Before Obama was elected president, nations worldwide were curious if Americans would choose a black president for the first time in history. To ultimately cover their critics and address white peoples’ fears of racial novelty in the government in the US, Obama delivered a speech on racism in 2008, proving him as a skilled orator. His clever use of rhetorical devices guaranteed his success in speech delivery.
Like many orators, Obama united his audience by evoking similar memories. Clark (2017) demonstrates how Obama utilized allusion to call American history in mind without specifying any phenomenon. More interesting was his courage allowed him to refer to the country’s failures: “this nation’s original sin of slavery.” When accompanied by allusions such as “we the people, to form a perfect union,” referencing the Constitution, he forced people to believe that their misjudgments violated equality promoted by the justice code. Everyone who understood Obama’s historical context was more eager to listen to his speech.
When the audience became excited, it was Obama’s responsibility to convey his message in a more accessible form. For this purpose, he relied on parallelism, which created a sense of a pattern through similar sentence structures. “Embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past” was delivered in an easy-to-comprehend structure with the rhythm facilitating speaking ease (Clark, 2017). However, both sentence parts had equally important ideas that made people reconsider their attitudes towards the past and present.
Although many of Obama’s opponents believed that empty rhetoric tools justified his orator skills, it was a very unreasonable statement as they created a more significant historical context. His allusions caused common emotions among the audience and united them, while parallelism paid more attention to his message’s importance. To conclude, Obama’s speech in 2008 facilitated his election as the first African American President in history.
Reference
Clark, R. P. (2017). Why it worked: A rhetorical analysis of Obama’s speech on race. Poynter. Web.