Qual Sociol (2012) 35:123141

DOI 10.1007/s11133-012-9225-5

Just Another American Story? The First Black

First Family
Patricia Hill Collins

Published online: 16 March 2012

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Abstract Analyses of racial equality and gender equity remain muted within contemporary
U.S. public policy debates. This context mandates a search for a new language to address social
inequalities generally, and racial inequalities in particular. In this regard, the construct of family
may be especially useful in that family rhetoric is the symbolic carrier of multiple, often
contradictory stories about race, gender, class, sexuality and citizenship. Moreover, because
family structures are vital institutional carriers for economic transformations of the new global
economy, public policies can be made comprehensible via the rhetoric of family. Using the
centrality of family narratives in Barack Obamas campaign and subsequent Presidency as a site
for exploring changing conceptions of race, gender, economic security and American national
identity, this essay explores how the symbolic and structural dimensions of family have been an
important part of the American national story.
Keywords Race . Gender . Colorblindness . Family . Rhetoric
Barack Obamas election as the first African American President seemed to be a validation of
the American Dream as well as a model of what others could achieve.1 Obamas success
suggests that an individual who holds fast to the values associated with the American Dream
hard work, commitment to family, and fairnesscan achieve an adequate standard of living and
societal respect. Shared values would enable Americans to transcend diverse racial, ethnic,
national and class backgrounds.
Here I use the terms Black and African American interchangeably to refer to the historically constituted,
ethnic group originating in American slavery that has incorporated earlier waves of immigrants of African descent
who could not become white. I distinguish African Americans/Black Americans from contemporary immigrants
of African descent from the Caribbean and continental Africa. Although this paper speaks to broader racial politics
that affect these groups, incorporating a more comprehensive analysis of blackness is beyond the scope of this
paper. I use lower-case black and white as descriptions for systems of ideas, ideologies or any construct that
does not refer to African Americans as a historically constituted collectivity, e.g., black masculinity or white
culture.

P. H. Collins (*)
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
e-mail: collinph@umd.edu

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Throughout his 2008 presidential campaign, Senator Obama routinely presented his
personal stories as quintessentially American. He often incorporated personal family stories
in his speeches to explain his vision of the American Dream. For example, in his A More
Perfect Union speech Mr. Obama invokes the multicultural face of America, past and
present, within his own family: I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman
from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to
serve in Pattons army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a
bomber assembly line I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood
of slaves and slave-ownersan inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have
brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered
across three continents (Obama 2008c, 217). In his 2008 speech, A World That Stands as
One, delivered to a large, enthusiastic outdoor rally in Berlin, Germany, he shares another
version of the same story that recasts the American story through the lens of multicultural,
international experience: I know that I dont look like the Americans whove previously
spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in
the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya (Obama 2008d,
261). Whether speaking to a national audience grappling with the contradictions of race or a
global audience enthralled by the candidacy of an African American person, Barack Obama
advanced his narrative of upward mobility as an American story: For as long as I live, I will
never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible, he proclaims
(Obama 2008c, 217).
Is Barack Obamas success just another American story? Furthermore, why are
personal family vignettes so central in telling this particular American story? Was this
focus on family simply a campaign strategy designed to humanize the candidate for a
diverse American constituency? Or was attention to family a rhetorical device that
enabled candidate Obama to advance his agenda concerning work, family, foreign policy,
American competitiveness, and the appropriate role of government? Why so much attention
to family at all?
The centrality of family narratives in Barack Obamas campaign and subsequent Presidency provides a useful site for exploring changing conceptions of race, gender, economic
security and American national identity. While racial inequalities and gender inequalities
have not disappeared, the interpretive climate of our alleged post-racial and post-feminist era
has rendered public discussions of racial equality and gender equity risky. This context
mandates a search for a new language to discuss social inequalities generally, and racial
inequalities in particular. Here family rhetoric is the symbolic carrier of multiple, often
contradictory stories about race, gender, class, sexuality and citizenship. Moreover, family
structures are vital institutional carriers for economic transformations of the new global
economy and public policies can be made comprehensible via the rhetoric of family. In this
sense, the symbolic and structural dimensions of family have been an important part of the
American national story.

Racial Muteness: Family, Colorblind Racial Formations and the American Dream
Family rhetoric navigates two significant social phenomena of early twenty-first century
American society; namely, (1) economic transformations associated with the new global
economy that have challenged the economic security long promised to those who believe in

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the American Dream; and (2) the emergence of ostensibly colorblind racial formations where
talking openly of race seemingly fosters racism. Ideas about family not only operate within
both dimensions but also link them together.
First, the erosion of economic opportunity associated with the new global economy has
catalyzed ongoing, dramatic shifts in the contours of work, marriage and family. Deindustrialization, job export, population migration, entrenched unemployment and the reliance on
consumerism (and related phenomena of credit and debt) as the engine of economic growth
have dramatically altered the contours of work, marriage and family. One outcome has been
a heightened concern within the United States about the economic security of families. On a
macroeconomic level, family serves as a core social institution for organizing economic
relations, regardless of the values of individual family members. Some families achieve
intergenerational economic security without any of their members ever having to take paid
employment. In contrast, other families find that even if all of their members work (including
children), they have little hope that they will ever achieve economic security. Thus, families can
be seen alternately as sites of intergenerational hoarding of wealth or as being at intergenerational risk of economic disadvantage.
The strong connections between families and intergenerational economic security and
vulnerability become increasingly significant in weathering the economic transformations of
the new global economy. Social policies drafted with certain family forms in mind, for
example, homeowner tax credits for married couple families, access to employer sponsored
health care benefits policies for employee spouses and children, the structure of school
calendars and school days that penalize working mothers, and social welfare policies that
support widows but not unmarried mothers seem less effective in ensuring economic
security for the middle class. In this context, the idealized family form of the two-parent,
married couple living with their own biological children in a privately owned house
financially supported by a high-income male partner and a stay-at-home mother remains
difficult to achieve in the face of shrinking union jobs, the mortgage crisis and the skyrocketing cost of higher education. Despite the fact that American families have never
reflected this idealized structurethere has been far more family diversity than is routinely
attributed to the American familythis ideal is the mainstay of the American Dream
(Coontz 1992). In the face of these new economic realities coupled with changing family
structures and dynamics, people turn to their families for help in times of economic hardship.
Getting men to pay child support directly to their families (and not the government), housing
relatives who may have lost their jobs and/or homes, sending remittances to relatives in other
countries, and fostering children whose parents are unable to care for them are all important
ways that families serve important economic functions in times of stress.
Because conceptions of families and economic security are so intertwined, narratives
about desirable and undesirable families take on added significance. Currently, many people
have grown up in families beyond the stereotypes, namely, families maintained by
divorced and single mothers and fathers, as well as same-sex couples, families where both
parents work, and extended families (Gerson 2010, 1545). Despite this diversity, the
structures and assumed dynamics of those families who appear to be more economically
secure than others, primarily middle-class, become idealized and associated with the American Dream. In contrast, families who live in poverty and/or who experience chronic
economic vulnerability can be stigmatized for causing their own disadvantage by ostensibly
rejecting dominant norms. Moreover, because the discourse on the idealized family is
fundamentally a moral discourse, it misrecognizes the interdependence of macroeconomic

