Pierre Orelus - Race, Power, and the Obama Legacy

This book critically examines Obamas presidency and legacy, especially in regard to race, inequality, education, and political power. Orelus depicts an interest convergence factor that led many White liberals and the corporate media to help Obama get elected in 2008 and 2012. He assesses Obamas political accomplishments, including parts of his domestic policy that support gay rights and equal pay for women. Special attention is given to Obamas educational policies, like Race to the Top, and the effects of such policies on both the learning and academic outcome of students, particularly linguistically and culturally diverse students. In a race and power framework, Orelus relates domestic policy to the effects of Obamas foreign policy on the lives of people in poorer countries, especially where innocent children and women have been killed by war and drone strikes authorized by Obamas administration. The author invites readers to question and transcend the historical symbolism of Obamas political victory in an effort to carefully examine and critique his actions as reflected through both his domestic and foreign policies.

Pierre Wilbert Orelus is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at New Mexico State University. He has received several awards, including the Exceptional Achievements in Creative Scholarly Activity (2013) award. Professor Orelus most recent books include On Language, Democracy, and Social Justice: Noam Chomskys Critical Intervention (with Noam Chomsky, 2014) and Affirming Language Diversity in Schools and Society: Beyond Linguistic Apartheid (2014).

Pierre Orelus has written an insightful, far-reaching and highly significant critique of the presidency of the first African-American to hold the office in the USA.

Paul Carr, co-author of The Phenomenon of Obama
and the Agenda for Education

Pierre Orelus provides a compelling indictment of the Obama years with respect to both domestic and foreign policy.

Mike Cole, Professor, University of East London,
and author of Critical Race Theory and Education:
A Marxist Response

Pierre Orelus important book, Race, Power, and the Obama Legacy, offers a detailed challenge to the many false assumptions surrounding Obama. Not only does he provide the necessary evidence to counter the notion that institutional racism has been eradicated, but he connects racism to capitalism.

Curry Malott, author of Teaching Marx: the Socialist Agenda

Orelus courageous new book is an important analysis, a must-read for educators and concerned citizens worldwide who wish to defeat the plague of racism and the brutality of capitalism in the interests of bringing forth a new social universe animated by social justice and true equality.

Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor, Chapman University,
and author of Pedagogy of Insurrection

Pierre Wilbert Orelus

First published 2016

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Taylor & Francis

The right of Pierre Wilbert Orelus to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Orelus, Pierre W., author.
Race, power, and the Obama legacy / by Pierre Wilbert Orelus.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Obama, BarackInfluence.2.United StatesPolitics and government20093.United StatesForeign relations2009 4.United StatesRace relations.I.Title.
E907.O75 2015
305.800973dc23
2015013081

ISBN: 978-1-61205-878-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-61205-879-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-67575-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Adobe Caslon

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

, although substantively modified, previously appeared in Orelus, P.W. (Fall 2010). The Occupier and the New Occupied: Haiti and Other Oppressed Nations Under Western Neocolonial, Neoliberal, and Imperialist Dominations. Netherlands: SensePublisher.

Pierre Orelus provides a compelling indictment of the Obama years with respect to both domestic and foreign policy. Orelus notes that while Obama, the safest and most pragmatic choice to follow George W. Bush, needs recognition for his progressive achievements on womens and LGBTQ rights, and to some extent (despite, as Paul Carr notes in his Afterword, its limitations and problems) on health care, he has followed and sometimes outstripped his predecessor in the pro-neoliberal capitalist orientation of his domestic policy and the pro-imperialist nature of his foreign policy. Moreover, having stated completely erroneously that there is not a Black and White America and Latina/o America and Asian America, Obama has not improved race relations domestically or internationally. Indeed, while his two election victories have symbolic importance for multiculturalism and antiracism, his stance on the deportation of millions of immigrants of color has worsened the situation in the United States, while he is accountable overseas for the wars of aggression against poor Black and Brown peoples, including the use of horrendous drone strikes. Obamas professed belief in hope and in change from the bottom up have been proved to be just slogans. Since Obamas record is dealt with at length throughout the book and in the Afterword, I will not make any further comments here. Instead, given Curry Malotts insistence in the Introduction that the crisis in capitalism is systemic, and accepting Oreluss contention that racism in the United States is also systemic, I want in this Foreword to address contrasting forms of power in another country in the Americas. I want also to compare institutional racism in the United States with that country, a country where, unlike the United States, the State is actively promoting antiracism and multiculturalism, as part of an agenda for twenty-first century socialism. That country is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.1

In Venezuela, a conception of power, diametrically opposed to capitalist and imperialist power, has been formulated and has taken root. In 2010, stressing the prime importance of education, the late President Hugo Chvez identified it as a key form of power in the ongoing Bolivarian Revolution:

When we talk about power, what are we talking about The first power that we all have is knowledge. So weve made efforts first in education, against illiteracy, for the development of thinking, studying, analysis. In a way, that has never happened before. Today, Venezuela is a giant school, its all a school. From children of one year old until old age, all of us are studying and learning. And then political power, the capacity to make decisions, the community councils, communes, the peoples power, the popular assemblies. And then there is the economic power. Transferring economic power to the people, the wealth of the people distributed throughout the nation (cited in Sheehan, 2010).