Black Lives and the First African American President

Abstract

Focusing on #BlackLivesMatter, this article examines African Americans’ campaigns against police brutality and for racial justice during Barack Obama’s second term. It compares this mobilization to the previous experiences of the civil rights movement and the Black Panther Party. It also addresses the issue of how the great expectations resulting from the first African American president’s election and the subsequent unfulfilled hopes of fairness, following Obama’s post-racial politics, shaped the response to police officers’ fatal shooting of unarmed blacks. Specifically, the article suggests that disappointment with the president’s approach accounts, at least in part, for the growing radicalization of African Americans’ reaction to law enforcers’ ruthless methods as the relations between blacks and the police descended to an all-time low during the Obama administration.