Unity and duality in Barack Obama's "a more perfect union"

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Volumn 95, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 363-386

  Terrill, Robert E ^a  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Double consciousness; Duplicity; Obama; Public address; Race

Indexed keywords

EID: 70949083457     PISSN: 00335630     EISSN: 14795779     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00335630903296192     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. Du Bois did not actually coin the phrase; it was used by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay "The Transcendentalist." Du Bois's professor at Harvard, William James, explored closely related ideas concerning the "divided self." Indeed, similar ideas were rampant in turn-of-the-century discourse, both academic and popular. See Shamoon Zamir, Dark Voices: W. E. B. Du Bois and American Thought, 1888-1903 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 153-54, 163-64.
2. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (1903; repr., New York: Bantam Classics, 1989), 3.
3. Adolph Reed Jr., "Du Bois's 'Double Consciousness': Race and Gender in Progressive Era American Thought," Studies in American Political Development 6 (1992): 135.
4. Ernest Allen Jr., "Ever Feeling One's Twoness: 'Double Ideals' and 'Double Consciousness' in the Souls of Black Folk," Critique of Anthropology 12 (1992): 261-75.
5. See also Dickson D. Bruce Jr., "W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness," American Literature 64 (1992): 299-309
6. Ernest Allen Jr., "Du Boisian Double Consciousness: The Unsustainable Argument," The Black Scholar 33 (2003): 25-43.
7. Paul Gilroy, similarly, argues that Du Bois-and Richard Wright, in drawing on Du Bois-viewed double consciousness as "neither simply a disability nor a consistent privilege." Paul Gilroy, similarly, argues that Du Bois-and Richard Wright, in drawing on Du Bois-viewed double consciousness as "neither simply a disability nor a consistent privilege." Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 161.
8. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, xxxi, 10.
9. David A. Frank and Mark Lawrence McPhail, "Barack Obama's Address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention: Trauma, Compromise, Consilience, and the (Im)possibility of Racial Reconciliation," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8 (2005): 589.
10. Du Bois does say that African Americans are "gifted with second-sight in this American world," which as Zamir points out suggests "a higher understanding, born of... alienation, of political and social realities." Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 3
11. Zamir, Dark Voices, 146. I am discussing race as a predominantly black/white issue because this is how both Du Bois and Obama discuss it.
12. Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 49.
13. I borrow the phrase "stereoscopic gaze" from Robert L. Ivie, "Finessing the Demonology of War: Toward a Practical Aesthetic of Humanising Dissent," Javnost-The Public 14 (2007): 37-54.
14. The key text for understanding political style is Robert Hariman, Political Style: The Artistry of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). He defines political style as "a coherent repertoire of rhetorical conventions depending on aesthetic reactions for political effect" (4).
15. James Darsey, "Barack Obama and America's Journey," Southern Communication Journal 74 (2009): 89.
16. David A. Frank, "The Prophetic Voice and the Face of the Other in Barack Obama's 'A More Perfect Union' Address, March 18, 2008," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 12 (2009): 168.
17. Both Darsey's and Frank's essays were published after I had submitted the initial draft of this essay to the Quarterly Journal of Speech; I have integrated references to their insights where they are consonant with my own. Similar approaches to Obama's rhetoric are ubiquitous. Ekaterina Haskins, for example, characterizes Obama as "summoning the ghosts of previous leaders and presidents who Americans have learnt to revere," showing that he "has certainly studied all of his predecessors," is "quite aware of the rhetorical heritage that he draws on," and that he sees himself particularly "as a descendant of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King" (quoted in Stephanie Holmes, "Obama: Oratory and Originality," BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7735014.stm)
18. Garry Wills provides a side-by-side reading of Obama's speech with Lincoln's Cooper Union Address (Garry Wills, "Two Speeches on Race," New York Review of Books, May 1, 2008, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21290)
19. Tom Palaima notes that "besides Lincoln, parallels can be drawn with John F. Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt," though Palaima himself "would argue that Obama combines the oratorical talents of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King" (Tom Palaima, "The Tools of Power," Times Higher Education, April 2, 2009, 35)
20. and Charlotte Higgins suggests a longer view, terming Obama's rhetoric "Ciceronian" and arguing that "to understand the next four years of American politics, you are going to need to understand something of the politics of ancient Greece and Rome" (Charlotte Higgins, "The New Cicero," Guardian, November 26, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/26/barack-obama-usa1).
