Technicolor Racism or Caricature Assassination? Satirizing White Anxiety About the Obama Presidency

ABSTRACT

Using the theory of iconography, this article deconstructs the “Politics of Fear” caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama, featured on the cover of The New Yorker magazine, to investigate White imagination about the couple's socio-cultural identities. Published before the 2008 Democratic nominating convention, the caricature set the couple within the Oval Office and depicted Barack in an Arab-style tunic bumping fists with an armed Angela Davis-esque Michelle dressed in fatigues. We examine defenses of the image as satire against anti-Obama caricatures. We also examine original and secondary survey data to uncover the determinants of support for the caricature. We argue that the caricature gave a unifying visual form to disparate trepidations about the Americanness and religious identity of the Obamas. Our article concludes by situating the controversy over the cover alongside longstanding suspicions by Whites that Barack Obama has deceived Americans about his religious identity and loyalty to American ideals.

KEYTERMS:

• racial caricatures
• Michelle Obama
• Barack Obama
• visual content analysis
• survey

Notes

1. Supplemental materials are available at http://www.elkastevens.com/TechnicolorRacism.pdf.