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and macro-political forces and family outcomes.2 In the U.S. context, class politics
concerning the distribution of property and political rights intersect with racial policies in
ways that advance ideas about strong families as a powerful explanatory text for economic
security. In this setting, distinctive patterns of family organization of indigenous peoples,
African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, undocumented Latino immigrants
and poor and/or working-class families of color have long served as benchmarks of what not
to be. For example, many Americans believe that African American families living in
poverty remain economically disadvantaged because African American men have largely
abandoned their duties as husbands and fathers leaving mother-headed families in their
wake; Latino families are perceived as a threat to the nation due to high rates of childbearing
among young Latinas, stereotyped as disproportionately illegal, taking unfair advantage of
the social welfare state. Conversely, Asian American achievement as a so-called model
minority uses family rhetoric to mask the actual costs paid by poor and working-class
families for their childrens achievement as well as the ways in which class privilege
enhances the achievement outcomes for wealthy Asian American youth. Racial politics
have been refracted through a lens of work and social welfare policies that privilege married
heterosexual couples with their own biological children. In this fashion, class and race both
rely on ideas about family.
The second significant dimension of early twenty-first century American society, namely,
the emergence of a colorblind racial formation within American racial politics, has occurred
concurrently with challenges to economic security spawned by the new global economy
(Bonilla-Silva 2010). Colorblind ideology contends that not seeing color should enable
American society to overcome historical color-conscious practices that produced racial
discrimination and encourages people to practice a willful blindness toward racial practices.
Armed with the components of colorblindness, well-intentioned anti-racist projects stemming from the Civil Rights Movement aspired to build a colorblind society by attacking the
constellation of racial practices that excluded people of color from the best neighborhoods,
housing, jobs and social services based on their race. Recognizing that such exclusionary
racism was hard wired into social institutions such that certain populations disproportionately bore the negative effects and risks of society overall, anti-racist strategies aimed to
achieve inclusion for African Americans and similarly raced groups in existing social
institutions. Moreover, such inclusion required a willful blindness to race and to racial
practices.
Colorblind social policies may not, however, be sufficient to produce racial equality. A
growing body of literature suggests that societies can have official policies of not seeing race
(being blind to it) yet reproduce racial inequalities: structural racial inequalities persist,
despite claims that they have been eliminated (Bonilla-Silva 2010; Collins 2004; Brown et al.
2003). Contemporary racial theory now advances sophisticated analyses of how contemporary
colorblindness produces structural inequalities through legal frameworks, social institutions,
2
Structural interpretations see marriage not exclusively through the moral lens of a romantic love partnership
but also as a fundamentally economic and political relationship. Marriage has long functioned as a legal
conduit for property and political rights, ensuring that wealthy families could pass on the benefits of wealth to
their children. Ideas about marriage and family have also been central to the functioning of political power.
Family is implicated in a range of nation-state practices, from immigration policies with questions of who
belongs to a nation, and to symbolic ideas of national identity (Collins 2001). Granting legal rights to lesbians,
gay men, and bisexual and transgendered people regarding civil unions, adoption, and marriages has minimal if
any demonstrated effect on the marriages and families of heterosexual couples. Yet LGBT marriages challenge
longstanding beliefs about the sanctity of the heterosexual, married-couple family form and the economic and
political rights that such family forms have long enjoyed within the American legal system.

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and state policies (Guinier and Torres 2002; Goldberg 2002). Colorblind racism may be a new
racial formation that is organized through structural, disciplinary, cultural and interpersonal
domains of power (Collins 2009, 4081).
Contemporary colorblind racism reflects not simply a change of attitudes, but also a
change in discourse. Colorblindness has catalyzed a form of racial muteness, where people
see speaking of race as stirring up old patterns of color-conscious, racialized language
associated with Jim Crow racism. Racial discourse was crucial to color-conscious racism,
yet the shift to colorblind racism continues to reproduce racial disparities while not talking
directly about race at all. Moreover, the racial muteness of a colorblind society must be
manufactured. The sociological subdiscipline of whiteness studies has investigated everyday
strategies that whites use to avoid seeing race and that maintain their own and others racialized
identities (Bonilla-Silva 2010). Several studies have analyzed allegedly non-racial documents
for how they function in producing racial hierarchy. Texts as diverse as public policy documents
(Van Dijk 1993) and mass media representations of black popular culture (Collins 2009, 135
174) have been analyzed as sites that ostensibly uphold universalistic criteria of colorblindness
yet help reproduce race.
How does a society grapple with race and racism in a context of racial muteness, one
where race and racism cannot be so freely debated for fear of violating the tenets of
colorblindness? In this context, family rhetoric can serve as a malleable and ambiguous
placeholder for a range of racial meanings that in turn are refracted though ideas about
gender, class and national identity. As a social construct, race relies on ideas about family
lineage (kinship models of biological families extended to broader imagined racial and/or
ethnic communities) as a justifiable marker of unequal distribution of social goods (class and/or
status) (Banton 1998). Conversely, family has been a major social institution for the regulation
of racial practices, with the state taking an active interest in producing and policing racial
categories (Collins 2001). In short, the rhetoric and practices of family and race have been
recursive and mutually constructing.
Further, family may serve as a touchstone in shaping connections between concerns about
the seemingly discrete issues of economic security and the racial muteness of colorblind
racism. When combined, these interdependent social phenomena present substantial challenges to the rhetoric and practices associated with the American Dream. Can American
national identity still be conceptualized as a national family composed of numerous strong
families patterned after the idealized American family? If the idealized American family is a
dinosaur, and if this family form has been so closely tied to understandings of the American
Dream, what are the implications of the uncoupling of these ideas?
In this context, Barack Obamas use of family rhetoric may signal a three-fold
mechanism that enables him to (1) discuss race in a context of colorblindness by
invoking the traditionally gendered construct of family; (2) explain economic transformation by using family rhetoric to knit together cultural arguments (e.g., family values)
and structural arguments (e.g., the economy and the state); and (3) recast American
national identity in ways that incorporate diverse populations and experiences (e.g., the
multicultural American national family). Barack Obamas ideas about family in general
and his personal family stories in particular suggest paths to economic security that tie
the significance of family to questions of American national identity and the American
Dream. Yet, when Barack Obama highlights personal family stories, he walks a fine line in
positioning himself in relation to common perceptions, on the one hand, of African American
families as culturally inferior in ways that foster poverty and economic vulnerability and, on the
other, of the idealized family form as modeled by the First Black First Family as the route to
economic security.