21. Though Obama is literally half (black) African and half (white) American, some have argued that he is not "African American" because his personal ancestry does not include the distinctive history of subjugation and discrimination associated with American chattel slavery.
22. Christina Bellantoni, "Cash-Flush Obama Steamrolls McCain in Ads," Washington Times, October 20, 2008.
23. For example, the February 2007 issue of Rolling Stone published a profile of Obama that featured some of Wright's more incendiary remarks and noted that "this is as openly radical a background as any significant American figure has ever emerged from." Ben Wallace-Wells, "Destiny's Child," Rolling Stone, February 22, 2007, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13390609/campaign_08_the_radical_roots_of_barack_obama.
24. Barack Obama, "On My Faith and My Church," March 14, 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barack-obama/on-my-faith-and-my-church_b_91623.html.
25. The video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?vo_7piGy0u43c.
26. Mike Dorning, "Obama to Give Rare Race Speech," Chicago Tribune, March 18, 2008.
27. "Under Pressure, Obama Prepares for Race and Unity Speech," March 17, 2008, http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/03/17/under-pressure-obama-prepares-for-race-and-unity-speech.
28. The prepared text of Obama's speech is supplied by his campaign at Barack Obama, "Obama Speeches," Organizing for America, http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php. Obama's actual delivery varied slightly, and I have corrected the delivery text to correspond to the video of the speech available at "Barack Obama: 'A More Perfect Union' (Full Speech)," YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?vzrp-v2tHaDo. Throughout this essay, quotations from Obama's speech are drawn from my corrected text. Video of the speech, and a transcription from the video, also are available at "Barack Obama-A More Perfect Union (Philadelphia Speech)," American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, http://www.americanrhetor-ic.com/speeches/barackobamaperfectunion.htm.
29. Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration did contain references to slavery, but these were struck by the Continental Congress during its editing of Jefferson's draft. See Stephen E. Lucas, "Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document," in American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism, ed. Thomas W. Benson (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), 104-7. It might be argued that the Constitution is itself a doubled document, in that it seems both to condemn and institutionalize slavery. The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution both are available online at Independence Hall Association, ushistory.org, http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/ document/index.htm, http://www.ushistory.org/documents/constitution.htm.
30. Frank and McPhail, "Barack Obama's Address," 583.
31. McPhail borrows the phrase "politics of disavowal" from Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 279-80.
32. The relevant sections of the Constitution include article I, section 2, which established that "three fifths" of slaves were to be counted for the purposes of representation and taxation (this was changed in 1868 with the ratification of Fourteenth Amendment); article I, section 9, which allowed for the "importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit" until 1808; article IV, section 2, which required that escaped slaves be returned to their owners (this was changed in 1865 with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment); and article V, which prohibited altering article I, section 9, until 1808.
33. Frank similarly notes Obama's use of "elegant pairing of contraries" that challenge "the binary thinking at the root of racism and other pathologies." Frank and McPhail, "Barack Obama's Address," 579. Significantly, such balanced phrases are much less prominent in Obama's speeches that do not explicitly address race.
34. Allen, Talking to Strangers, 17.
35. On April 29, 2008, after Wright made another set of controversial comments to the National Press Club, Obama formally cut all ties with his former pastor. A video of Obama's press conference is available at "Obama Press Conference: April 29, 2008," YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4EKY7rCF_c.
36. Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995), 294.
37. George Lakoff describes Obama's stance toward Wright in parallel terms, casting it as a form of judgment. George Lakoff, "What Made Obama's Speech Great," AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org/story/80549/. Frank, similarly, notes that Obama's critique of Wright is "twofold," in that he both embraces the prophetic tradition within which Wright was preaching and recognizes that it is ill-suited to the public sphere.
