Obama’s Preaching Doesn’t Reach

[rug]

President Obama's speech to the Congressional Black Caucus this weekend was a combination of traditional black preaching and civil rights rhetoric, designed to stir up his beleaguered African American base. Not everyone was impressed, however. Maxine Waters, congresswoman from California and a member of the CBC, said "she found the president’s language a bit curious. She says that Obama didn't address Hispanics in such a blunt manner and would never use that language in a speech to a gathering of gays or Jews."

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Let me say it more bluntly. The president said at the end of his CBC speech: "(I) expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on."

That was the moment that the president turned into a jackleg preacher. A jackleg preacher is an untrained preacher who relies on tried and true tropes to get his audience to respond to preaching. If a jackleg is really good, he or she can get the money or whatever else they want by hitting the sweet spot, that emotional place where the congregation always responds well, because they recognize the feelings and emotions the jackleg preacher wants to evoke. Referring to taking off the slippers and putting on marching shoes is a tired racist trope, and besides, isn't Snooki the person who wears her slippers in public? I don't think she's African American.

There is a history with Obama's speeches to predominantly black audiences that either try to use respectability or shame to change steroetypical behavior. Obama's 2008 speech excoriating absent black fathers at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, and his comments on the campaign trail in 2008 in Beaumont, Texas urging black parents "not to feed their kids cold Popeye's chicken for breakfast," are just two examples of how Obama deploys this racially-coded rhetorical strategy. The president's behavior since taking office towards the African American community has been either to tell black folks to get in line and get to work, or gee, I love ya'll, but I need your vote. If only he would speak to Republicans and Tea Partiers in the same harsh manner.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/antheabutler/5168/obama%E2%80%99s_preaching_doesn%E2%80%99t_reach/

[darkstar3]

1. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: He's the President, not the Preacher-in-Chief.

[bluestateguy]

2. This article reads like a lot of pseudo-intellectualism

Not very convincing.

[tblue]

3. Telling people to take care of their kids is one thing.

Telling people to be quiet and work for my benefit is another. Our president is very fortunate and I think he knows it. Some people make every excuse for him. They are very forgiving. They devise rationales. I don't think they'd take too kindly almost any other politician talking to them like that. I wouldn't.