I am here because of Ashley: Obama and Piper on the Rhetoric of Race, by Audrey Chan
October 31st, 2008Essay published in …might be good, Issue #109, Bring Your Umbrella, October 31, 2008.
Adrian Piper, Cornered, 1988 (Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Bernice and Kenneth Newberger Fund) © 1988 Adrian Piper
I’m black. Now, let’s deal with the social fact and the fact of my stating it together.
–Adrian Piper, Cornered (1988)
I wrote this essay partly because of a nagging resistance to the idea of Barack Obama as a messiah. I would like the banners of “Hope” and “Change” to be put away soon. They make me nervous. They are too full of potential and of dreams deferred. It makes the moment too fragile. The most important thing that we can ask from a leader is accountability. By focusing primarily on rhetoric, the effective and persuasive use of language and the art of influencing an audience, in the case of Obama and Adrian Piper, my hope is that lessons can be drawn from both of their rhetorical approaches to the subject of race, a subject that is bound to take on new dimensions in the very near future. It will be a struggle that is characterized by a conflict of a generous hope and faith in humanity on the one hand and on the other a deep irony that may be more accurate in describing the situation on the ground.
The 2008 election season is roiling to an explosive finish. Senator Barack Obama, young, gifted, and black, is forecasted to win decisively. We don’t yet know if his campaign will fall victim to the Bradley Effect or rampant voter fraud; we don’t yet know how we will speak about race post-11/4. The language that we currently use to talk about race and racism descends from a history of pain. The verbal trauma of this history is manifested in a rich vocabulary of oppression, slavery, and victimization. Barack Obama presents a new situation that begs the question: what will happen to the conventional power dynamics of racial discourse when the Other assumes the mantle of “Leader of the Free World”?
