On Being Articulate

[teendoc]

Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.

I’ve heard a good bit about Senator Joe Biden’s recent gaffe as he introduced Senator Barak Obama:

…the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.

Now many of the people I’ve spoken to were more hung up on the word

Comments

[chiromama]

Oy. I didn't read about that. (teething. no time for anything other than survival)

If it makes you feel any better, i doubt anyone would ever utter the phrase "George Bush is articulate (and good looking)"

Obama IS articulate. He IS good looking. He IS all of those things, but why is it emphasized? (clean. that's funny. seriously, what politicians aren't clean? I mean, who's gonna vote for the dude who doesn't shower?) Ugh. If he were white, would anyone say it? I might because we havent had an articulate man in the white house for 8 years. We've had just the opposite. lol

I love how you approach these things. Your posts on race tend to come from less of an angry pace, and more of a 'point of fact' place. you're just so articulate.

Bwhahahahahaha!

Ok back to being a chew toy.

[satsumasalad]

That was a terrible introduction for anyone, black or white or any other colour or culture. Take out "articulate" and "clean" and none of the others are any good either. I suspect "clean" was supposed to mean "clean-living" (ie no drugs or guns) but that doesn't make it any better, worse if anything

[grassyslough]

I'm ashamed to say that recently someone close to referred to someone as "articulate," which rang all sorts of alarms bells to me, and I didn't call them on it. A former college classmate of mine is teaching as an adjunct at our alma mater and asked me to fill in for her for one class when she's going to be out of town. We were meeting up so she could give me the textbook. DH was with me, and I introduced the two of them. Now, former classmate is black, which normally I'd never mention, but after we went our separate ways, DH commented that former classmate was very articulate. And I was stunned. Well, maybe shocked is a better term because I couldn't figure out how to respond. I've never heard him say something like that before. I'm not even entirely sure he realized he was speaking in such negatively coded language. But it bothered me.

[teendoc]

Maybe you could show him the Eugene Robinson piece in the Post.