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Abstract
The mainstream press frequently characterized the election of President Barack Obama the first African American US President as the realization of Martin Luther King's dream, thus crafting a postracial narrative of national transcendence. I argue that this routine characterization of Obama's election functions as a site for the production of selective amnesia, a form of remembrance that routinely negates and silences those who would contest hegemonic narratives of national progress and unity.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Raymie McKerrow, Victoria Gallagher, Jonathan Rossing, Bryan McCann, and anonymous reviewers for their insightful commentary and suggestions. She is also grateful for Casey Kelly's encouragement and thoughtful criticism throughout the writing process. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2009 National Communication Association conference in Chicago.
Notes
1. Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 40.
2. Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union—March 18, 2008.” American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobamaperfectunion.htm.
3. Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, “A Political Odyssey; How Obama's Team Forged a Path That Surprised Everyone, Even the Candidate,” The Washington Post, August 2, 2009.
4. Peniel Joseph, Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama (New York: Basic Books, 2010).
5. Jill Edy, “Journalistic Uses of Collective Memory,” Journal of Communication 49 (1999): 71–87.
6. Early and fundamental essays within the discipline include Carole Blair, Marsha S. Jeppeson, and Enrico Pucci Jr., “Public Memorializing in Postmodernity: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial as Prototype,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 77 (1991): 263–88; Stephen H. Browne, “Reading Public Memory in Daniel Webster's Plymouth Rock Oration,” Western Journal of Communication 57 (1993): 464–77; Stephen H. Browne, “Remembering Crispus Attucks: Race, Rhetoric, and the Politics of Commemoration,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 85 (1999): 169–87; and Bruce Gronbeck, “The Rhetorics of the Past: History, Argument, and Collective Memory,” in Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, ed. Kathleen J. Turner (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998), 47–60. For recent examples see Kendall Phillips, ed. Framing Public Memory (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004); and Greg Dickinson, Brian L. Ott, and Eric Aoki, “Spaces of Remembering and Forgetting: The Reverent Eye/I at the Plains Indian Museum,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3 (2006): 27–47.
7. John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 15.
8. Stephen Browne, “Review Essay: Reading, Rhetoric, and the Texture of Public Memory,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 237–65.
9. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire,” Representations 26 (1989): 7–24.
10. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991), 3; Barbara Biesecker, “Remembering World War II: The Rhetoric and Politics of National Commemoration at the Turn of the 21st Century,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 406.
11. Biesecker, “Remembering;” Dickinson, Ott, and Aoki, “Spaces”; Kristen Hoerl, “Mario Van Peebles's ‘Panther’ and Popular Memories of the Black Panther Party,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24 (2007): 206–27; Kristen Hoerl, “Burning Mississippi into Memory? Cinematic Amnesia as a Resource for Remembering Civil Rights,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 26 (2009): 54–79; Roseann M. Mandziuk, “Commemorating Sojourner Truth: Negotiating the Politics of Race and Gender in the Spaces of Public Memory,” Western Journal of Communication 67 (2003): 271–91.
12. Browne, “Reading Public Memory,” 466.
13. Browne, “Remembering Crispus Attucks;” Mandzuik, “Commemorating.”
14. Victoria J. Gallagher, “Memory and Reconciliation in the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 2 (1999): 303–20.
15. Denise M. Bostdorff and Steven R. Goldzwig, “History, Collective Memory, and the Appropriation of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Reagan's Rhetorical Legacy,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 35 (2005): 661–90; Shawn J. Parry-Giles and Trevor Parry-Giles, “Collective Memory, Political Nostalgia, and the Rhetorical Presidency: Bill Clinton's Commemoration of the March on Washington August 28, 1998,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 86 (2000): 417–37.
16. Marouf Hasian Jr. and A. Cheree Carlson, “Revisionism and Collective Memory: The Struggle for Meaning in the Amistad Affair,” Communication Monographs 67 (2000): 42–62; Kelly J. Madison, “Legitimation Crisis and Containment: The ‘Anti-Racist-White-Hero’ Film,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 16 (1999): 399–416; and Kristen Hoerl, “Mississippi's Social Transformation in Public Memories of the Trial Against Byron de la Beckwith for the Murder of Medgar Evers,” Western Journal of Communication 72 (2008): 62–82.
