The Evolution Of African-American Cultural Identity

People often talk about the significance of Barack Obama's status as the first African American president during the 2008 presidential election, which has broken through the history of white presidents. And there are a lot of researches on it both at home and abroad, while most of them are from the political perspectives. So, in this essay, the author aims to analyze this topic from the angle of cultural identity.Although Barack Obama's winning the presidency in 2008 has been warmly received by the whites and the racial problem seems not as serious as before, the blacks is still somewhat ambivalent and confused about their cultural identities nowadays. This thesis plans to explore the evolution of African-American cultural identity by comparing the failure of Jesse Jackson's presidential elections in the 1980s and the success of Barack Obama's presidential election in 2008. Stuart Hall, a British Scholar, thinks cultural identity is a matter of 'becoming'as well as of 'being'; and he thinks of identity as a 'production', which is never complete, always in process, and constituted within, not outside, representation. Homi Bhabha holds the idea that hybridity of cultural identity is the production of globalization, which is favorable for surviving in the multicultural context.Based on the research, the paper draws the conclusion that African-American cultural identity has changed dramatically from Jesse Jackson to Barack Obama. Jesse Jackson is a traditional African American and American society was not ready to accept an African American president in the 1980s. But Barack Obama, by contrast, is an African American in a new sense and his winning the presidency in 2008 shows much more tolerance of cultural diversity in America. The author of this thesis recommends that the first thing for African Americans in the 21st century is to feel a sense of being the master in America. Only in this way can American society tolerate and accept cultural diversity to a great extent. And the racial discrimination against the blacks can probably be eliminated by joint efforts and unity from the whole society.