Joe Biden ’s Obama moment, or, I love it when you talk white to me

[Dennis Baron]

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Joe Biden’s Obama moment, or, I love it when you talk white to me.
When Joe Biden characterized Barack Obama to the New York Observer as  
“the first mainstream African-American who is articulate,” he  
revealed the kind of linguistic prejudice that too often passes for  
acceptable in white America. Biden made this remark about his Senate  
colleague in an interview in which he disparaged his other rivals for  
the Democratic presidential nomination as having a position on Iraq  
that is “nothing but disaster” (Hillary Clinton) and not knowing  
“what the heck he’s talking about” (John Edwards).  Calling Obama  
well-spoken as well as “bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”  
didn’t seem so bad in comparison. But it was the Obama moment, not  
the other insults, that threatened to derail Biden’s candidacy,  
because it revealed an insensitivity both subtler and in some ways  
more pernicious than Virginia Senator George Allen’s use of macaca,  
an overt slur which contributed to Allen’s defeat in the last  
election. ... Sen. Biden and many other mainstream Americans all too  
frequently assume as well that the right way is the white way....

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DB


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

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