in their own ways. To put it in a sentence, we have seen success in America beyond our wildest dreams.

Johnson was not the only one in a triumphant mood. Life dispatched a cadre of photographers to find the 200 millionth American, anointing a baby boy in Atlanta with the title. In an article marking the occasion, former Census Bureau director Richard M. Scammon predicted that when the 1967 newborn turned twenty-one in 1988, he or she would face a bright future:

The bourgeois, accomplishment-oriented middle-class values will still predominate, despite the hippies' protestations. Most people will still like their creature comforts and the better life and, as they always have, will be trying to get what they can out of them.

[A] backyard swimming pool will be as common as a color TV set is today, and central home air conditioning will be the norm. With the shorter work week, most people will be able to get a second job to help them pay their bills.

Scammon invented the word demophobia to describe those people who feared a country overgrown with people.

Gardner's admonition was lost amid the national celebration. Yet his sentiments were commonplace when the 300 millionth American arrived. Page 3 Few cheers marked that milestone, and President George W. Bush gave no address in honor of the occasion. A day before the 300 million mark was reached, a Census Bureau spokesperson told reporters that plans to observe the occurrence were still being finalized, adding, I don't yet know what, if anything, we are going to do in the way of an event.

For some Americans, having 300 million residents means rethinking how the United States should use its precious resources. Gregg Easterbrook, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, invoked Gardner's memory, writing that having more Americans means having more of everything in life, including those things that are less desirable: More people, more sprawl, more creativity, more traffic, more love, more noise, more diversity, more energy use, more happiness, more loneliness, more fast food, more art, more knowledge, maybe even more wisdom.

Today, doubts about the future abound. But it is not the scarcity of land, food, or fuel or the presence of too many people that creates our present-day discomfort. Rather, our political dissent is amplified by who these new Americans are and the question of whether they embody the ideas associated with becoming an American. Though no one can say for sure, it is probable that the 300 millionth American is the child of immigrants. In Queens, New York, the Elmhurst Hospital Center decided it should lay claim to the precedent-setting birth. So when Gricelda Plata, aged 22, gave birth to a six-pound, five-ounce boy at 7:46 A.M. on October 17, 2006, the hospital presented her with an oversized T-shirt that announced, I delivered Page 4 America's 300 millionth baby. Plata and the boy's father, Armando Jimenez, aged 25, immigrants from Puebla, Mexico, reside in Brooklyn.