Barack Obama
Obama’s elevation to the Presidency is often situated in symbolic terms as the commencement of a “post-racial America.” The author, however argues that Obama is a symbol of hope precisely for the exact opposite reason, citing his embrace of his multi-racial identities that transform his success into a representation of hope for those of all racial identities.
Jackie Robinson
The first player to break the modern Major League Baseball color line in 1947, Jackie Robinson has long since become the go-to symbol for the “first” of anyone to cross the line or break through the barrier of any obstruction based on stereotype.
Antonio Vivaldi
The author describes how he used to whistle the music of classical composer Vivaldi while walking down sidewalks in order to defuse the natural suspicion of seeing an unexpectedly out of place black youth. Vivaldi is situated as a symbol of “high white culture” (while the Beatles, whose music he also whistled, is situated as a symbol of white pop culture) that made him automatically less suspicion, defusing the paranoia of his being “out of place.”
The Swimming Pool
The book opens with an anecdote from the author’s youth taking place on the last day of school when he is walking home and learns that the swimming pool located in a local park is made available to the neighborhood’s black kids only on Wednesday afternoon. This aware of his own “blackness” and the limitations it automatically imposes upon his life becomes the central and dominant symbol of the book’s theoretical construction of “social contingencies” in modern society.
John Henry
The legendary steel-driving man of folklore who battled against a steam-powered opponent and won only to wind up perishing in the effort becomes a symbol of the tendency for the underprivileged or underrepresented to work so hard at overcoming social disadvantages that they wind up paying a heavy physical price.
