Rebranding America: race, religion, and nation in Obama’s social justice rhetoric

Mobilizing Michael Hanchard’s important distinction between ‘black memory’ and ‘state memory’, this article explores the extent to which Obama’s social justice rhetoric subordinates Civil Rights memory to the needs of state memory. I suggest that Obama’s attempt to mobilize Civil Rights memory as a vehicle for his election campaign and as a symbol for America not only threatens its domestication but also defies the post-Civil Rights racist backlash which viewed the movement as a way of re-fashioning the federal government as an agent for black interests