Barack Obama's election to the American presidency has prompted rethinking in the way that scholars have customarily mapped out the terrain of black politics. This development brought onto the national stage the complexities confronting the members of a minority group assuming power over national political institutions and also the limits placed on that power by virtue of the double accountability such a figure faces. The question posed in this new volume of the NPSR is: might the ascendancy of President Obama lead to a deracialization of American politics, or perhaps its opposite?