Eugene Robinson - An Inarticulate Kickoff - washingtonpost.com What is it, exactly, that white people mean when they call a black person "articulate"? ... Biden explained Obama's appeal as a presidential candidate by calling him "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." ... It's interesting that Obama's reaction dealt solely with the A-word. "I didn't take Senator Biden's comments personally, but obviously they were historically inaccurate," he said in a statement. "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."

I was about to explain what the real issues were when Eugene Robinson did it for me. Articulating (as it were) the very essence of much disagreement between a symbolically powerful group (often but not always the majority) and a symbolically less powerful group who the first one is trying to treat as equal. The same column could have been written by a feminist about many condescending compliments paid to women by men. Here it is:

I realize the word is intended as a compliment, but it's being used to connote a lot more than the ability to express one's thoughts clearly. It's being used to say more, even, than "here's a black person who speaks standard English without a trace of Ebonics." ... The word articulate is being used to encompass not just speech but a whole range of cultural cues -- dress, bearing, education, golf handicap. It's being used to describe a black person around whom white people can be comfortable, a black person who not only speaks white America's language but is fluent in its body language as well. ... Articulate is really a shorthand way of describing a black person who isn't too black -- or, rather, who comports with white America's notion of how a black person should come across.

Whatever the intention, expressing one’s astonishment that such individuals exist is no compliment. Just come out and say it: Gee, he doesn’t sound black at all.

Robinson does a really good job of explaining all the associated conceptualizations (frames) and in this case his supposition that these frames are unconscious and reflect the causes of discrimination is probably correct. Being articulate has to do not with just stringing together a complete sentence, however, but also with the cadences (maybe primarily with the cadences) of speech. A good comparison may be between a black and white evangelical preachers. They are both perfectly articulate (and probably rely on the same surface syntax, morphology, vocabulary and by and large also phonology). However, the surprasegmental and paralinguistic nature of their presentation makes their discourses as unalike as if they were speaking a different language (and indeed they are not as easy to comprehend to the other group). They certainly don’t have the same effect. These and other patterns of public discourse are what matters in identifying somebody as being able to articulate in a manner that is comprehensible to me. Now, Obama has the “advantage” that he can articulate in a manner that is comprehensible to the white audience and luckily the minority black audience can find him comprehensible (because minorities are usually better at negotiating the language of the majority than vice versa - see Czechs and Slovaks) and as long as they don’t identify him as someone trying to be not like them, he is OK. So Robbinson is perfectly correct when he says that Biden’s unconscious conclusion was “he doesn’t sound black at all”.

Now, the question is. Does a candidate sounding like Al Sharpton have ever a chance of seeming articulate to the white majority? (Or more generally what does it take for a person who does not sound like belonging to another group be accepted as the group’s representative or leader.) Yes (but only under certain conditions). Let’s take the example of Martin Luther King who certainly had a huge white as well as black following while not sounding like Obama. However, he was a spiritual rather than a political leader (in the sense of holding a political office not articulating political ideas). And in that case paralinguistic differences can be a definite advantages. A much more illustrative example is Arnold Swartzenegger who doesn’t sound anything like a typical Californian and yet is now California’s leader and public representative. Two factors made this possible. First, his other attributes, such as being famous for acting, made his speech patterns not as important and also he made his speech symbolic of what he stood for, i.e. change (see Jay Leno’s sanctioned lampooning of it). But much more importantly, his speech patterns are not associated with a discriminated minority.

And that is the real problem for black candidates. Any serious contenders Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell or Barak Obama (or Tiger Woods) are in no way associated with the “stigma” of being black (in the way Chris Rock is black). And the fact that the word “stigma” can even be used, goes to the very nub of the issue of racism. Unfortunately and paradoxically, traditional KKK style racists give racism a bad name. So it is much more difficult for your usual white voter to admit to tinges of racism which is inevitably a part of their conceptual make up (just like it is such as common in the African American community). It isn’t the full-on “they’re not as human as we are” racism or even the subtle “I think there might be something to this ‘Bell Curve’ thing, they are very good at athletics, after all” kind of racism. It is the accidental cumulative racism that leads to the reality of the “driving white black offense” and that Eddie Murphy so brilliantly demonstrated in his Mr. White sketch. (Or Chris Rock who when asked what it’s like to be rich, responded “It’s almost like being white.”) It is committed through the small acts of asymmetric perceptions that we all engage in. Namely, seeing the same fact as typical of one group and an exception of the other. And what is seen as typical of the black community are all the things that are associated with “ebonics” - lack of economic and political power, lack of education, lack of self-control and most importantly lack of being like anyone I know. As a result a black candidate speaking with the cadences typically associated with ebonics (but probably not the grammar) will only acceptable to the white majority if they have changed their frame of reference or if they can somehow subvert that frame and make it salient in such as way that it stands for things that are desirable (in the same way that presidents speaking with Southern accents that have similar associations of diminished competence were able to do). And neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton have been able or even tried to do that. They evoke in their white audiences guilt (with its associated fear) not desire. And their appeal to their black audiences rests at least in part in their ability to evoke that guilt.

Of course, the ideal situation would be where these differential frames for the black and white community would be dissociated from their implications of power and competence. But that will most likely be a slow process in which the election or at least a significant success of a black candidate not typical of his or her group may play a role. (But it is not guaranteed, see Margaret Thatcher and her lack of influence on numbers of women in politics). Obama has a very good chance of becoming that candidate and I for one would like to see him a ‘leader of the free world’ if only because he makes speeches that are a pleasure to listen to.