In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois observed that the problem of the twentieth century was the problem of the “color line.” At the turn of the twentieth century, racial divides were being chiseled through the American working class. These divides were codified in laws demanding racial segregation and led to an era referred to by Rayford Logan as the “nadir of American race relations.” Historians argue over when that era came to a close, but the vast majority agrees that it is over. Yet, is it possible that over the course of the last 100 years, or so, the United States has progressed through its darkest racial hour to the “post-racial” promised land envisioned by the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. where people are judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character?

Millions of Americans passionately wished for that to be the case when the Democratic Party certified Barack Hussein Obama as the official party candidate for President. His was an American story for a new America where King's vision had manifested itself in the first non-white President of the United States. He was from humble beginnings, raised in a single-parent household by his mother. His name was Arabic and he identified himself as African American. When Obama won the White House on November 4 2008, his victory was hailed, by some, as the definitive end of Du Bois’ “color line” problem.

While perceptions of race in the United States have certainly changed over the last century, it is hard to understand Obama's presidency as proof of a new “post-racial” America. In the immediate aftermath of his election, crimes of racial hatred were reported all over the United States directly linked to Obama's victory. In Standish, Maine, not exactly a hotbed of racial intolerance (or multicultural diversity), a local store even sponsored an informal “dead pool” wherein people were asked to wager on the date of Obama's assassination (Harnden, 2008).

Further complicating the “post-racial America” narrative is the circumstances of Barack Obama's parentage. Given that Obama's father was an immigrant from Kenya and his mother was white and from the American mid-west, it would seem that his self-identification as African American would be absolutely appropriate.