What racist rumors about Barack Obama tell us about the intractability of racism in American politics.
Barack Obama and his family have been the objects of rumors, legends, and conspiracy theories unprecedented in US politics. Outbreaks of anti-Obama lore have occurred in every national election cycle since 2004 and continue to the present day—two elections after his presidency ended. In Trash Talk, folklorist Patricia A. Turner examines how these thought patterns have grown ever more vitriolic and persistent and what this means for American political culture.
Through the lens of attacks on Obama, Trash Talk explores how racist tropes circulate and gain currency. As internet communications expand in reach, rumors and conspiracy theories have become powerful political tools, and new types of lore like the hoax and fake news have taken root. The mainstream press and political establishment dismissed anti-Obama mythology for years, registering concern only when it became difficult to deny how much power those who circulated it could command. Trash Talk demonstrates that the ascendancy of Barack Obama was never a signal of a postracial America.
Patricia A. Turner is Professor of African American Studies and of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her previous books include I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Whispers on the Color Line.
"Patricia Turner is a venerable scholar of American rumor, and Trash Talk is a brilliant examination of the conspiracy theories, legends, myths, and national lies that attended the rise, election, and governance of Barack Obama, the nation's first black president. Her book also ingeniously unmasks the folklore, ideology, and logic of anti-blackness that seethe at the heart of white supremacy. Trash Talk is a tour de force of American culture criticism."—Michael Eric Dyson, author of Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America
"Patricia Turner is the perfect scholar to undertake such an eye-opening project. Trash Talk provides an in-depth but accessible documentation and analysis of anti-Obama lore in context. It not only helps make visible the shocking quantity of anti-Obama lore but also highlights its troubling persistence over nearly two decades. In this masterful book, Turner has produced a work that illuminates a body of material we might have otherwise overlooked and forces us to look critically at it even as we might rather pretend it didn't exist."—David Todd Lawrence, coauthor of When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics, and Community in Pinhook, Missouri
"This is an important and timely piece of research, building on Patricia Turner's established insights into the dynamics of legend and rumor in both African American and white supremacist culture as manifested during a critical moment in American history. She explains but does not excuse the dynamics of anti-Obama belief, showing how they are not the sole domain of irrational actors. The world needs this book."—Ian Brodie, coauthor of Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories: QAnon, 5G, the New World Order and Other Viral Ideas
264 pp.6 x 9Illus: 25
9780520389243$29.95|£25.00Paper
Sep 2022