Obama’s America by Ian Reifowitz is a thoroughly expounded study of President Barrack Obama as well as national identity and inclusiveness. Reifowitz manages to adequately portray the long-standing tension that has existed between the liberal’s approach that embraces multiculturalism and the conservative’s approach that is in support of a unified nationalism. The book captures the decades of thinking and reasoning alongside debates that have been aimed at reconciling the diversity and unity of the United States’ nation. It is positioned in the political and intellectual history of the American people. The book also covers and discusses the contrasting ideas of exclusionism, identity politics and various views that run contrary to president Obama’s themes of the American community and inclusion.
The American National Identity is a major theme in Obama’s America. It shows how President Barrack Obama has vigorously and repeatedly throughout his political career spoken about his vision of a national civic identity. He has shown how the American Civic National Identity will lead to a more inclusive and united nation. He insists on his belief that it is the common good that must be pursued and that the stipulated policies cannot be based on focusing only on maximizing personal gain for several individuals. One of Obama’s core communitarian values is that of One American Family. This communitarian value, however, stands in contrast with the conservative concepts of hyper-individualism, capitalism and extreme libertarianism and social Darwinism. It is due to these reasons that the Presidential candidate Mitt Romney labeled Obama’s ideas as foreign. It is also what led the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich alongside other conservatives to say that Obama did not understand America.
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Ian Reifowitz traces the origins of president Obama’s vision of an America in which all citizens live in recognition of a shared history as well as a shared fate, and from this, they would actively participate and work together in the great American enterprise. He closely examines president Obama’s writing and public statements. This examination includes president Obama’s view of the American history including the one that covers the darkest moments as well as the one that covers the greatest triumphs. He emphasized on the progress towards the equality that was proclaimed publicly in the declaration of independence.
Ian Reifowitz uses Obama’s America as an innovative, concise and tightly reasoned work to show that the contribution President Barrack Obama made strengthening the United States of America's understanding of itself as a society. These contributions had significant effects in creating and strengthening America to understand of itself as an inclusive society, and this transcends president Obama's status as the United States' first African American president. The author, Ian Reifowitz depicts and gives a reflection of an optimistic vision to the current day’s usually dreary and polarized political debates. The book shows how president Barrack Obama tried to transform the national identity while having it live up to the true values of the American people. These values are laid out in the Declaration of Independence and are built around the idea of equality. The author depicts how the American people have not always lived up to the standards of these values. Reifowitz uses Obama’s America as a way of showing how president Obama emphasized on progress over time. It shows how he talked about the spread of equality to all the people in the American society. President Obama addressed the people that had been excluded by the law previously through the 1960s and even mentioned those that were still excluded to the present day based on their race, gender, and sexual orientation. The president Obama’s address of these people and issues is depicted as an effective approach to advancing equality.
Obama’s America gives an illustration of how Obama took the values and raised them up to a new level altogether. He dealt with national identity and addressed the importance of making efforts to assist all the people to feel that they are included in the American national community. According to Ian Reifowitz, president Obama managed to raise the standards and values to a very high level that ranks him as an effective leader. He shows from earliest Obama’s writings how he had managed to bring about the ideas of encouraging people across various ethnic lines to develop and maintain strong ties with one another based on the fact of their being American. Obama’s America illustrates how President Obama not only talked about good relations across different ethnic lines but also how effective he had been since he talked of it over and over again. It illustrates how President Obama succeeded at spreading his ideas by saying hem over and over again in the most appealing ways.
Unity is also one of the major themes in America’s Obama. The author demonstrates and details how Obama emerged at the start of a new national narrative that was founded on an America guided by the unifying dedication to inclusiveness. The demonstration shows how it was necessary to include not only the country's successes but also its failures. This approach is required for the protection of the diverse citizens of America. Reifowitz plainly documents Obama's journey in dealing with racial confusion, Black Nationalism and liberal nationalism that embraces inclusiveness.
The phrase "we are one American family" has been shown to appear multiple times in President Obama's speeches. Reifowitz uses this fact to build on his argument that Obama used this to counter the hyper individuals' viewpoint that is also seen in the economic conservatives. This phrase is used to indicate that there is a communitarian concept versus the individualism ideas. Obama’s America also captures a piece from his experience in the 1980s and 1990s with multiculturalism. This piece is used to show that Obama sought a path that was beyond the identity politics as well as the extremes of the radical forms of multiculturalism that were sub-categories under the general multicultural movement. This approach depicts president Obama trying to take the best out of the broader multicultural movement with the primary focus directed toward inclusion and a broader diversity. It also indicates that Obama rejected any common American national identity. This depiction creates the impression that President Obama came from a more traditionalist perspective with a unified national identity and recognized the fact that it historically lacked inclusion. Obama’s America shows how President Obama made efforts to take the strengths of the two poles of the debate that were ranging in the cultural wars that occurred in the 1990s and his working towards putting them together into something that fits perfectly. It shows Obama commitment to Unity in diversity through his approaches that paint him as a political thinker.
Racial discrimination is also a major theme addressed in Obama's America. The author makes an argument that President Obama entered the states' and national politics with rhetoric and thinking way on race being inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. The book shows how Obama emphasized on economic issues and universal values that were meant to build appeal with the whites and other minorities just as Martin Luther King Jr. had done knowing that those issues were bound to affect the African Americans disproportionately. Reifowitz demonstrates how Obama’s approach sought to unify the American people by way of addressing the racial issues through nonracial terms as well as through the use of universal principles. Obama’s America depicts how president Obama contributed towards the negotiation of the tension between national identity and inclusiveness in the United States. Reifowitz argues that despite the fact that Obama eventually enjoyed political benefits from his way of thinking, he had carried these ideas with him for a long time way before he achieved national prominence.
President Obama talked about the progress that America had achieved on issues related to racism. He said that the progress that had been realized shows that America can change. President Obama further explained that continued progress puts a demand on the white community to first acknowledge that what the African American community ails from is real. He talked of the need for the white community to acknowledge and appreciate the fact that what the African American community suffers from does not just exist in the minds of the black people. Obama’s America shows how Obama detailed the reality of racism as well as the lasting effects of past discrimination and the adverse effects of the continuation of discrimination in the current day. Reifowitz also indicates that praising America’s progress first had a significant impact in making whites more open to hearing Obama's message on the need to address racism continually.
Ian Reifowitz uses Obama’s America a tool to show the efforts made led by those of president Barrack Obama to come up with an emphasis on the national unity and identity. These efforts came from a perception that appreciated the association with the traditional right as well as inclusion and respect for diversity and pluralism coming from different concepts and multiculturalism. It shows Obama’s belief in the importance of diversity and pluralism alongside his recoil against identity politics and the Black Nationalism.