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African American Families, Social Class and U.S. Racial Politics

The unique position that African American families have occupied within broader relations of
marriage, family and U.S. racial politics provides an important structural backdrop for assessing
Barack Obamas use of personal family stories as well as the class, race and gendered meanings
suggested by them. Black families have been historically disadvantaged by racially discriminatory public policies concerning work, marriage, and family, with correspondingly negative
effects on their economic security. Any changes to assumptions about marriage and family,
especially those that emanate from the White House, thus have potentially far-reaching
implications for African Americans as well as American families overall.
All social groups within U.S. society are affected by the ways in which work, marriage and
family privilege some groups and disadvantage others. Yet African Americans as a collectivity
constitute a particularly visible and deeply entrenched version of these more general relations as
well as a hyper-visible moral text for society overall. My intent here is not to present African
Americans as a special case, an exception to the rule of normal marriage/family/economic
security relations, but rather as an especially visible site where these broader relations can be
observed. Families are central to the intergenerational transfer of wealth and/or debt and are not,
as commonly assumed, private spheres that are far removed from public sphere processes of
capitalist development and state policy. U.S. social class inequality persists across generations
because it is reproduced via family placement in the economy as well as citizenship rights
afforded varying family formations. Rather than viewing African American families solely as
sites for the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital, such families become intergenerational locales for the transmission of actual capital.3
During the slave era, for example, when propertied whites formed legal marriages and passed
on their property to their children, African Americans were not allowed to marry; they and their
children were the property that was inherited. Despite efforts by African Americans to locate
their family members, marry and form legal families after Emancipation, this foundational
experience set the stage for subsequent African American family forms and accompanying
economic insecurity (Gutman 1976). High rates of female-headed households, the inability to
accumulate wealth, political disenfranchisement, and the intergenerational poverty that results
from these phenomena all stem from slavery. These same practices not only also resulted in
patterns of intergenerational hoarding of wealth within propertied white families that advantaged
them across generations, it created a system that bundled race and class together in ways such
that whiteness itself could be conceptualized as a property relation with tangible economic
benefits (Harris 1993). For White and Black Americans alike, intergenerational advantage and
disadvantage may have taken culturally and/or ethnically distinctive expressions, but they rested
on a structural foundation that proved difficult to unsettle.4

3
Wealth is the accumulated assets and resources owned by an individual, family, or some other social unit at a
particular time. Debt is wealths opposite. Being perpetually in debt, lacking the assets needed to broker for
housing, education, health care, employment, and other social opportunities leaves families intergenerationally disadvantaged. Wealth and debt remain so unevenly distributed within the United States that the economic
status of African Americans is typically not discussed in terms of ownership or absence of assets. But African
Americans disproportionate historic placement as debtors at the bottom of the wealth hierarchy constitutes
one neglected factor that explains contemporary low incomes (Oliver and Shapiro 1995, 56).
4
Research in African American family studies has avoided challenging both marriage as the center of family
formation and the assumed heterosexuality of marital partners. Instead, Black family studies implicitly rely on
assumed norms of marriage, heterosexuality, and the idealized two-parent nuclear family. Assumptions of
heterosexual marriage inadvertently construct African American mother-child families, especially those living
in poverty, as social problems.

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Family lineages were a primary site for organizing a racially stratified, intergenerational
system for the transfer of wealth and debt from one generation to the next. Because families
remained important conduits for inherited property, regulating the racial composition of a
given family unit was vitally important in reproducing social class relations across time. For
example, keeping families racially homogeneous via endogamous marriage customs ensured
that wealth accumulated by whites would be passed on to white children. Until laws against
interracial marriage were finally outlawed in 1967, the vast majority of African Americans
could not marry into (white) wealth. By forbidding intermarriage, whites effectively discouraged the redistribution of wealth from White Americans to Black Americans by denying
the biracial children of interracial relationships legitimate access to inherited wealth. When
coupled with historically specific yet persistent racially discriminatory policies that blocked
African American access to high paying jobs (income), these racial barriers to acquiring
wealth and income as refracted through marriage and family policies ensured that each
generation of African American children would inherit their parents economic disadvantage. Historically, persistent racial discrimination coupled with higher rates of mother-child
families in African American civil society ensured that less property could be accumulated
to pass on to future generations. Each generation of African American children inherited the
prior generations debt.
Gender ideologies that stigmatize African American men and women not only work
closely with these historical patterns of family disadvantage, they suggest that racism has
gendered contours. Sex roles among whites (which embrace ideas of strong men/weak
women) allegedly constitute normal and ideal gender practices against which African
Americans have been evaluated and stigmatized as deviant. African American progress, or
lack thereof, in achieving white gender norms, has long been used as a marker of racial
progress, and often used to explain and justify racial inequality itself (Collins 2004,
181212). For African American women, marital status remains linked to both family status
and the property rights that flow from being single without children, married, separated,
divorced and a never-married mother. Because African American men have been discriminated against in schooling and the labor market and have high rates of incarceration that
render many unemployable, poor and working-class African American women also have
found it difficult to find African American male partners who earn an adequate income.
Families supported by such women are at a decided disadvantage. Historical patterns of
wealth and debt that characterized the color-conscious, institutionalized racism of the past are
unlikely to yield quickly to contemporary exhortations to rely on families in hard times. For
example, encouraging African American women to find and marry men with property, regardless of race (color) is unlikely to solve institutionalized social problems such as the ghettoization
of poor, young African Americans in inner city schools, neighborhoods and prisons, or
stubbornly persistent racial achievement gaps in educational attainment. At the same time,
urging African American men to become financially responsible for their wives and children
requires access to quality education and good jobs.
The late-twentieth century expansion of the African American middle class suggests that
a significant segment of the African American population has been able to accumulate
sufficient income (if not property) to acquire education, attain good jobs, buy homes and
achieve the American Dream (Patillo-McCoy 1999). These changes demonstrate, in part,
how public policies that created educational, housing and employment opportunities for all
Americans were effective during times of economic growth when coupled with civil rights
legislation that ensured fair access to opportunities. The expansion of the African American
middle class thus signaled a new chapter in U.S. race relations. When viewed against the
historical backdrop of intergenerational poverty among African Americans as a collectivity,

