You see, what he mean to say wuz: TheRoot.com plays cleanup for Obama’s speech
on September 29th, 2011 at 7:08 am“Richard Leeman, a professor of African-American oratory at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and co-editor of the forthcoming The Will of a People: Great Speeches by African Americans, had a different interpretation of Obama’s infamous last words. The president, he said, was clearly referring to gripes about the Republican obstructionists that he called out in the section just before that.
‘He was making the same kind of appeal that a preacher makes as a way of connecting with his congregation,’ Leeman told The Root. “He was chastising them a bit, but I don’t think he was angry. The chastising was meant to reinvigorate the audience and draw them together, which you find often in African-American preachers, before creating a positive message out of it. In this case that message was: We have a long way to go, and we need to keep working at it.”
Of course, there is the small detail of Obama being the president of the United States, not a black preacher. Some critics even found his gospel speechifyin’ demeanor offensive. Jackson argues that the president’s rhetorical code switching for black crowds is a device that many leaders, from Booker T. Washington to Malcolm X, have employed over the years.
‘Even when Maxine Waters speaks to a black audience, she’s a little more casual and more identified with that audience than she is when she’s talking on the floor of Congress,” Jackson said, explaining that the relaxed rhythm signals not only a strategy to align oneself culturally with black folks but also a sense of comfort with that particular audience.”
[...]
“It may be unfair to separate the speech’s last paragraph from the rest of it, as many reports have, but that comes with the territory of being a public figure. Particularly a black one.
‘That’s a situation that African-American speakers have been in forever,” said Leeman. ‘[TV journalist] Louis Lomax talked specifically about it in one of his speeches. He said, ‘Any time we say anything about what the black community needs to do, or taking responsibility for something, that’s all the white audience hears. They never hear the other part of the message.’ “
Tavis?
I raised some the the same exact points the other day.
