Yale historian Jonathan Holloway closes his course American History: From Emancipation to the Present with a synthesis of the semester's themes: citizenship, uplift and respectability, political radicalism, cultural politics, and racial symbolism. He turns to Barack Obama's 2008 campaign speech A More Perfect Union, his election, and his inauguration to ask what it might mean to call America post-racial. Holloway then surveys how race gets deployed in everyday American life, from Uncle Ben's rice and Aunt Jemima's pancakes to tourism marketing and media coverage of New Orleans residents during Hurricane Katrina, arguing race is used to sell, to distract from class and gender, and to stir emotion, usually in ways that are simplistic or destructive. The lecture ends with a challenge to students: how will you use race? It is a closing synthesis lecture, best watched after the earlier sessions in the course.