Research Article| September 01 2020 (Re)-Signing Reconciliation: Reading Obama’s Charleston Eulogy through a Rhetorical Theory of Adaptive Racism Mark Lawrence McPhail Mark Lawrence McPhail Mark Lawrence McPhail is a Senior Research Fellow in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs at Indiana University. I wish to thank Professor Martin Medhurst for his sustained and ongoing commitment to inclusive excellence, diversity, and equity, Professors Aaron David Gresson, III, John Hatch and David Frank for their courage, commitment, and integrity, and Dr. Evelyn Boise Bottando for showing me the clear connection between white privilege, innocence, and sociopathy. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2020) 23 (3): 529–552. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0529 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mark Lawrence McPhail; (Re)-Signing Reconciliation: Reading Obama’s Charleston Eulogy through a Rhetorical Theory of Adaptive Racism. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2020; 23 (3): 529–552. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0529 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2020 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

AbstractThe Gates Foundation invokes a third way in education reform debate by appealing not to government regulation or market competition but to philanthropic investment as a catalyst for improving educational equity. While the foundation praises this investment as transcending the conventional polarities of debate, I argue that this praise assigns a familiar form of blame toward public education and educators, for it declares philanthropists the only reformers whose commitments to educational civil rights remain uncompromised by political-economic self-interest. In light of this analysis, I qualify the deliberative potential of praise as a rhetoric of education reform.

Abstract This essay examines how President Trump’s vacillations between overt and colorblind racism represent the intensification of white racial anxieties in anticipation of an impending demographic shift toward a nonwhite majority. Trump’s contradictory rhetoric on race becomes legible in the context of white ambivalence, a condition that entails that white identity, history, and culture be respected as morally superior but, at the same time, not be characterized as white supremacy. Examining a selection of Trump’s campaign and postelection rallies, I show how white ambivalence constitutes a perverse mixture of overweening and explicit valorizations of people of color and, simultaneously, a forceful disavowal of racial conversations that might otherwise implicate white identity in the legacy of white supremacy.

AbstractIn his eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, President Obama responded to postracial claims in the United States and to criticism that he had not done enough for black Americans by drawing on grace as the vehicle for collective salvation and his own agency on civil rights. Eulogizing Pinckney as a man of faith and grace, Obama affırmed the black church’s dual focus on religious faith and collective civil rights action as exemplary of American civil religion and treated Dylann Roof’s heinous act as both emanating from the sin of slavery and embodying prevenient grace that had led the nation to acceptance of justifying grace and the need for sanctifying action as he discussed the Confederate flag, systemic racism, and gun violence. In encouraging the ongoing work of collective sanctifıcation, Obama employed code-switching, particularly in his delivery, which served to heighten and reinforce his powerful message.

In this essay, we examine the complete published speeches of Arne Duncan from his seven years (2009–2015) as Barack Obama’s secretary of education, to understand how his language both defined problems and promoted solutions for our nation’s schools. By looking at Duncan’s rhetoric through close readings and computer-aided textual analyses, we find that his discourse contained paradoxes, particularly through a notion of schooling as a means of achieving both social justice and economic growth, by framing education as both a private and public good, and through assertions about the need for government both to centralize authority over schooling and promote a global educational marketplace. In essence, Duncan used a both/and approach to these purposes, adding to our understandings of the character and functions of educational rhetoric and showing how critical it is for scholars to recognize that such tensions exist in language about what education policy should do. Ultimately, we conclude that Duncan’s rhetoric obscures historic tensions in the purpose of education and highlights the way that policy rhetoric may saddle public education with responsibilities beyond its capacities.

Abstract Opioid addiction and overdose are widely recognized as a contemporary “crisis” across the United States. To address rapidly increasing mortality rates related to this substance use epidemic, the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office announced in January 2018 that it would encourage the development of supervised injection sites or “Comprehensive User Engagement Sites” within city limits. Official communications cited select moments from the region’s past to frame these sites as urgent while constituting a supportive, unified public. Through remediating disidentification, a mode of rhetorical contestation and reformulation, local community members used an alternate historical framing to resist dominant ideology and revise the terms of the related public discourse. By further developing the concept of rhetorical disidentification, this essay demonstrates how the deployment of historical analogy in response to proposed public health interventions can enable the public recognition and potential address of systemic racial inequities.

AbstractIn this essay, I offer a reception study of the varied responses to and interpretations of a burning church in the town of Eldoret following the 2007 Kenya presidential election. Specifically, I study responses from the U.S. and British media, U.S. officials, and Kenyan politicians. My analysis illuminates how different uses of the term “genocide” mobilize particular sensibilities about the relation between ethnicity and politics and demonstrates how the label of genocide constrains interpretations of violence. In the media and discourse of U.S. politicians, the identification or denial of genocide was made by setting ethnicity and politics as opposing explanatory factors of the violence. Discourses in Kenya, however, demonstrate that understanding the violence required understanding the intersection and permeability of these same categories. This analysis has important implications for understanding how conflicts are and are not named genocide. It demonstrates the importance of attending to the nuanced rhetoric of genocide and calls our attention to the contingent relationships among ethnicity, politics, and genocide.

