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634 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 6 (2011)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0634 and id is 1 raw text is: Introduction
By
MATTHEW O. HUNT
and
GEORGE WILSON

Keywords: race; inequality; ideology; stratification
beliefs; racial attitudes; policy
D espite Barack Obama's generally race-
neutral campaign strategy and subsequent
policy agenda, his election as the forty-fourth
president of the United States has reinvigorated
discussions of the meaning of race and the roles
of racial discrimination and inequality in shaping
the life chances of African Americans and other
ethno-racial minorities (Ford 2009; Smith and
King 2009). Some observers-particularly polit-
ical conservatives and various proponents of a
color-blind perspective and agenda-see
Obama's election as further evidence of the
country's transition to a postracial age (Schorr
2008; Williams 2008). Others are less sanguine,
lamenting the Obama presidency's potential to
divert public attention from the stark racial dis-
parities still characterizing American society
(Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich, this volume).
This debate over the implications of the Obama
presidency occurs in an era when scholarly atten-
tion to the intersections of race, ideology, and
inequality has been expanding in concert with the
growing racial and ethnic diversity of American
society. During the past several decades, sociolo-
gists, political scientists, and psychologists have
led the way in addressing a wide range of issues
Matthew O. Hunt is an associate professor of sociology at
Northeastern University. His primary research interests
involve intersections of race/ethnicity, social psychology,
and inequality in the United States. His work has
appeared in the American Sociological Review, Social
Forces, Social Psychology Quarterly, Social Science
Quarterly, Du Bois Review, and other publications.
George Wilson is an associate professor of sociology at
the Universit y of Miami. His research interests focus on
th e inst itut ional production of racial and ethnic inequal-
ity in the workplace and the social structural determi-
nants of beliefs about the causes and consequences of
racial and stratification ideology.
DOI: 10.1177/0002716210386161

ANNALS, AAPSS, 634, March 2011

6

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