| Sumario: | Immediately after Obama's election, within both popular and scholarly discourse, claims that his election signified a post-racial America emerged. In this paper we examine these claims by situating Barack Obama's path to the presidency within the context of the post-civil rights politics of race. We assert that the symbol of the United States' first black president combines with Obama's espousal of the white racial frame in a way that is potentially dangerous to racial reform. Obama's focus on a colorblind, abstract liberal individualistic notion of race lends credibility to conceptions of race that recognize difference but disavow structural inequality. We demonstrate how this frame has been employed by the Supreme Court in a manner that limited and ultimately stalled the remedial potential of affirmative action policy largely through an abstract conceptualization of "diversity." The contemporary legal and political atmosphere is thus particularly hostile to remedies aimed at creating structural change. As such, we assert that while Obama's presidency is touted as proof of racial equality, given his discursive commitment to abstract liberalism and white racial framing, his presidency actually propels a so-called "diversity" project which functions to reify structural racial inequality. We warn against the use of the symbol of Barack Obama to stall racial progress.
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