From the Parlor to the Barnyard: Obama and Holder on Race

Abstract

This essay explores Barack Obama's “A More Perfect Union” speech and Eric Holder's speech marking African American History Month as a case study of contemporary public discourse on race. This article argues that in these speeches, Obama and Holder perform the social drama of race relations in profoundly different ways. Drawing on the Burkean parlor and barnyard as metaphors of rhetorical form, the analysis demonstrates the interplay of these dialogic and agonistic forms in motivating democratic deliberation on race. Implications of these rhetorical forms for healthy democratic practice are discussed.

Keywords:

• Deliberation
• Dialogue
• Holder
• Kenneth Burke
• Obama
• Race
• Rhetorical Form

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank James F. Klumpp for sharing his thoughts on the presentation of an earlier draft of this paper, and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and helpful comments.

Notes

All references to the speech are found in Eric Holder, “Speech at the DOJ African-American History Month Program,” American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ericholderdojaahistory.htm).

Coverage of the speech often included the phrase as a headline or within the first line of text. See “Holder: U.S. ‘a nation of cowards’ on race,” Race & Ethnicity on msnbc.com, February 19, 2009, Web, September 20, 2011; Stephen Clark, “Attorney General's Remarks Ignite Debate Over Race Relations,” FOXnews.com, February 19, 2009, Web, September 20, 2011; Terry Frieden, “Holder: U.S. a ‘nation of cowards’ on race discussions,” CNNPolitics, CNN.com, February 18, 2009, Web, September 20, 2011; Pierre Thomas and Jason Ryan, “Stinging Remarks on Race From Attorney General,” ABC News, February 18, 2009, Web, September 20, 2011.

“Attorney General Eric Holder's Speech on Race,” WashingtonPost.com, February 21, 2009, Web, September 20, 2011; Tobin Harshaw, “Weekend Opinionator: A Nation of Cowards, Stimulus-Wielding Chimps and Hip-Hop Republicans,” Opinionator, The New York Times, February 21, 2009, Web, September 20, 2011; “Holder Speech Sparks Debate on Race,” Voice of America, VOAnews.com, February 20, 2009, Web, September 20, 2011; Tara Wall, “Commentary: Americans are not cowards on race,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, February 24, 2009, Web, September 20, 2011.

Robert Terrill offers an excellent overview of the situation, including a summary of the ABC News report that focused attention on the sermons of Rev. Wright. See Robert E. Terrill, “Unity and Duality in Barack Obama's ‘A More Perfect Union’,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95 (2009): 366–367. Video of the ABC report can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObH7ZgmQm5A.

For reactions from academics and political strategists, overwhelmingly positive regarding the content and potential effect of the speech, see Jay Newton-Small, “Reaction to the Obama Speech,” Time Politics, Time.com, March 18, 2008, Web, September 20, 2011. For a summary of the “acclaim and criticism” afforded the speech, see 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 and Public Affairs 12 (2009): 168–169.

Susanna Dilliplane, “Race, Rhetoric, and Running for President: Unpacking the Significance of Barack Obama's “A More Perfect Union” Speech,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 15 (2012): 129–131.

This perspective on rhetoric is best articulated in James F. Klumpp and Thomas A. Hollihan, “Rhetorical Criticism as Moral Action,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 75 (1989): 84–97. See especially, pages 88–90.

Frank 167–168.

Robert C. Rowland and John M. Jones, “One Dream: Barack Obama, Race, and the American Dream,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 14 (2011): 127.

Rowland and Jones 127.

James Darsey, “Barack Obama and America's Journey,” Southern Communication Journal 74 (2009): 88–103.

Mark Lawrence McPhail, “The Politics of Complicity Revisited: Race, Rhetoric, and the (Im)Possibility of Reconciliation,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 12 (2009): 122.

McPhail 122.

Terrill, “Unity and Duality,” 365.

Christel N. Temple, “Communicating Race and Culture in the Twenty-First Century: Discourse and the Post-racial/Post-cultural Challenge,” Journal of Multicultural Discourses 5 (2010): 52.

Temple 54–55.

Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 55 (1969): 2.

Charles J. Stewart, “The Evolution of a Revolution: Stokely Carmichael and the Rhetoric of Black Power,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 83 (1997): 429.

Robert E. Terrill, “Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 4 (2001): 35.

Terrill, “Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence,” 25. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting how Holder's speech might be viewed in terms of this rhetorical tradition.

Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement (1931, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968): 114.