AbstractIn 2010, the United Farm Workers (UFW) launched a campaign titled “Take Our Jobs!” Explicitly directed at “Americans,” the campaign promised UFW training to applicants for jobs in the nation’s fields. With references to (un)documented immigrants within the nation, the campaign located debates on immigration within the nation, not at the border. I argue that the campaign relied upon irony and visibility politics, generating a logic of absurd reality that allowed audiences to differentiate themselves from (un)documented immigrants in ways that both reinscribe the racial figure of the deportable Mexican and see that figure, at least momentarily, in a humane way.

Other| September 01 2017 Racial Presidentialities: Narratives of Latinxs in the 2016 Campaign J. David Cisneros J. David Cisneros J. David Cisneros is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2017) 20 (3): 511–524. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.3.0511 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation J. David Cisneros; Racial Presidentialities: Narratives of Latinxs in the 2016 Campaign. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2017; 20 (3): 511–524. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.3.0511 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2017 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Forum: The 2016 Presidential Primary: Rhetoric, Identity, and Presidentiality in the Post-Obama Era You do not currently have access to this content.

In 2008, when Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States, many heralded the arrival of a post-racial era. Some were cautious, others seemed to throw caution to the wind, but there was a widespread appreciation, or anticipation, that something new was happening with regard to the role of race in U.S. politics. Daniel Schorr, for example, on National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) All Things Considered, reported that “post-racial” was “the latest buzz word in the political lexicon”; Matt Bai, in the New York Times Magazine, wondered if “black politics might now be disappearing into American politics in the same way that the Irish and Italian machines long ago joined the political mainstream”; writing for Forbes, John McWhorter acknowledged that “nothing magically changed when Obama was declared president-elect” but went on to argue that “the election of Obama proved, as nothing else could have,” that racism against African Americans in the United States is no longer “a serious problem.”

Abstract This essay examines Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 speech “Where Do We Go from Here?” Delivered at the 11th annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the speech addressed the contentious racial politics that permeated the post–Voting Rights landscape. I argue that the speech constituted King’s call for the SCLC to reinvent its ethos—both its “character” and its “dwelling place.” In issuing this call, King cultivated new possibilities for the conceptualization and practice of social justice activism.

Book Review| March 01 2017 Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. By Ian Haney López. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014; pp. xx + 277. $24.95 cloth; $17.95 paper. Jonathan P. Rossing Jonathan P. Rossing Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2017) 20 (1): 180–183. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.1.0180 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jonathan P. Rossing; Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2017; 20 (1): 180–183. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.1.0180 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2017 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract Scholars have repeatedly argued that Harry Truman’s decision to create the President’s Committee on Civil Rights would ultimately influence civil rights in the United States for many years afterward. However, scholars have been less clear in explaining what led Truman to act on civil rights in the first place. One important factor in the Truman administration’s creation of the committee that is often mentioned but almost never given as much attention as it deserves is the 1946 Georgia Lynching. Through a reception study of the articles, congressional debates, editorials, and speeches that responded to the murders, this essay argues that the murders of four African Americans in a small, rural town were transformed into a national focusing event because of how several key interpretive decisions emerged from the basic facts of the lynching in conjunction with larger cultural concerns. This analysis both highlights how the mass lynching came to have cultural significance and argues for the importance of rhetorical scholarship that engages the role of focusing events in both public debate and policy creation.

Book Review| June 01 2016 A Growing Appetite: The Emerging Critical Rhetoric of Food Politics Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health. By Charlotte Biltekoff. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013; pp. 1 + 224. $79.95 cloth; $22.95 paper.The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food. By Lizzie Collingham. New York: Penguin, 2012; pp. 1 + 656. $36.00 cloth; $22.00 paper.Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. By Peter Daniel. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013; pp. 1 + 352. $27.95 paper; $24.99 e-book.The Rhetoric of Food: Discourse, Materiality, and Power. Edited by Joshua J. Frye and Michael S. Bruner. New York: Routledge, 2012; pp. 1 + 270. $160 cloth; $51.95 paper.Seeds, Science, and Struggle: The Global Politics of Transgenic Crops. By Abby Kinchy. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2012; pp. 1 + 240. $24.00 paper; $17.00 e-book.Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. By Marion Nestle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; pp. 1 + 534. $29.95 paper; $29.95 e-book.The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices. By Patrick Westhoff. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press/Pearson, 2010; pp. 1 + 256. $25.99 cloth. Stephanie Houston Grey Stephanie Houston Grey Stephanie Houston Grey is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2016) 19 (2): 307–320. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.2.0307 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Stephanie Houston Grey; A Growing Appetite: The Emerging Critical Rhetoric of Food Politics. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2016; 19 (2): 307–320. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.2.0307 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2016 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: REVIEW ESSAY You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| March 01 2016 Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era. By Saladin Ambar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; pp. vii + 224. $26.42 cloth. Lisa Corrigan Lisa Corrigan University of Arkansas Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2016) 19 (1): 147–150. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0147 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Lisa Corrigan; Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2016; 19 (1): 147–150. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0147 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2016 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract This essay analyzes Ralph Ellison’s 1943 “Editorial Comment” from the Negro Quarterly. In the editorial, Ellison highlighted the shortcomings of black America’s attitudinal responses to World War II; as a corrective, he offered “critical participation,” which entailed supporting U.S. and Allied principles while remaining vigilant against white supremacy. I argue that Ellison’s editorial signified more than just a meditation on wartime political strategies; it also marked the articulation of black community. Through a close reading of Ellison’s editorial, I contend that the text grounded black community in the enactment of self-conscious doubleness. Ellison’s appeal to self-conscious doubleness contributed to African American intellectual culture in that it outlined an innovative way for navigating the constraints of “double consciousness.” Rather than regarding doubleness as indicative of a static identity, Ellison engaged it as a source of dynamic rhetorical possibility.

