John L. Jackson reflects upon teaching Spike Lee at UPenn

John L. Jackson Jr. is an associate professor of communication and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008), Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (2005), and Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (2001). He will be writing about racial politics, religion, and contemporary popular culture.

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Talking about Race and Gender in the Democratic Primaries

All the Men Are Black, All the Women Are White, and Some of Us Vote: A Remix by Salamishah Tillet

I spent the better half of Tuesday afternoon, listening to and reading the transcript of Barack Obama’s speech on “race.” Obama’s address was thoughtful, progressive, eloquent, brilliant, moving, and insightful. He did all the things I wanted him to do, acknowledged the founding “sin” of American slavery, shifted the burden of racial reconciliation from the shoulders of African-Americans to the larger American citizenry, and spoke about the past and present consequences of white rage and black disillusionment.

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