Michael-John DePalma, Jeffrey M. Ringer, and Jim Webber, “(Re)Charting the (Dis)Courses of Faith and Politics, or Rhetoric and Democracy in the Burkean Barnyard,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 38 (2008): 314. The concern with opening space for discourse, here focused on the value of open deliberation, is based on Floyd D. Anderson and Lawrence J. Prelli, “Pentadic Cartography: Mapping the Universe of Discourse,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 87 (2001): 73–95.

Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, 3rd ed., (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1973): 444.

Burke, PLF 444–445.

DePalma, Ringer, and Webber 316.

Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (2000, New York: Verso, 2009): 104.

Mouffe, Paradox, 103.

Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (1993, New York: Verso, 2005): 130.

Robert L. Ivie, “Rhetorical Deliberation and Democratic Politics in the Here and Now,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5 (2002): 278.

Ivie 279.

Ivie 283.

Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (1950, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969): 23. DePalma, Ringer, and Webber also cite this quotation.

Burke, Rhetoric, 23.

Burke, Rhetoric, 23.

Burke, PLF 109.

Burke, PLF 110–111.

Burke, PLF 107.

Burke, PLF 107–108.

Burke, PLF 108.

Jay P. Childers, “Review Essay: Deliberating Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94 (2008): 455–467; Erik W. Doxtader, “Characters in the Middle of Public Life: Consensus, Dissent, and Ethos,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 33 (2000): 333–369; J. Michael Hogan and Dave Tell, “Demagoguery and Democratic Deliberation: The Search for Rules of Discursive Engagement,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 9 (2006): 479–487; Robert L. Ivie, “Democratic Deliberation in a Rhetorical Republic,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998): 491–530; Mari Boor Tonn, “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 8 (2005): 405–430; Scott Welsh, “Deliberative Democracy and the Rhetorical Production of Political Culture,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5 (2002): 679–708.

Jeanine Czubaroff, “Dialogical Rhetoric: An Application of Martin Buber's Philosophy of Dialogue,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 86 (2000): 170.

Czubaroff 177–179.

John B. Hatch, “Dialogic Rhetoric in Letters Across the Divide: A Dance of (Good) Faith Toward Racial Reconciliation,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 4 (2009): 492.

Hatch, “Dialogic Rhetoric,” 492. See John M. Murphy, “Mikhail Bakhtin and the Rhetorical Tradition,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 87 (2001): 259–277 for a full discussion of Bakhtin's disdain for rhetoric. Murphy likens Bakhtin's dialogism to “civic conversation” as opposed to rhetoric's “barnyard scramble.” See page 260.

M.M. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, Ed. Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981): 279.

Bakhtin 294.

Bakhtin 280.

Bakhtin 291–292.

Bakhtin 293.

Welsh.

Tonn 413.

Tonn.

Mark Lawrence McPhail, “Race and the (Im)Possibility of Dialogue,” Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies, Eds. Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter, and Kenneth N. Cissna (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003): 210.

John B. Hatch, “Reconciliation: Building a Bridge from Complicity to Coherence in the Rhetoric of Race Relations,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6 (2003): 737–764; “Beyond Apologia: Racial Reconciliation and Apologies for Slavery,” Western Journal of Communication 70 (2006): 186–211; “Dialogic Rhetoric.”.

Hatch, “Dialogic Rhetoric.”.

Hatch, “Dialogic Rhetoric” 487.

Hatch, “Dialogic Rhetoric” 511.

Hatch, “Dialogic Rhetoric” 488.

Katherine Cramer Walsh, Talking About Race: Community, Dialogue, and the Politics of Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007): 156–157.

Walsh 156.

Walsh 156–157.

All references to the speech are found in Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobamaperfectunion.htm.

Frank also references the confessional nature of this segment. See p. 180.

Gary Selby outlines the significance of the “march” to the civil rights movement. Gary S. Selby, Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle of Civil Rights (Waco, TX, Baylor University Press, 2008).

See Bryan Crable, “Symbolizing Motion: Burke's Rhetoric and Dialectic of the Body,” Rhetoric Review 22 (2003): 121–137 for a discussion of Burke's action/motion polarity as offering a dialectic of embodiment, specifically applied to race and racial identity.

Terrill, “Unity and Duality,” 381.

Frank and McPhail develop this strategy in their analysis of speeches by Obama and Al Sharpton. See: 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 and Public Affairs 8 (2005): 571–594.

Burke, Rhetoric, 22.

Frank 190.

Frank191; Terrill, “Unity and Duality,” 376–377.

Terrill, “Unity and Duality,” 377.

Frank and McPhail 584.

Scott and Smith 2.

Burke, Rhetoric, 26.

Burke, Rhetoric, 22.

I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for the phrasing, “oppressive fog of identification.”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jean Costanza Miller

Jean Costanza Miller (Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2000) is an assistant professor in the Department of Organizational Sciences and Communication at The George Washington University.