Abstract At the outset of the 2012 presidential race, Republican candidate Mitt Romney touted his private sector leadership of the private equity firm Bain Capital. As this election unfolded, Romney’s Bain Capital story became less of a narrative he could run on and more of a narrative he had to run from. Why did this Bain Capital story, a story about someone’s success in the free marketplace in a society that seemingly values such success, become so troubling for the Romney campaign? This question constitutes the centerpiece of the present essay. In addressing this question, we argue that the Bain Capital narrative’s role in the 2012 presidential race divulges a great deal about the fundamental nature of economic discourse in American democracy. Specifically, we contend that the economic narratives circulating in American democracy actually construct a tale of two economies—a tangible economy and a speculative economy. Unfortunately for Romney, his Bain Capital narrative situated him on the wrong side of this economic divide.

Book Review| March 01 2015 The Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American Prophetic Tradition The Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American Prophetic Tradition. By Andre E. Johnson. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012; pp. viii + 127. $60.00 cloth. Theon E. Hill Theon E. Hill West Chester University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2015) 18 (1): 184–187. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.18.1.0184 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Theon E. Hill; The Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American Prophetic Tradition. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2015; 18 (1): 184–187. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.18.1.0184 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract This essay examines the 1959 controversy over whether and how to commemorate the centennial of abolitionist John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. I argue that the controversy arose because commemorating Brown’s raid challenged prominent U.S. public memories of the Civil War that excluded slavery and the continued existence of white supremacy. I analyze the discursive fields into which the centennial commemoration entered: the heroic, patriotic, and unifying narratives of the war championed by the national organizations tasked with commemorating the Civil War centennial, and discourses of the civil rights movement and the black press that demanded a repudiation of white supremacy and the recognition of African Americans as equal citizens. Ultimately, I contend that the rhetoric that surrounded the Harpers Ferry raid commemoration sheds light on how the civil rights movement not only challenged white supremacy in its conservative form, but also pushed against the moderate and liberal manifestations of white supremacy that were embedded in the commemoration of the Harpers Ferry raid.

Book Review| December 01 2012 Public Memory, Race, and Ethnicity Public Memory, Race, and Ethnicity. G. Mitchell Reyes. Jennifer Heusel Jennifer Heusel Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (4): 740–743. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940636 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jennifer Heusel; Public Memory, Race, and Ethnicity. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 December 2012; 15 (4): 740–743. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940636 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| September 01 2012 Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War. Dayo F. Gore. Maegan Parker Brooks Maegan Parker Brooks Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (3): 552–555. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940617 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Maegan Parker Brooks; Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2012; 15 (3): 552–555. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940617 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract Barack Obama’s "A More Perfect Union" speech was widely viewed as a key rhetorical moment in the 2008 presidential campaign. The purpose of this essay is to unpack reasons why the speech was significant, focusing particularly on the complex historical and contemporary dynamics of African American oratory black churches, race relations, and American politics. largue that the significance of the speech lies in the specific rhetorical challenges posed by the immediate context, the rhetorical strategy that Obama used to negotiate those challenges, and the way in which this strategy resonated more broadly with the rhetorical themes underlying Obamas candidacy.

Abstract Drawing on his two books, Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope, the prophetic African American Christian mythic system, and a rhetoric of argumentative reason, Barack Obama developed literary, mythic, and rhetorical signatures during his campaign for president. His signatures recast binary oppositions and answered questions of identity with a set of dissociations, rhetorical acts intended to transform the relationship between contraries. In his inaugural address, Obama adapts these signatures to the assumption of power as president by recalling and rescuing the cosmopolitan expression of American civil religion.

Book Review| September 01 2011 From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964 From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964. Millery Polyne. Omedi Ochieng Omedi Ochieng Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2011) 14 (3): 556–559. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940556 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Omedi Ochieng; From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2011; 14 (3): 556–559. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940556 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2011 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract In this essay I analyze the debate over Abraham Lincoln’s role in the emancipation of African American slaves. Speaking both to contemporary public memory and the evidence of history, I contend that when Lincoln discussed or wrote about emancipation between 1860 and 1863, his rhetoric exhibited a dialogic form that shifted responsibility from the president to congressional leaders and common citizens. I conclude that Lincoln’s dialogic rhetoric does not signal his opposition to emancipation but rather his deep belief that emancipation would become meaningful only after the considered deliberation and action of the American people.