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the work, marriage and family patterns of middle-class African Americans can be held up to
their poor counterparts as a path out of poverty. This same context illustrates a willful
blindess to how race matters to the African American middle class, instead identifying racial
assimilation in an ostensibly colorblind society as the foundation of African American
economic success.

In the Public Eye: The First Black First Family

The Obama family faces an interpretive context that has long placed African American families
in the public eye by using cultural frames to evaluate such families as dysfunctional, culturally
inferior, and justifiably poor, while rejecting structural analyses that identify factors such as
wealth, work, and public policies as equally if not more significant in accounting for their
economic insecurity.5 The emergence of the African American middle class ostensibly refutes
this thesis of African American family deviancy, mainly by presenting African American,
middle-class families as culturally indistinguishable from their white counterparts and attributing their economic success to shared values. Racial difference is only allowed when it defines
black culture as a positive, optional ethnicity that middle-class families can enjoy (The Cosby
Show provided a template for this depiction) (Jhally and Lewis 1992). As a result, deviant (and
ostensibly authentic) black culture becomes increasingly assigned to poor, urban African
Americans who seemingly hold fast to the anti-authoritarian values of hip hop culture. In
essence, cultural values become the cause of African American, middle-class economic
success, veiling the ongoing significance of structural factors to economic outcomes.
In this context, the intense media scrutiny afforded the First Black First Family constitutes a
continuation of these historical practices pitting culture against structure, but now applied in the
decidedly different racial formation of colorblind racism and during an era of heightened concern
about economic security. African American families and First Families have both been in the
public eye, albeit for ostensibly different reasons, the former as a site of what not to be if one
wished to achieve the American Dream, and the latter, a model of what one should try to be in
order to get there. As the First Black First Family in the White House, the Obama family draws
from both traditions. Moreover, their visibility reflects how mass media spectacles, driven by
new communications technologies and the reorganizaton of journalism, have catalyzed an
intense scrutiny of public figures that can turn them into celebrities. The Obama organization
has been aware of the intense public scrutiny granted the Obama family and has also been an
active player in aiming to manage media representations. The intensified media environment of
the 24-hour news cycle and entertainment venues makes it difficult to distinguish ideas about the
First Black First Family manufactured by mass media and those advanced by the Obama
organization. Attempts to draw lines between the two are speculative at best.
Despite these limitations, the arrival of the First Black First Family in the White House can
be seen as serving as a symbolic touchstone for several issues that are directly tied to family
concerning connections between race, gender, economic security and American national
identity. Three themes stand out: (1) countering the stigmatized gender ideology attributed to
African American families by depicting Barack Obama as a strong, family man; (2) using
5
African American families have long been in the public eye, with African American intellectuals such as
William E. B. Du Bois and E. Franklin Frazier arguing for more analysis of the structural factors that shape the
economic capacity of African American families. Despite a plethora of scholarship disputing the premise of
Black families as the source of black cultural inferiority that resulted in economic disadvantage, the muchtouted The Negro Family: The Case for National Action resurrected the idea of Black family deviancy
(Moynihan 1965).

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responsible fatherhood initiatives to support an agenda concerning race, masculinity and public
policy; and (3) using Michelle Obamas media visibility as First Lady to publicize a family
policy of work-family balance. Collectively, they illustrate how ideas about family operate in an
interpretive colorblind racial formation that has rendered public discussions of racial equality
and gender equity risky; how public policies concerning the economic transformations of the
new global economy can be made comprehensible via the rhetoric of family; and how family
helps frame understandings of American national identity.

Barack Obama as a Strong Family Man: Countering Black Gender Ideology

Barack Obamas presentation of himself as a family man illustrates an unresolved tension
concerning the connections between ideas about families, economic security and racial politics.
By sharing his own personal story of how his past upbringing was central to his current economic
prosperity and political success, Barack Obama intentionally valorized non-traditional family
structures, namely, blended families with stepfathers and half-siblings, families maintained by
single mothers, extended families that include grandparents as primary caretakers, and families
formed across racial, ethnic and national boundaries. The family values he learned within these
diverse family forms signal a new politics of race that more closely resembles the multi-racial,
multi-ethnic and multi-cultural fabric of American society. If strong families are the foundation of
American society, then Obamas showcasing of his family diversity expands notions of a
multicultural American national identity within an ostensibly colorblind society.
Michelle Obamas family story contains different details, but serves a similar function. In
telling her past family story, Michelle Obama focuses on growing up in her intact, workingclass African American family in Chicago. Michelle Obamas opening speech at the 2008
Democratic National convention focused on family. She paid special attention to the intact
African American family of her childhood, highlighting the significance of family values to
economic security: I come here as a daughterraised on the South Side of Chicago by a father
who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me
(Obama 2008e). Moreover, she draws connections between family support and upward mobility: Thanks to their faith and hard work, we both were able to go on to college. So I know
firsthand from their livesand minethat the American Dream endures (Obama 2008e).
As President, Barack Obamas current family experiences within the first-ever Black First
Family as a devoted husband and father in a racially homogeneous, married heterosexual
nuclear family with legitimate childrensignals more traditional conceptions of the links
between family and economic success. Barack and Michelle Obama may have followed
different paths to their current family status, but their shared values enabled them to create a
traditional American family. For example, Michelle Obama explains how the family values that
she gained growing up in an intact, married-couple African American family resembled those of
her spouse, despite his less traditional lineage:
What struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name,
even though hed grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was
so much like mine Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that
you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what
you say youre going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you
dont know them, and even if you dont agree with them. (Obama 2008e)
The family values that are associated with the Obama familys nuclear structure, such as
teaching their children the importance of education, hard work, exercise, healthy food