17. Other essays have suggested that civil rights museums provide productive spaces for transcending social differences and resisting racial injustice. See Victoria J. Gallagher, “Remembering Together? Rhetorical Integration and the Case of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial,” Southern Communication Journal 60 (1995): 109–19; and Carole Blair and Neil Michel, “Reproducing Civil Rights Tactics: The Rhetorical Performances of the Civil Rights Memorial,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30 (2000): 31–55.
18. Gallagher, “Memory.”
19. Bostdorff and Goldzwig, “History”; Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles, “Collective Memory.”
20. Kirt H. Wilson, “Rhetoric and Race in the American Experience: The Promises and Perils of Sentimental Memory,” in Sizing Up Rhetoric, ed. David Zarefsky and Elizabeth Benacka (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2008), 20–39.
21. Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998).
22. Bradford Vivian, “Review Essay: On the Language of Forgetting,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95 (2009): 89–104.
23. Bradford Vivian, Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).
24. Kammen, Mystic, 13.
25. Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Practice,” Communication Monographs 56 (1989): 107.
26. Robert L. Scott, “Dialectical Tensions of Speaking and Silence,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 79 (1993): 14.
27. Dana L. Cloud, “The Null Persona: Race and the Rhetoric of Silence in the Uprising of '34,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 2 (1999): 177–209; Carrie Crenshaw, “Resisting Whiteness’ Rhetorical Silence,” Western Journal of Communication 61 (1997): 253–78.
28. Philip C. Wander, “The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984): 210.
29. Wander, “The Third,” 210.
30. Kenneth Burke, Attitudes Toward History, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 80.
31. James P. Zappen, “Kenneth Burke on Dialectical-Rhetorical Transcendence,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 42 (2009): 297.
32. Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 187.
33. Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles, “Collective Memory,” 418.
34. CNN, “Inauguration Day Coverage,” CNN Live Event Special, January 20, 2009.
35. Kenneth T. Walsh, “For Obama‘s Inauguration, Echoes of Lincoln and Martin Luther King,” US News.com, January 16, 2009.
36. PBS, “Barack Obama Inaugurated as 44th President of the United States,” The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, January 20, 2009; CNN, “National Mall Filling Early for Obama Inauguration Day,” American Morning, January 20, 2009.
37. PBS, “Congressman, Journalists Reflect on the Presidency on Eve of Obama's Inauguration,” The Charlie Rose Show, January 19, 2009 and Fox, “More Inauguration Coverage,” Live Event, 10:00 AM EST, January 20, 2009.
38. See also CNN, “Final Preps At Inaugural Site; Secret Service Countersnipers; ‘A Dream Come True’; Changing Views of Obama,” The Situation Room, January 19, 2009; Barbara Boxer, “My Inaugural Reflections,” Huffington Post. January 22, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com; NBC, “Professor Michael Eric Dyson Discusses this Historic Inauguration Day in the Context of Dr. King and Struggle for Civil Rights,” Today Show, January 20, 2009; and MSNBC, [untitled], MSNBC Special, 1:00 EST, January 20, 2009.
39. MSNBC, “For January 19, 2009,” 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with David Gregory, January 19, 2009.
40. FOX, “America Prepares for the Transfer of Presidential Power,” On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, January 19, 2009. For a similar example see FOX, “Special Edition: Obama's Inauguration,” The O'Reilly Factor, January 20, 2009.
41. NBC, “This Moment, This Time,” Dateline, January 18, 2009.
42. CNN, “Inauguration Day Coverage,” CNN Live Event Special 3:00 EST, January 20, 2009.
43. FOX, “Preparations for the Inauguration Continue,” The O'Reilly Factor, January 18, 2009.
44. ABC, “Witness to History: Historic Pilgrimage,” Good Morning America, January 18, 2009.
45. Rachel L. Swarns, “Vaulting the Racial Divide, Obama Persuaded Americans to Follow,” New York Times, November 5, 2008.
46. Judy Keen, “Many See Dream Come True; They Plan Trips to D.C. for Obama's Inauguration if Only to be Near to the Man whose Success Touched Them,” USA Today, November 28, 2008.
