Rhetoric & Public Affairs

McPhail, Mark Lawrence.
A Question of Character: Re(-)signing the Racial Contract
Rhetoric & Public Affairs - Volume 7, Number 3, Fall 2004, pp. 391-405

Michigan State University Press

Mark Lawrence McPhail - A Question of Character: Re(-)signing the Racial Contract - Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7:3 Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7.3 (2004) 391-405 A Question of Character: Re(-)signing the Racial Contract Mark Lawrence Mcphail Is white America really sorry for her crimes against the black people? Does white America have the capacity to repent -- and to atone? Does the capacity to repent, to atone, exist in a majority, in one half, in even one-third of American white society? --Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X Ach, I'm not fuckin' sorry for what I did. Look -- I fought for my country, I believed in what I did, and I did a good job. They were my enemy at the time. . . . I did my job well. And I'd do it again if the circumstances called for it. No, man, I'm not really fuckin' sorry for what I did. --Captain Jacques Hechter The two epigraphs with which I begin this essay epitomize the stasis at the heart of any discussion of racial reconciliation: the question of credibility. The first comes from the American social activist Malcolm X. The second comes from Captain Jacques Hechter, a former member of South Africa's apartheid security police. Taken together, they reveal the double-edged character of rhetoric's third blade: ethos. The question of "character as it emerges in language" is fundamentally at stake in any discussion of race, and it informs my response to John Hatch's thoughtful and well-argued essay on enlarging rhetorical...