W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures
1 total work
When Barack Obama clinched his bid for president, his victory redefined politics-as-usual, cast America's race relations in a bold new light, and energised pop culture throughout. No writer is better positioned to tease apart the multiple meanings of this unprecedented journey than Dyson, an award-winning author often dubbed 'the preeminent black intellectual'. Before Dyson's first W.E.B Du Bois lecture at Harvard in November 2008, Lawrence D. Bobo introduced him by saying 'few have carried on the legacy of Du Bois' of public intellectualism as well, or with as much verve, or quite as much rhymin' as Professor Dyson'. And this style is apparent in "Full of the Hope That the Present Has Brought Us", which moves effortlessly between politics and popular culture, hailing Obama as 'the first president of the hip-hop generation'. This book deftly explores how Obama often resisted race, as he led America beyond the paralysing polemic of black and white. Through Dyson's eyes, we look past 'post-racial politics' - a widely heralded ideal hatched in racial naivete - toward a post-racist future.
He also grapples with Obama's challenge to a narrow understanding of American identity, citizenship, and patriotism, and wrestles with the consequences of putting a black face on a global empire. Dyson measures Obama's influence on pop culture; from t-shirt vendors to talk radio, from Hollywood stars to hip hop honchos. But he also probes the ways that pop culture made a black president possible, from the "Cosby Show" in the eighties, to rappers in the nineties, and from the rise of Oprah, to the television show 24, which featured not one but two black presidents. In the earliest days of Obama's campaign, Dyson saw the path that would lead the first black president to the White House. His new book sparkles with the erudition and intimate knowledge of an insider, as he helps us understand this watershed event in American history.
He also grapples with Obama's challenge to a narrow understanding of American identity, citizenship, and patriotism, and wrestles with the consequences of putting a black face on a global empire. Dyson measures Obama's influence on pop culture; from t-shirt vendors to talk radio, from Hollywood stars to hip hop honchos. But he also probes the ways that pop culture made a black president possible, from the "Cosby Show" in the eighties, to rappers in the nineties, and from the rise of Oprah, to the television show 24, which featured not one but two black presidents. In the earliest days of Obama's campaign, Dyson saw the path that would lead the first black president to the White House. His new book sparkles with the erudition and intimate knowledge of an insider, as he helps us understand this watershed event in American history.