Race and the Politics of Policing during the Obama Presidency

Please join the Centre for Research in Race and Rights and the Department of American and Canadian Studies for a special lecture by Professor Kevern Verney, chaired by Rosemary Pearce. As we approach the final year of the Obama era, this lecture will assess what became of a leader whose election apparently heralded a new post-racial America. Has Barack Obama's presidency delivered the kind of deep-rooted changes that were initially prophesised? Had Obama abandoned his core African-American constituency in favour of projecting a race-neutral approach designed to maintain centrist support? How do we assess Obama's leadership on issues like policing in the context of the current Black Lives Matter movement? What has become of Obama's 'no drama' persona in these final months and years of his two-term presidency?

Kevern Verney is Professor of American History and Associate Dean at Edge Hill University. His books include Black Civil Rights in America, African Americans and U.S. Popular Culture, The Art of the Possible: Booker T. Washington and Black Leadership in the United States, Long Is the Way and Hard: One Hundred Years of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Barack Obama and the Myth of a Post-Racial America. Since 2011 he has been a co-organizer of the Barack Obama Research Network.