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consumption and service to the less fortunate, uphold traditional ideas about the family that
ostensibly foster the American Dream.
Barack Obamas relationship to family is situated at the intersection of these multiple
narratives. They enable him to present himself as a strong family man and thereby avoid the
stigma of African American male irresponsibility that has been part of the gendered analysis of
African American family deviancy. This perception of African American male irresponsibility
reflects the thesis that African American women are too strong and African American men
are too weak, an ideological outcome of deviant sex role behavior attributed to African
American families. This strong-black-woman/weak-black-man thesis has taken an especially
pernicious form in the post-Civil Rights era, the same period of the growth of changing
marriage and family patterns for everyone as well as the emergence of colorblind racism.
Increasingly, gender relationships among African American men and women are often depicted
as one of perpetrator and victim whereby African American men are too weak because
African American women are too strong (Collins 2004, 181212).
Within the strong-black-woman/weak-black-man thesis, two specific dimensions are allegedly responsible for producing weak African American men and strong African American
women. One dimension is the putatively flawed relationship between African American
mothers and their children; strong African American mothers allegedly baby their sons yet
raise their daughters in their own, too strong image. As a result of flawed gender socialization,
African American men never fully grow up to become men, and succumb to irrational, childish
acts of unrestrained violence or sexual irresponsibility. The second dimension centers on one
alleged outcome of this flawed gender socialization: the seeming absence of commitment to
marriage among African Americans. As indicated by high rates of mother-headed families,
African Americans seemingly have difficulty committing to each other via marriage and
maintaining healthy families.
The First Black First Familys unique and highly visible media presence requires
protection from this negative black gender ideology, especially its depiction of African
American men as immature as a result of flawed gender socialization, and therefore
unwilling to form healthy, adult relationships. Barack Obamas 1995 autobiography, Dreams
from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, refutes these stereotypes by detailing his
family experiences in Hawaii, Indonesia and Kenya. During the campaign, he repeatedly
referred to the family that raised him, specifically, his mother, his grandparents, his Indonesian stepfather, and his reactions to not having his biological Kenyan father as part of his
upbringing. Working against the trope that blames African American mothers for producing
weak African American sons, Barack Obama extracts himself from this negative stereotype
by drawing upon his past family story to acknowledge and praise the (white) women who
raised him. In this way, he can share his progressive views on women, especially working
women; yet avoid suspicion that an African American mother emasculated him. Combining
these multiple narratives of Michelle Obamas family story of working-class intact African
American family life, Barack Obamas family of origin that lacked an African American
mother, and his current family where he is successfully partnered with a strong but not toostrong African American woman, enables Barack Obama to valorize female strength within
families by retaining ambiguity about which exact women he means. Combining the (white)
women of his family of origin with the (black) woman who is most significant within his
current nuclear family creates space to celebrate female strength.
This family story of Barack Obamas past upbringing is especially significant in sidestepping the weak-black-son/strong-black-mother dimension of black gender ideology by

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showing that the trope simply does not apply to him. Yet sustaining a commitment to family,
motherhood and women without alienating African American womenone of his most
faithful groups of supportersmeans that African American women cannot be excluded
from the Obama family story. Here the family narratives of the strong family that Barack
Obama has formed with his partner Michelle, as well as Michelle Obamas own family story,
provide an important complementary piece that demonstrates Barack Obamas commitment
to family by marrying a strong, but not too-strong African American woman. During the
2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama took pains to acknowledge his love for his wife.
Quite simply, Barack Obama publicly states that he is a man married to a woman he loves,
raising two children that they clearly adore. However, in the context of mass media
spectacles where the African American single mother has been demonized, Michelle Obama
stands out. She does not fit media representations of African American female beauty,
namely, light-skinned, longhaired, and/or biracial black and ethnic women. Moreover, her
visibility as a professional woman contradicts the strong-black-woman/weak-black-man
thesis. Barack Obama can present himself as a strong family man because he chose to marry
a strong African American woman, is still married to her, and remains committed within a
strong marriage to her. For the public at large, theirs is an idealized, ordinary marriage,
but when placed in the context of black gender ideology, their successful marriage is
extraordinary.
The Obama campaign routinely drew upon multiple depictions of family, with the connections between family and economic security implied but not fully developed. When
combined as one Obama family story, with Barack Obama as the protagonist, the multiple
narratives suggest a temporal pathway to economic security where past actions shape contemporary economic realities. For example, one story, that of the single mother whose biracial child
is cared for within families maintained by his stepfather and by his grandparents, emphasizes
the significance of caring for children to ensure their upward social mobility. Michelle Obamas
family story of upward social mobility from the working class to the middle class offers another
script of how past parental actions fostered contemporary economic success. When shorn of the
stigma of slavery, her story suggests that, for working-class African American families, intact,
married-couple families constitute a viable path to economic security. Both stories suggest that
values learned in the past can foster economic security; regardless of the pastfor Barack
Obama, the past of his racial/ethnic otherness within his non-traditional families, and for
Michelle Obama, the past of urban-working class life a few generations removed from
slaverythe values of education and hard work learned from families are essential to current
economic success.
The contemporary Obama family narrative that identifies their current family structures and
dynamics as critical to their success is a morality story about adhering to the values of the
American Dream. Going to the best schools, working in the best jobs, and living in a
heterosexual, married-couple family with ones own biological children is central to achieving
the American Dream. Because people who are fortunate enough to be born into intact, middleclass nuclear families, regardless of racial heritage, are more likely to enjoy economic security,
they have the responsibility for modeling their family values for others. The racial subtext of the
Obama family story heightens the significance of this values argument. The Obama family
stands for itself, but also provides evidence for African American, middle-class achievement.
Those not currently in married-couple, nuclear families can look to the Obama family for hope
and inspiration. In this sense, the First Black First Family becomes a model for emulation and a
symbol of national leadership.

