where's chuck sumner when you need him?

Music: Love Psychedelico: The Greatest Hits (2001)

This morning Senator Obama delivered his anticipated apologia on the racial politics stirred up by the MSM coverage of Reverend Wright's fiery sermons. Apropos Bryan M.'s comments on the previous post, the speech was disappointing. This disappointment has less to do with Obama's actual remarks than the rigid rhetorical options he had: (a) complete disassociation; or (b) admission of association but denouncement of statements. The preferred (c) option, embrace of association and explanation of black vernacular discourse, of course, would be considered pedantic and racist. Obama went for (b) by not distancing himself from Wright, just denouncing "Wright's political views."

What's completely absent, of course, is that "Wright's political views" are mistaken for the rhetorical tradition he is enacting. Black vernacular is double-voiced, playful, it has an edge for which context is everything, and not just sermonic context, but historical. Black spirituals were not just about deity, but simultaneously about emancipation from slavery (unbeknownst to the master). I just want to shake these commentators and say, "it's the rhetoric, stupid!"

I've watched a lot of You-Tubage of Wright, and I still say there's not much there to quibble with: to deny the United States of America has and continues to treat its citizens of color poorly is absurd. Yes, god damn the United States of America! for its genocides and internments and ghettoizations. I agree with Wright's passion and the patriotism that underlies it (that is, the right to claim community as an American). It's too bad Obama cannot admit any identification with this sentiment, but must condemn any agreement and squelch any common affect. I know given the way publicity works he has no choice. As a rhetorician, its just tough to watch these rhetorical choices because they are being made for lack of even a basic understanding of rhetorical history.

Here's perhaps an even more disturbing aspect of the speech: it had an eugenic flavor. Bryan M. is was right-on when he predicted Obama would retreat to (neo)liberal racial appeals: we are all one despite our differences, politics of hope, blah blah blah. I just found myself sighing loudly. But I was alarmed when Obama resorted to genetics. I've heard him say before, strangely, that a tolerance for diversity was "in my DNA." Today, Obama stressed he had a white mother and black father; he told a story about his white grandmother and how her remarks of being afraid of black men troubled him; he stressed he had family members of different "colors and hues" across the globe. And then, again, he stressed he was "genetically" hard-wired to respect difference.

Does anyone remember the alarming comments about DNA and blood in The Phantom Menace? That acting challenged kid being identified as "the one" because his blood contained something special? I had a flashback to that scene watching Obama today when he dropped the "in my genetic make-up" comment.

I understand the appeal of miscegenation. Charles Sumner used it to great effect ("ocean of humanity") in arguing for the rights of African Americans back in the nineteenth century. Many of his speeches have a subtle undertone of a coming colorblindness via globalization and travel . . . . But this not how Obama is using the appeal; the enthymeme here is that Obama is "special," not so much because he grew up in many worlds, but because he is genetically predisposed to tolerate difference. He is deploying genetics as a metaphor, but it's purchase is subtly scentistic, and it is premised on race as a genetic category.

WTF? Isn't believing before seeing? Isn't race a social construct that has nothing to do with genetics? Isn't this what Sumner once argued in the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction? Why is Obama turning to the "genetic" metaphor? What is this really achieving, and isn't this counterproductive in any discussion of race?

[sigh]