La nébuleuse post-raciale : l'avènement d'une nouvelle dialectique raciale dans la vie politique américaine?

Résumé 0

The 2008 presidential election came to be celebrated as a climactic event in terms of race relations in the United States. The victory of Barack Obama, the first African-American candidate to garner a majority of the votes, seems to have left behind the last traces and bruises of slavery, segregation, and racism. This historic election fostered a wave of enthusiasm among Americans and inspired media and academic circles to comment excessively and passionately on it. Many pundits jumped to the conclusion that the election of a black president had paved the way to the advent of a post-racial society. Yet it seems premature to make such a claim without clearly defining the concept. Has the United States entered an era liberated from racism, putting aside the last signs of a troubled racial past? How can we then explain the violent backlash of some of the most conservative elements of the Republican Party? In this new and nonetheless ever changing context, it is necessary, on the one hand, to clearly analyze and scrutinize the main characteristics of a potential post-racial society as it is presented by some of the rising stars of black American politics. On the other hand, one cannot abstain from mentioning the other side of the coin: the renewed racial discourse used by some nostalgic members of American politics. This essay intends to demonstrate the complexity of the period through the lens of a new racial dialogue inspired by the Hegelian dialectics