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Responsible Fatherhood, Masculinity and Public Policy

For Fathers Day 2008, President Obama presented his views on responsible fatherhood at a
White House event to a handpicked gathering of exemplary father figures:
Lets be clear: Just because your own father wasnt there for you, thats not an excuse
for you to be absent alsoits all the more reason for you to be present. Theres no
rule that says that you have to repeat your fathers mistakes. Just the oppositeyou
have an obligation to break the cycle and to learn from those mistakes, and to rise
up where your own fathers fell short and to do better than they did with your own
children Thats what Ive tried to do in my life. When my daughters were born, I
made a pledge to them, and to myself, that I would do everything I could to give them
some things I didnt have. And I decided that if I could be one thing in life, it would be to
be a good father [emphasis added]. (Obama 2008b)
Barack Obamas personal and national focus on fatherhood enables him to couch
economic and social policy within the rhetoric of responsible fatherhood. This commitment
to fatherhood delivers messages to overlapping constituencies: (1) African American men
who seek new leadership in redefining black masculinity; (2) American men from varying
socioeconomic, racial and ethnic backgrounds about the challenges that confront fathers in
times of economic adversity and how those challenges signal the changing nature of
American masculinity; and (3) the general public (men and women) about how Barack
Obamas support for strong and compassionate father figures grants him legitimacy to be a
strong leader.
Making fatherhood central to family discourse enables Barack Obama to speak to African
American men about responsible fatherhood as part of a redefined black masculinity. Several
elements of his argument about fatherhood and black masculinity are especially noteworthy.
For one, Barack Obama reveals the pain caused by father-absence. Because father-absence
has been so visible within African American communities, directly confronting this issue in
ways that do not excuse this practice breaks new ground. For example, President Obamas
letter published in a widely distributed newspaper supplement discusses the pain of father
absence:
In many ways, I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its
absenceboth in my life and in the lives of others. I came to understand that
the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one
that no government can fill. We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good
schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the
difference That is why we need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end
at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage
to raise one. (Obama 2008c)
Here President Obamas emphasis is on responsible fatherhood, not biological
fatherhood. This statement also points to the boundary distinguishing family and
governmental responsibilities and the balance between them; each have their place
and neither can fully replace the other. President Obama also refutes the cultural norm
that children from so-called broken homes (father absent, households maintained by
women) are irreparably damaged. By skillfully using his own family narratives to
hammer home this point, he proclaims that he is especially committed to being a good
father to his children because he realizes the pain of father absence. The absent
biological father of his childhood becomes an object lesson of what not to be, whereas

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his current presence as a strong caring father in his present family speaks to a path of
potential redemption for all those fathers who take responsibility.
African American support for fatherhood initiativesfor example, the Million Man
March on Washington that had a similar message of African American male responsibility and redemptionenabled Barack Obama to advocate for responsible fatherhood
in ways that directly targeted African American men. In a Fathers Day speech
delivered at an African American church, Barack Obama sent a clear message to
African American fathers. Claiming that responsible fatherhood is especially needed
in African American communities because so many fathers have abandoned their
duties, candidate Obama explained why fathers are integral to families: Of all the
rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most
important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that
foundation (Obama 2008b, 238). Barack Obama identified two significant ways that
fathers should be central within families. For one, fathers should help set high expectations for children by being role models to their children and setting examples of
excellence in their own lives. Second, fathers should set good moral and emotional
examples for children: Obama encourages men to pass along the value of empathy to
our children we forget about our obligations to one another. Theres a culture in our
society that says remembering these obligations is somehow softthat we cant show
weakness, and so therefore we cant show kindness (Obama 2008b, 238). Resisting the
pressures to embrace dominant gender ideology that advances views of black masculinity that
requires female subordination, Barack Obama reclaims empathy and emotions as part of a
redefined masculinity. Instead, he redefines a strong father (and by implication a strong man) as
one who willingly chooses to commit to others, who does not see commitment as a sign of
weakness, but of humanity.
Responsible fatherhood initiatives speak to a second dimension of the centrality of
fatherhood within Barack Obamas family narratives, namely, how responsible fatherhood
initiatives enable President Obama to address men as a collectivity concerning the challenges they face in times of economic adversity. Focusing on fatherhood enables Barack
Obama to examine shifting patterns of masculinity in a changing U.S. economy where men
have lost their place in the traditional nuclear family as breadwinners and as so-called natural
authority figures. Whereas these trends have disproportionately affected African American
and/or working-class men, all men have been increasingly vulnerable to broader macroeconomic forces. When President Obama states, what makes you a man is not the ability to
have a child but the courage to raise one (Obama 2008c), he may have been addressing an
African American audience; yet he counsels all men to develop new conceptions of
masculinity that incorporate, to the degree possible, both financial support for children
and non-financial contributions. In this sense, responsible father initiatives provide important clues concerning what kinds of men will be needed to meet the challenges of contemporary society.
Finally, Barack Obamas responsible fatherhood initiatives enable him to sketch out his
work and family policy to the general public. In essence, by couching social policy through
the rhetoric of family generally and fatherhood in particular, Barack Obama presents a
family values argument from the political, liberal left that refuses to cede the language of
family as being hopelessly embedded in the Right-wing rhetoric of the idealized nuclear
family. In place of a feminist discourse on motherhood that argues for many of the same
policies as the Obama administration, Barack Obamas fatherhood initiatives aim to reclaim
the language of fatherhood and change its meaning. For example, during his 2008 Fathers
Day speech, candidate Obama explains his endorsement of family and economic policy

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initiatives through a rhetoric that recognizes strong families and responsible fatherhood as
pivotal in achieving economic security:
We should be making it easier for fathers who make responsible choices and harder for
those who avoid them. We should get rid of the financial penalties we impose on
married couples right now, and start making sure that every dime of child support goes
directly to helping children instead of some bureaucrat. We should reward fathers who
pay that child support with job training and job opportunities and a larger Earned
Income Tax Credit that can help them pay the bills. We should expand programs where
registered nurses visit expectant and new mothers and help them learn how to care for
themselves before the baby is born and what to do afterprograms that have helped
increase father involvement, womens employment, and childrens readiness for
school. We should help these new families care for their children by expanding
maternity and paternity leave, and we should guarantee every worker more paid sick
leave so they can stay home to take care of their child without losing their income.
(Obama 2008b, 239)
In this passage, delivered as part of the same speech where he identifies role modeling and
values education as crucial components of responsible fatherhood, Barack Obama focuses on
responsible fatherhood to chart a moderate course between conservative and liberal agendas for
social and economic policies. Groups as diverse as African Americans, women and conservative family values groups can all claim a space within responsible fatherhood initiatives. Here
President Obama expresses support for working parents, long a demand of womens groups, but
sidesteps the claim that his administration panders to feminist groups by couching his policies
within the language of family. Further, Barack Obamas responsible fatherhood initiatives recast
policies inherited from the Bush administration that preceded him in the rhetoric of a liberal
social agenda.
Barack Obamas use of responsible fatherhood with multiple publics suggests that the same
family narratives that helped him win the election also enable him to position himself as a strong
leader. Ideas about fatherhood within idealized nuclear families have long served as the
template for ideas about strong leadership within American politics. Female and/or non-white
candidates face the dilemma of presenting themselves as viable leaders within this traditional
understanding of family and of political leadership. Because he is African American, biracial,
and had a funny name, Barack Obama faced the challenge of convincing citizens that he can
be a strong leader who could command the reins of power. Barack Obama also faced the
specific challenge of refuting claims that his background of father-absence (by his African
biological father) made him less fit for leadership than his political counterparts who grew up in
white, intact married-couple families. Thus, ideas about responsible fatherhood reach out in
many directions to negotiate the politics of race in a seemingly colorblind setting where race and
masculinity are especially visible.