47. NBC, “People from All Backgrounds at Inaugural Ceremony,” NBC Nightly News, January 20, 2009.
48. “And Now” 2009
49. This selection of artifacts for analysis works in accordance with Michael McGee's observation that the first job of the critical rhetorician is to “[invent] a text suitable for criticism” out of the available scraps and pieces of evidence within our fractured media environment. See Michael Calvin McGee, “Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture,” Western Journal of Speech Communication 54 (1990): 288. For a discussion of media constraints on interpretation, see also Celeste Michelle Condit, “The Rhetorical Limits of Polysemy,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 6 (1989): 103–22.
50. Raymie McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric and the Possibility of the Subject,” in The Critical Turn: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Postmodern Discourse, ed. Ian Angus and Lenore Langsdorf (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993): 51–67.
51. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).
52. CNN, “National Mall.”
53. Mary Mitchell, “It Wasn't Easy: King's Prophetic Dream, Decades in the Making, Takes a Giant Leap as He Passes the Torch to Illinois’ Favorite Son,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 19, 2009.
54. Walter R. Fisher, “Reaffirmation and Subversion of the American Dream,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59 (1973): 160–67.
55. Bostdorff and Goldzwig, “History”; Dana L. Cloud, “Hegemony or Concordance? The Rhetoric of Tokenism in ‘Oprah’ Winfrey's Rags-to-Riches Biography,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13 (1996): 115–37; Kristen Hoerl, “Cinematic Jujitsu: Resisting White Hegemony Through the American Dream in Spike Lee's Malcolm X,” Communication Studies 59 (2008): 355–70.
56. Catherine Squires, Eric King Watts, Mary Douglas Vavrus, Kent A. Ono, Kathleen Feyh, Bernadette Marie Calafell, Daniel C. Brouwer, “What is this ‘Post’ in Postracial, Postfeminist … (Fill in the Blank)?” Journal of Communication Inquiry 34 (2010): 210–53.
57. Andrew Young, “Week One of a Dream Fulfilled,” Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2009.
58. CNN, “Final Preps.”
59. CNN, “Martin Luther King's Dream,” Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, January 19, 2009.
60. CBS, “Memorable Sights and Sounds from Inaugural Day,” CBS Evening News, January 20, 2009; CNN, “Inauguration Day Coverage,” Live Event Special 11:00 EST, January 20, 2009; FOX, “Continuing Coverage of Inauguration Day Events,” Live Event, 11:00 EST, January 20, 2009; PBS, “Barack Obama;” MSNBC, “Inauguration Coverage,” MSNBC Special, 12:00 EST, January 20, 2009.
61. Barack Obama, “Pre-Inauguration Address at the Lincoln Memorial-January 18, 2009,” American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobama/barackobamapreinaugurallincolnmemorial.htm.
62. Barack Obama, “Presidential Inaugural Address: What is Required: The Price and the Promise of Citizenship-January 20, 2009,” American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobama/barackobamainauguraladdress.htm.
63. Swarns, “Vaulting the Racial Divide.”
64. CNN, “Martin Luther King's Dream”; FOX, “Dr. King's Legacy,” FOX Special Report with Brit Hume, January 19, 2009.
65. CNN, “Martin Luther King's Dream.”
66. CNN, “Inauguration Eve,” CNN Larry King Live, January 19, 2009; Rick Hampson, Larry Copeland, Charisse Jones, and William M. Welch, “Where King Preached, Obama's the Word; Sunday Sermons See a Dream Fulfilled, but More to be Done,” USA Today, January 19, 2009; NBC, “Obama's Inauguration Day and Other Topics,” Meet the Press, January 18, 2009.
67. CNN, “Coverage of Pre-Inauguration Events,” CNN Live Event Special 3:00 EST, January 18, 2009.
68. CNN, “Coverage of Pre-Inauguration Events.”
69. CNN, “From MLK to Today,” CNN Live Event Special 7:00 EST, January 19, 2009.
70. Bostdorf and Goldzwig, “History.”
71. Derrick P. Alridge, “The Limits of Master Narratives in History Text Books: An Analysis of Representations of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Teacher's College Record 108 (2006): 662–86.