38. Frank, "Prophetic Voice," 184.
39. Obama's maternal grandmother played a significant role in his upbringing; he lived with his grandparents in Hawaii during his early teen years, while his mother did fieldwork in Indonesia, working toward her PhD in anthropology. See Obama, Dreams from My Father, especially 72-91.
40. Robert C. Rowland and John M. Jones, "Recasting the American Dream and American Politics: Barack Obama's Keynote Address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention," Quarterly Journal of Speech 93 (2007): 435.
41. Frank and McPhail, "Barack Obama's Address," 577-78.
42. On this speech as empathic, see also Lakoff, "What Made Obama's Speech."
43. Throughout the primaries and into the general election, a recurrent critique was that Obama's followers, and perhaps Obama himself, suffered from a messianic complex. See, for example, Wesley Pruden, "The Faith Healer for Our Time," Washington Times, June 10, 2008
44. Mary Zeiss Stange, "Obama's Believers: There's a Theological Underpinning to What's Going On with the Illinois Senator's Campaign," USA Today, April 7, 2008
45. Christina Bellantoni, "Oprah Hails Obama for 'New Vision,'" Washington Times, December 9, 2007.
46. Zamir notes the close association, for Du Bois, "of self-consciousness to seeing and being seen," and argues that this association between double consciousness and double perspective represents a significant innovation of Du Bois's in relation to the many conceptions of the "divided self "that were salient in the late nineteenth century. Zamir, Dark Voices, 144.
47. The prepared text reads, "But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow." It may be that the references to disparities within the African American community was an error that Obama corrected in delivery. But in any case, referring to inequalities between whites and blacks better fits the theme of the text.
48. Frank, "Prophetic Voice," 181.
49. Frank is borrowing the phrase "hush harbor" from Vorris Nunley, "From the Harbor to Da Academic Hood: Hush Harbors and an African American Rhetorical Tradition," in African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Elaine B. Richardson and Ronald L. Jackson (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 221-42.
50. The prepared text does not mention the beauty shop.
51. Ivie, "Finessing the Demonology of War," 51.
52. Frank, "Prophetic Voice," 185.
53. In the prepared text, the reference is to Obama's "single candidacy" rather than to Obama as the "single candidate."
54. Rowland and Jones note that this theme is present in Obama's 2004 DNC address as well, though they do not point out the supporting stylistic cues. Rowland and Jones, "Recasting the American Dream," 435.
55. When addressing his white audience, Obama makes less use of doubled tropes than when he is addressing his black audience. It may be that whites must first learn to recognize that other consciousnesses exist before they can productively cultivate double consciousness, and perhaps only then can they make productive use of the stylistic cues associated with a double attitude.
56. Allen, Talking to Strangers, 87.
57. Allen, Talking to Strangers, 105.
58. Jeffrey Wattles, The Golden Rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 31. The term "comparable" is especially useful, as it complements the visual emphasis in Du Boisian double consciousness that is less obvious in the idea of "consubstantiality" that Rowland and Jones borrow from Kenneth Burke.
59. Rowland and Jones, "Recasting the American Dream," 435.
60. Kenneth Burke, Attitudes Toward History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 348
61. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 242-43.
62. Jeffrey Wattles puts it this way, just before he quotes the passage from Du Bois with which I began this essay: "The mature practice of the golden rule involves an identification with others that includes understanding plus an appropriate level of shared feeling plus an appropriate practical response." The understanding and shared feeling necessitates a doubled consciousness; the practical response finds its foundation in a doubled attitude. Wattles, Golden Rule, 121.
63. This interpretation of the election results would belie, to some extent, Adolph Reed's prediction that "Obama's style of being all things to all people threatens to melt under the inescapable spotlight of a national campaign against a Republican." Adolph Reed, "Obama No," The Progressive, May 2008, http://www.progressive.org/mag_reed0508.
64. Kate Zernike and Dalia Sussman, "For Pollsters, The Racial Effect that Wasn't," New York Times, November 6, 2008.
65. Bob Hepburn, "US Still a Nation Deeply Divided," Toronto Star, November 6, 2008.
66. Elizabeth Markovits, The Politics of Sincerity: Plato, Frank Speech, and Democratic Judgment (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 34.
