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Showing posts from January 4, 2009

The Marketplace, Barack Obama, and African-American Culture

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The election of Barack Obama to the United States presidency represents more than one man’s personal political victory. It also in part represents the triumph of the cultural values, diverse spirituality, and enduring legacies of a people who survived centuries of slavery to emerge as a globally influential and celebrated community. Stocks in products exploring and documenting African-American culture have ebbed and flowed since the 1920s-1940s Harlem Renaissance which helped generate and coincided with America’s famous Jazz Age. Interest surged forward again during the 1960s Black Arts Movement and yet again with the more recent boom in Afrocentric literature, in both traditional publishing houses and among independent authors turned publishers, from the 1990s to the present. The impact tends to be a cross-industry one that enhances the quality, productivity, and profitability of different institutions. Universities, high schools, museums, libraries, the film industry, and