[...] Obama’s election promised to harmonize political discourse on racial and economic inequality, as his presidential campaign and presidency would further legitimate underclass ideology’s project of racializing economic inequality via attribution of poverty to the dysfunctional culture of the minority poor themselves rather than political economy. [...] Obama would emphasize — albeit with quick nods to institutional racism and a soupçon of compassion — the impact of ghetto residents’ dysfunctional behavior on contemporary disparities as a pretext for stressing individual solutions to structural problems.