Michelle Obama: First Lady, Mom-in-Chief and Working Mother

Just as Barack Obama had to walk a fine line regarding black masculinity and its discourse
about fatherhood, Michelle Obama encountered similar issues concerning her appropriateness as a wife to such a powerful husband. Because of her gender and race, she was the
antithesis of what the First Lady traditionally represented (Williams 2009, 839840).
Moreover, just as Barack Obama deployed family narratives as a way of explaining
economic and social policies, Michelle Obama used family narratives to redefine black

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femininity. Her media visibility and celebrity status enabled the Obama administration to
package arguments regarding the connections between economic security, race, gender and
national identity within publically accessible family rhetoric. Here I focus on three elements
of Michelle Obamas media representations where family rhetoric is designed to shape social
meanings of race, gender, class and/or nation: (1) her reinterpretation of the role of First
Lady, especially her status as the first Black First Lady, to move beyond traditional functions
of being a homemaker and hostess for the White House to being a public figure that
advanced the agendas of the White House; (2) her reinterpretation of motherhood from a
stay-at-home endeavor to a Mom-in-Chief enterprise; and (3) her efforts to highlight the
needs of working mothers primarily by blurring work/family boundaries. Via these three
themes, Michelle Obama expanded womens issues in ways that encapsulate seemingly
contradictory views of traditionalists and feminists.
Michelle Obamas interpretation of her status as First Lady refracts the politics of race and
gender through family rhetoric. As an unelected position lacking any constitutionally defined
job description, the role of First Lady constitutes an exemplar of traditional femininity and
therefore carries great social meaning. As the nations hostess and housekeeper, the traditional
social and ceremonial duties of the First Lady are essential not only because they are symbols of
the First Lady, but also because they directly reflect upon the President, and in turn, the nation
(Williams 2009). While staff and budgetary support has grown for the increasingly professionalized position of the First Lady, the First Family constitutes a social script for women
concerning the benefits and responsibilities of marrying wealthy and powerful men. This script
carries a powerful racial subtext, one suggesting that a white nation should have a white,
heterosexual family at its helm, and that the Lady of the house is responsible for modeling the
morals and values of the American family. Because Michelle Obama could never become
white, how could she ever become a true Lady?
As First Lady, Michelle Obama must demonstrate not only that she can perform the
traditional duties of this visible social position, but also must negotiate a racialized gender
ideology. Moreover, she must do so in a context where she remains on public display, yet
must find ways to make her highly visible race invisible in the context of a colorblind
racism. In response, Michelle Obamas shaping of the role of First Lady draws upon the
image of the Black Lady, a trope that many African American women have long used to
reject their stereotypical treatment. Working-class and middle-class African American women alike have responded to the derogated image of the strong and emasculating black woman
by embracing a politics of respectability operating through traditional femininity and symbolized by the First Lady position. Middle-class African American women have drawn upon this
Black Lady standard in their professional positionsthe case of Condolezza Rice as Secretary
of State during the George W. Bush Administration comes to mindbut the cost of respectability has often been remaining unmarried and childless. Traditionally, Ladies did not have outof-wedlock children, nor did they publicly flaunt their unmarried sexual experiences (Collins
2004, 138146).
Michelle Obama engages in a sophisticated fusion of three social scripts, those attached
to the First Lady, the Black Lady and the strong Black woman. She fulfills traditional ideals
about domesticity associated with the position of First Lady by positioning herself as a Black
Lady. In essence, whiteness is no longer a requirement for being a Lady. She also draws
upon the Black Lady standard in that she is a person of high morals that believes in the
values associated with the American Dream, and her professional career and path of upward
social mobility demonstrate that she is willing to work for them. She also draws upon and
redefines yet another dimension of black gender ideology, the strong black women representation. Here Michelle Obama softens the negative impact of black female strength by

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placing her strength in service to her husbands ambition to run for President. Her softness
bolsters Barack Obamas public persona as a traditional father and husband. Michelle
Obama seems to have it allshe is attractive, married to a strong African American
man, has two beautiful children, and a new (albeit unpaid) profession of managing the White
House.
To have it all, however, Michelle Obama must simultaneously show that her career harms
neither her marriage nor her family life. Barack and Michelle Obamas private life has been
extensively covered in Barack Obamas autobiographies as well as in magazines and in the
popular press. Interestingly, the Obamas have used the media to refute the notion of the
traditional idealized family, even though their own family seems to fit the mold, bringing a
candid and non-idealized view of what it takes to make a marriage work, with special attention
to the challenges facing working mothers (Kantor 2009). In The Audacity of Hope, Barack
Obama acknowledges the difficulty Michelle faced, despite the gender egalitarianism of their
marriage, in balancing the desire to be the woman her mother had been, solid dependable,
making a home and always there for her kids; and the desire to excel in her profession, to make
her mark on the world (Obama 2006, 340341). This portrayal humanizes Michelle Obama,
pulling her back from the place of black superwoman to show, instead, how difficult it is to hold
a professional position and be a good mother.
Michelle Obamas reinterpretation of motherhood from a stay-at-home endeavor to a
Mom-in-Chief enterprise constitutes a second site where family rhetoric concerning
Michelle Obama shapes social meanings of race, gender, class and/or nation. First Ladies
must be good wives, and if they are mothers, they must be good mothers. In contrast to the
First Lady image, one that is often devoid of children or where servants care for children, or
the professional Black Lady who is married to her job and remains single, Moms are
actively involved in their childrens lives. Being a Mom-in-Chief means showing concern for
children, both ones own children and the children of the nation. Having children of her own
certainly helps facilitate Michelle Obamas Mom-in-Chief image. More importantly, her fusion
of being both a loving mother and a Mom-in-Chief enables her to use her position as mother to
exert leadership for the nation.
As Mom-in-Chief, Michelle Obama recasts traditional views of motherhood as a privatized
affair within the confines of ones nuclear family to a broader social role of tremendous
significance. Her commitment to healthy eating illustrates this redefined and revalorized
motherhood as important to families and to the national family. Mothers routinely do chores
such as meal planning, food shopping, and meal preparation for their families, with the goal of
wanting their children to live healthy lives. Yet these activities have historically been treated as
privatized chores that women naturally do. Michelle Obamas public campaign concerning
healthy eating tells all those individual mothers that childrearing is not just a solitary activity but
is also important for the nation. Speaking out against childhood obesity catalyzed visibility for a
major public health issue in the United States and has helped to shed light on the politics food.
First Ladies have gardeners; they do not food shop, cook or work in dirt. In contrast, Moms and
Michelle Obamas public persona as Mom-in-Chief are intimately concerned in all aspects of
the welfare of their children.
On one level, the narrative of Michelle Obama as a stay at home Mom who is
concerned with many of the same issues that preoccupy mothers regardless of marital and
employment status (although the home where she is staying is clearly extremely unusual).
On another level, the narrative of Michelle Obama as Mom-in-Chief provides a personalized
entre into family policy in ways reminiscent of Barack Obamas reliance on personal family
stories to humanize his campaign. Yet, Michelle Obamas status as a mother coupled with
her status as a working woman with a career signals a third element of how Michelle

