(Re)-Signing Reconciliation: Reading Obama's Charleston Eulogy through a Rhetorical Theory of Adaptive Racism

Abstract:One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul. Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.The Roof massacre was a shocking throwback to this country's deplorable racial past. But the vast majority of whites have moved beyond that past. Most whites and most blacks wish only to be allowed to get along, outside enforced race consciousness. Pockets of virulent racial contempt still exist (as much among blacks as among whites), but they are irrelevant to the millions of individual behavioral choices that drive social and economic outcomes.