67. Markowitz, Politics of Sincerity, 33.
68. Mark Backman, Sophistication: Rhetoric and the Rise of Self-Consciousness (Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1991), 5-7.
69. Markovits, Politics of Sincerity, 32.
70. In referring to "zero-degree tropes," Markovits is following (and critiquing) Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001), 21.
71. Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 3.
72. Markovits Politics of Sincerity, 31.
73. Anne E. Kornblut and Dan Balz, "Underdog Clinton Goes after Obama," Washington Post, January 6, 2008.
74. Robert J. Samuelson, "The Obama Delusion," Washington Post, February 20, 2008.
75. George F. Will, "The Final Repudiation," Newsweek, November 17, 2008, 124.
76. Excellent responses to Will's essay include Tom Frentz, "Ravaged by Rhetoric," Communication Currents 3 (2008)
77. Jennifer R. Mercieca, "Don't Fear Oratory," Communication Currents 3 (2008)
78. David Levasseur, "To Trust or Distrust the Electorate," Communication Currents 3 (2008). All are available online at http://www.communicationcurrents.com/index.asp?bid15&issuepage=120.
79. Haiman, Talk Is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 101.
80. "News Conference by the President," East Room, White House, July 22, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/News-Conference-by-the-President-July-22-2009.
81. Video and commentary are available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/fox-host-glenn-beck-obama_n_246310.html.
82. "Statement by the President," James S. Brady Briefing Room, White House, July 24, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Statement-by-the-President-in-the-James-S-Brady-Briefing-Room.
83. These polls also reinforce the racial divisions emphasized in the election results: Jon Cohen, "Obama Involvement in Gates Flap Hurt Image, Poll Finds," Washington Post, July 31, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/30/AR2009073004097.html
84. Paul Steinhauser, "Poll: Obama Approval Drops 7 Points over Last 100 Days," CNN.com, August 6, 2009, http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/06/obama.poll.
85. Indeed, conservative bloggers and commentators often refer to Obama's "duplicity" with regards to many different issues, as any simple Internet search will reveal.
86. As the intended "rhetorical end-point" of the Reverend Wright crisis, which had threatened to derail his campaign, Obama prepared and delivered the speech in Philadelphia which, as I have argued, supplies inventional resources for productive ways of speaking and thinking about race. As the intended end-point of the Professor Henry Louis Gates crisis, which in turn threatened to derail the president's agenda for health care reform, Obama invited Gates and police sergeant Crowley to share a beer at the White House. This was to be a "teachable moment," as Obama put it, but it was a peculiarly quiet lesson. The three principles in the matter (and Vice President Joe Biden) sat around a table at the edge of the Rose Garden and drank their beers, a small group of multiracial bodies well out of earshot of the gathered press. What they said, or how they said it, was not reported; no ways of speaking in public about race were modeled. Indeed, the implied message was that discussions about race, even and perhaps especially in highly visible public spaces, should be entirely private affairs, presumably conducted in a plain-spoken vernacular. See John Louis Lucaites, "President Obama's Teachable Moment," blog post, No Caption Needed, August 2, 2009, http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/?p=3538.
87. Quoted in Alec MacGillis, "Finding Political Strength in the Power of Words," Washington Post, February 26, 2008. Ekaterina Haskins concurs: "Rhetoric always has the connotations of being about appearances rather than reality, but he [Obama] doesn't sound false."
88. Quoted in Stephanie Holmes, "Obama: Oratory and Originality," BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7735014.stm.
89. Tom Palaima, "The Tools of Power," Times Higher Education, April 2, 2009, 32.
90. David Brooks, "Where's the Landslide?" New York Times, August 5, 2008.
91. See also Higgins, "New Cicero."
92. Alec MacGillis, "Finding Political Strength in the Power of Words," Washington Post, February 26, 2008.
93. Lakoff, "What Made Obama's Speech."
94. Burke, "Grammar of Motives", 59-61
95. Robert Wess, "Representative Anecdotes in General, with Notes toward a Representative Anecdote for Burkean Ecocriticism in Particular," K. B. Journal 1 (2004): http://www.kbjournal.org/node/54.