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Obamas media representations draw upon family rhetoric to shape social meanings of race,
gender, class and/or nation. Michelle Obamas experiences fall in the space between the
traditionalists, who wish that mothers would stay home, even though economic realities can
no longer support the idealized family form, and feminists, who focus on the needs of
women in the workplace and in families, but not necessarily on families themselves.
Redefining her highly visible role as First Lady and crafting a new motherhood discourse
via the Mom-in-Chief public persona enables Michelle Obama to highlight the challenges of
work/family balance and advance public policies that support families generally and working mothers in particular.
Collectively, Michelle Obamas (1) reinterpretation of the role of First Lady, especially
her status as the first Black First Lady; (2) her reinterpretation of motherhood from a stay-athome endeavor to a Mom-in-Chief enterprise; and (3) her efforts to highlight the needs of
working mothers via attention to work/family balance enables her to advance specific policy
initiatives of concerns of diverse womens groups in ways that eschew being labeled either
traditional or radical. In this fashion, her use of family rhetoric shapes social meanings of race,
gender, class and/or nation.

Conclusion: Just Another American Story?

The media attention afforded the First Black First Family becomes especially important in a
context where conservative pundits and their followers nostalgically hope that restoring the
traditional American family will catalyze economic security, and where global processes have
made the family wage, the stay-at-home-Mom, the ownership of a single family home, if not
marriage and family itself, less attainable. The First Family constitutes one social location that
can assist the nation in rethinking the American Dream in ways that are more inclusive and
pragmatic. In this context, family rhetoric illuminates the connections between the media
visibility of the First Black First Family and the organization of the politics of race, economic
security and American national identity.
First, the Obama organizations reliance on family stories suggests a goal of building
political unity across racial differences. In a context of colorblindness that renders many
people racially mute, family stories enable listeners simultaneously to see the race of the
individual, yet imagine a shared familial connection. Because everyone has family stories,
no matter how contentious or tragic they might be, family rhetoric provides common ground
for transcending the particularities of race. At the same time, because racism is a visible
system of power that writes race onto bodies as visible markers of social hierarchy,
sustaining willful blindness to racial inequalities requires effort. Despite the Obama organizations seeming goal of generating a space of racial tolerance via the use of family
rhetoric, the effectiveness of this strategy is best judged at the conclusion of the Obama
administration.
Second, how Barack and Michelle Obama rely on family stories is also significant. The
multiple and often competing narratives from the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign as well as
those about the First Black First Family reflect intentional and/or media generated ambiguities concerning connections among marriage, family and economic security. When read
selectively, the past and present strands of President Obamas family narratives speak to
quite diverse political programs concerning the centrality of family to economic prosperity.
Without due diligence on the part of the Obama administration, economic security policies
honed within these unresolved tensions concerning family might suggest that the path to
economic success for non-standard families, for example, those headed by single African

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American mothers or those maintained by LGBT people, lies in embracing the new Black
First Familys model of marriage and parenting. Barack Obamas impressive accomplishments could easily be recast as yet another role model recipe of how one might overcome a
non-traditional past to achieve economic security through marriage. Be like Barack and the
First Family, we may be told, and you too will find wealth, fame and fortune. As
indicated by documents produced by the Obama campaign and Presidency, notably, the
detailed Plan and signature speeches assembled in Change We Can Believe In (Obama
2008a), and the plethora of documents available on the official website, this does not seem to
be the kind of change that President Obama has in mind. Yet in a highly partisan political
context, when it comes to issues of gender, work and family, this could be the kind of change
that the First Black First Family comes to represent.
Finally, the family drama surrounding the First Black First Family serves as a template for a
new multiracial, multicultural American national identity. Barack Obamas heterogeneous
family experiences enable him to advance more robust arguments about race, upward social
mobility and the future of the nation. Barack Obama identifies as African American yet he also
claims individuals of diverse racial backgrounds in his family. His refusal to reject his mixedrace, multi-ethnic family, coupled with his explicit embrace of non-traditional gender roles for
women and responsible masculinity for men, serves as morality tale for the permanence of
family ties. Just as family members are joined together, whether they want to be or not,
American citizens stand in a similar relation to one another within the American national
family. Barack Obamas family rhetoric thus touts the benefits of inclusivity. In this sense,
developing a new understanding of American national identity through the prism of multicultural family rhetoric enables a recasting of the American story, now predicated upon racial
diversity and inclusivity. The actual effects of this ambitious program both for American
democracy and for economic security of all families remain to be seen.

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Professor Collins is a social theorist whose research and scholarship have examined issues of race, gender,
social class, sexuality and nation. In 2008 she became the 100th President of the American Sociological
Association. She has published a number of books, including Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990), Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology (2007), which
is in its 8th edition, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (2004) which
received ASAs 2007 Distinguished Publication Award, Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for
Justice (1998); and From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism (2005). She has
published many articles in professional journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, Signs, Sociological
Theory, Social Problems, and Black Scholar, as well as in edited volumes