72. For a discussion of the nuances of King's rhetoric and philosophy in 1967 see George N. Dionisopoulos, Victoria J. Gallagher, Steven R. Goldzwig, and David Zarefsky, “Martin Luther King, the American Dream, and Vietnam: A Collision of Rhetorical Trajectories,” Western Journal of Communication 56 (1992): 91–107.
73. Gary Daynes, Making Villains, Making Heroes: Joseph R. McCarthy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Politics of American Memory (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 131.
74. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Boulder, CO: Reiner, 2001); Andreana Clay. “All I Need is One Mic”: Mobilizing Youth for Social Change in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Social Justice 33 (2006): 105–21.
75. Thomas L. Friedman, “Finishing Our Work,” New York Times, November 5, 2008.
76. CBS, “Mayor Cory Booker Discusses the Historical Significance of Barack Obama being Elected President,” The Early Show, January 19, 2009.
77. NBC, “John Lewis, Last Surviving Speaker from Platform where Martin Luther King JR. Gave ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech, Will Be at Obama's Inauguration,” Nightly News, January 19, 2009.
78. Steven R. Goldzwig, “LBJ, the Rhetoric of Transcendence, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6 (2003): 41.
79. Bob Herbert, “I Wish You Were Here.” The New York Times, January 20, 2009.
80. CNN, “Final Preps.”
81. Elizabeth Alexander, “Can you be BLACK and Look at This?” Reading the Rodney King Video(s),” in The Black Public Sphere Collective: A Public Culture Book, ed. The Black Public Sphere Collective (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 84.
82. ABC, “A New Day; Expectations,” World News with Charles Gibson, November 5, 2008; Mitchell, “It Wasn't Easy,”; Chao Xiong and Curt Brown, “The Inauguration of Barack Obama; Minnesota Reaction: ‘Love and cooperation know no skin color’; For Those Around the Twin Cities who Watched Obama Take the Oath of Office, Optimism Reigned,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 21, 2009; CNN, “The ‘We Are One’ Concert Set To Begin At Lincoln Memorial, Obama Family, Biden Family Arrive, Wide Array Of Stars To Perform, Attend, Honoring Lincoln, King, Obama,” CNN Live Event Special, 2:00 EST, January 18, 2009.
83. PBS, “Barack Obama Inaugurated.”
84. CNN, “From MLK to Today”; CNN, “Whirlwind Day for Barack Obama,” Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees 10:00 PM EST, January 19, 2009.
85. CNN, “Inauguration Day Coverage,” CNN Live Event Special, 10:00 AM EST, January 20, 2009.
86. Barack Obama, “Remarks to the NAACP Convention,” Democratic Underground, July 14, 2008, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6501240.
87. “Honoring Martin Luther King Jr., the Man and the Kid,” The Washington Post, January 19, 2009.
88. CBS, “Achievements in African-American History,” The Early Show, January 1, 2009.
89. NBC, “This Moment.”
90. ABC, “Inauguration of Barack Obama: Pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement,” Good Morning America, January 19, 2009.
91. Obama: The Dream Fulfilled, A Historical Retrospective. (Tinton Falls, NJ.: Multi-media International, 2009).
92. “About Us,” Multi-Media International, http://web.archive.org/web/20090626112520/ http://www.mmimags.com/magazines.html.
93. Obama: The Dream Fulfilled, 3.
94. Obama: The Dream Fulfilled, 3.
95. Obama: The Dream Fulfilled, 3.
96. Obama: The Dream Fulfilled, 42–43.
97. Obama: The Dream Fulfilled, 43.
98. Obama: The Dream Fulfilled, 46.
99. For further discussion of counter-memory, see George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990).
100. Obama: The Dream Fulfilled, 114.
101. Houston Baker, “Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere,” reprinted in The Black Public Sphere Collective: A Public Culture Book (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1995), 7–37.
102. Clay Risen, A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009).
103. James H. Cone. Martin & Malcolm X & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997).
104. Joshua F.J. Inwood, “Contested Memory in the Birthplace of a King: A Case Study of Auburn Avenue and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Park,” Cultural Geographies, 16 (2009): 90.
105. Stokely Carmichael, “Berkeley Speech, October 1966,” reprinted in Dissent in America: The Voices that Shaped a Nation, ed. Ralph F. Young (New York: Pearson, 2006), 567–76.