ABSTRACT
Confederate nostalgia and racial violence circulating today evince antebellum past-presences: an historic period during which white male privilege appears so clearly pronounced and borders upraising white masculinity seem impenetrable. The Barack Obama Presidency announced a transcendent moment well beyond the racial attitudes associated with antebellum history. President Obama’s disruption of the established social order provoked violent “blacklashes,” notably the killing of African Americans by mostly white men, many of whom identified as police officers, in nearly every region of the nation. Barack Obama’s transnational and inter-racial identities stress test the social hierarchies operating within the national imaginary. The campaign slogan drives the administration’s effort to remove or weaken President Obama’s legislative and Executive Order achievements—“blacklashes” everywhere.
