Drawing from the work of "cultural memory" and "racial formation theory" (Omi and Winant 1994) we explore the ascension of Barack Obama as an illustration of how "race" is understood and remembered. This article focuses on the public media discourse of the 2012 Obama re-election to illustrate how the narrative morphed…

This article examines the Black male crisis thesis promulgated by the social science literature, public policy, and mainstream discourse, respectively. The authors contend that the stock-story that the majority of African American males are "at-risk" for engaging in self-destructive behavior or on the verge of extinction perpetuates a discourse of…

Since the early 1990s, several researchers have found that African American teachers who are successful with African American students hold deep philosophical commitments to the concept of "social justice". While these scholars have convincingly articulated how "social justice" is a central feature of African American teachers' success with…