There was an interesting discussion of all this on Talk of the Nation Wednesday that you may have heard. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7402914 Debra Dickerson made the good points that Obama’s candidacy both offers the opportunity for a fuller discussion about different kinds or experiences of Blackness (she suggests that this category will likely decline in significance in the wake of this demographic expansion of non-American slavery descended African-American populations) and that his early success may be something of a bitter pill for some African-American since they know that he would likely not be experiencing this same kind of success/acceptance among Euro-Americans if he were of the above mentioned American-slavery descent, and yet his success will also likely help to lift barriers for other Americans of African descent.

Annecdotally, I was flipping around a friend’s cable access channels and saw two relavent discussions in the space of a few minutes, neither of which fit with the media’s gloss of these discussions as “Is he black enough?” One was a neo-Garveyite individual arguing that Africans should under stand that Americans do not want African-Americans in this country and positing that Obama, despite his qualifications, would never be elected as evidence of this. The other was a conversation between two African-American women in African dress. One of them was saying that she didn’t know what the solution to bringing African-American and new African immigrant communities closer together was, but that it would require more effort and understanding from African-Americans to bring it about.

Thanks for the cites. I knew that Sundiata’s book was out but haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. This is really rich and nicely evolving field.