Signifying without Specifying: Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama

4. Performing Intimacy: “Race-Specific, Race-Free Language” in Political Discourse

134 4 Performing Intimacy “Race-Specific, Race-Free Language” in Political Discourse President Obama has proved to be our country’s most adroit user of “race-specific, race-free language.” However, because the race of participants upon the national stage is already known, such coded rhetoric operates apart from the experimental ambiguity of Paradise and “Recitatif,” the deliberate isolation of the protagonist in Apex Hides the Hurt, and the intimate silences of Lahiri’s characters. Instead, this discourse, when used for political purposes, paradoxically both preserves and elides racial difference according to various strategic ends. Although “race-specific, race-free language” has proved to be a powerful rhetorical tool for Obama, it poses complex challenges. Black critics like Michael Eric Dyson and Zadie Smith may admire how Obama invokes race without stating it explicitly, but this type of muted racialized language that is open to an array of interpretations can have problematic consequences. Race becomes an unstable signifier, apparent in seemingly innocuous comments that demonstrate highly contested reading practices. During the 2008 campaign, Obama expertly invoked race without specifically mentioning it in order to solidify the broadest possible voting base. Some examples of his rhetorical nuance, however, have led to charges that he is more concerned with pleasing white audiences than with aiding communities of color. For example, when Obama urged black fathers to do more for their children and their families in his 2008 Father’s Day speech, many read this as a concession to prospective white voters still wary that a black president might favor African American communities. PERFORMING INTIMACY 135 Ishmael Reed observed in his blog: “The talking heads also concluded that Obama’s speech before a black congregation in which he scolded black men for being lousy fathers and missing in action from single parent households and being boys, etc., was clearly aimed at those white male Reagan democrats, who, apparently, in Obama and the media’s eyes, provide the gold standard for fatherhood.”1 Was Obama’s call for self-reliance and accountability among blacks a denial of abiding forms of racism? Obama’s rhetoric, like most public references to race, be they racist or well-meaning, are made through largely veiled language. W.E.B. Du Bois’s veil, his symbol of black alienation, has moved from the face of the Negro to the site of racial encounters. “Race-specific, race-free language ” and the ambiguity it generates puts the onus of interpretation on readers and listeners, often making intention no more than a guessing game and leading to exhausting bouts of racial paranoia. Richard Thompson Ford calls this “a new, postmodern idea of race” in which racism becomes “a product of interpretation, a symptom of the gaze” (The Race Card, 333). As a result, there is no fixed understanding of what constitutes racism— only discrete perspectives that argue for how race operates in contemporary life.2 As both a purveyor of “race-specific, race-free language” and a fraught symbol of national progress, Obama models racialized speaking and reading practices that call for unity though often at the expense of necessary racial particularity. In 2007 when then Senator Joe Biden referred to Obama in language that many read as racially offensive, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Obama responded by issuing a written statement that defused the testy situation: “I didn’t take Sen. Biden’s comments personally, but obviously they were historically inaccurate. African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate.”3 By focusing on the African American presidential candidates who preceded him rather than on the condescension implicit in lauding a black candidate for being articulate and clean, Obama made Biden’s gaffe not a racial jab but a failure in historical knowledge. Here Biden is not a prejudiced white man surprised that a black man can be so SIGNIFYING WITHOUT SPECIFYING 136 successful but a poor student of American history. Obama does not read racism into this situation and presumably the American public is to follow. Obama’s reply succeeded in moving away from Biden’s explicit racialization toward “race-specific, race-free” discourse. Although he clearly aligned himself with other black presidential candidates, our future president did not...