TODAY, we may well ask whether there is a paradigm shift in American race relations with the election of the first African-American President four years ago. President Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th U.S. President symbolised the zenith of African-American struggle from the beginnings of slavery within a racially prejudiced society that even today persists in casting African-Americans as “strangers in their own homes.” Nonetheless, the Obama Presidency represents a significant landmark of the African-American struggle for political, economic, and social equality over a period of 375 years, within a nation founded on slavery, disenfranchisement, and White domination.

And it would be politically useful to reiterate the African-American struggle, which included the following, indeed, not an exhaustive list: slavery as human degradation; the Dred Scott Case in 1857 that questioned the citizenship of Blacks; the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 that abolished slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 that reversed the Dred Scott ruling; the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 that gave the right to vote; the Jim Crow laws that accommodated institutional discrimination; the Plessy v. Ferguson case that institutionalised segregation, advocating  the separate but equal doctrine for Blacks and Whites; the Brown v. the Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court case 1954 that brought an end to segregation; the national civil rights movement of the 1960s; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the perpetual racial profiling of African-Americans and other minorities by law enforcement agencies, etc.
It would be foolhardy, too, not to say that President Obama received a painful legacy from former President George W. Bush. But in 2000, Bush inherited a healthy economic legacy from the Clinton two-term Presidency. However, by the end of Bush’s two terms in office in 2008, he engaged the U.S. in two wars – Afghanistan and Iraq -, and his inherited, healthy economic legacy evaporated into an economic nightmare, which was compounded with the international financial meltdown
In fact, Obama in 2008 was heir to a terrifying and deeply distressing legacy from Bush. The following is what awaited him: United States Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Annual Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2009, made several observations on the U.S. economy. He explained that since the commencement of the international financial meltdown in August 2007, the U.S. financial system remained strained, with rising inflation arising from a global commodity boom, emergence of a sluggish economy, collapse of several critical financial institutions and financial markets, and the materialisation of the global economy into a deep recession.
He noted that the unemployment rate was 5.75%, consumer spending sluggish, fall in residential construction and house prices, with increasing mortgage defaults and foreclosures; and credit losses at financial institutions such as IndyMac and Lehman Brothers, among others; Bank of America purchased Merrill Lynch; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) settled the financial woes at Washington Mutual; Wachovia bank was sold; Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs became holding companies.
Then there was the bank stress test, one of Obama’s initial responses to the financial crisis, whereby 19 of the largest bank holding companies agreed to an evaluation of their capital positions by the Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller and Currency, and FDIC, with the Treasury providing capital as necessary.  The bank stress test identified capital deficiencies in the bank holding companies and with appropriate capital replenishment, the financial institutions recouped and began to function.
This financial crisis plus coping with two wars were what faced Obama as he entered the White House. Obama inheriting a messy legacy and two wars had his work cut out for him. He transformed health care that no American President was able to do in the last 50 years, and he stabilised the financial institutions and financial markets not to many Americans’ satisfaction; the reason he has an uphill battle in the imminent U.S. Presidential election.
And notwithstanding Bush’s mismanagement of the economy and providing America with two wars, the American people gave him a second term with 51% of the votes in 2004. In the case of Obama, his pursuit of a second term is fraught with perpetual racist innuendoes and general race hate, with the view to block an African-American President from gaining a second term.
The promise of a post-racial America with the institution of the Obama Presidency is now nowhere in sight. Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes (2012) argued that this post-racial America has not happened largely because of the influences of beliefs, values, and rules and slow-changing institutions. And Johnson, Jr. (2009) concluded that the rush to see a post-racial America happening with the Obama Presidency overlooked the fact that race, in spite of everything, matters everyday in the lives of Americans. The Obama Presidency rekindled  racism among the White minority, including the Tea Party Movement that tried unsuccessfully to lend respectability to racist views and actions in the guise of resisting Obama’s health care reforms and patriotism.
There is the constant harassment and humiliation of President Obama by the birthers who claim that Obama was not born in the USA. Most recently, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio at a press conference last Tuesday asserted that his investigators concluded that Obama’s birth certificate was not legitimate. Hawaii officials have verified Obama’s U.S. citizenship, and several courts have rejected law suits over the birth certificate matter. Then there was the New York Post Editor Col Allan racist cartoon on Obama’s US$787 billion stimulus plan, showing Obama as a monkey.
The racial name-calling and disrespect during Obama’s Presidency in the form of common racial slurs as, “A dick,””jackass,” “tar baby,” “your boy” (Burton, 2011); these racial smears originated from the Reconstruction Era after slavery ended; and then there was the Republican Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina who shouted “You lie!” at President Obama during his State of the Union speech, to Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer sticking her finger in Obama’s face on the airport tarmac in Arizona.
These racist statements and innuendoes depicted in the cartoon shown here all came from the Reconstruction Era; and there is a small minority of Americans who are revisiting this era to refresh their repertoire of race hate and to lend credence to their brand of racism. The race hate peddled against Obama is rooted in American institutionalised racism; and it will have more frequent incursions in the months ahead leading up to the election of the next U.S. President. Now in the 21st century, the racial paradigm in the U.S. remains unchanged.for this small minority of White racists. In fact, Obama’s inhabitation of the White House may have deepened the racial divide.