{"id":22609,"date":"2012-04-22T18:27:21","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T18:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22609"},"modified":"2013-04-01T01:18:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T01:18:36","slug":"%e2%80%98too-black-or-not-black-enough%e2%80%99-social-identity-complexity-in-the-political-rhetoric-of-barack-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22609","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Too black or not black enough\u2019: Social identity complexity in the political rhetoric of Barack Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1002\/ejsp.1868\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018Too black or not black enough\u2019: Social identity complexity in the political rhetoric of Barack Obama<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/journal\/10.1002\/(ISSN)1099-0992\" target=\"_blank\">European Journal of Social Psychology<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/ejsp.v42.5\/issuetoc\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 42, Issue 5<\/a>, August 2012<br \/>\npages 564\u2013577<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1002\/ejsp.1868\" target=\"_blank\">10.1002\/ejsp.1868<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.adelaide.edu.au\/psychology\/staff\/augoustinos.html\" target=\"_blank\">Martha Augoustinos<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Psychology<br \/>\nUniversity of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stephanie De Garis<\/strong><br \/>\nSchool of Psychology<br \/>\n<em>University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The election of the first African-American President of the United States, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a>, has been widely recognised as an extraordinary milestone in the history of the United States and indeed the world. With the use of a discursive psychological approach combined with central theoretical principles derived from social identity and self-categorisation theories, this paper analyses a corpus of speeches Obama delivered during his candidacy for president to examine how he attended to and managed his social identity in his political discourse. Building on a social identity model of leadership, we examine specifically how Obama mobilises political support and social identification by building an identity for himself as a prototypical representative of the American people, notwithstanding the protracted public debate within both the White and Black American communities that had questioned and contested Obama&#8217;s identity. Moreover, we demonstrate how Obama managed the dilemmas around his identity by actively crafting an in-group identity that was oriented to an increasingly socially diverse America\u2014a diversity that he himself exemplified and embodied as a leader. As an \u2018entrepreneur\u2019 of identity, Obama&#8217;s rhetorical project was to position himself as an exceptional leader, whose very difference was represented as \u2018living proof\u2019 of the widely shared collective values that constitute the \u2018American Dream\u2019. Drawing on social identity complexity theory, we suggest that by providing more inclusive and complex categories of civic and national identity, Obama&#8217;s presidency has the potential to radically transform what it means to be a prototypical in-group member in America.<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/ejsp.1868\/pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Too black or not black enough\u2019: Social identity complexity in the political rhetoric of Barack Obama European Journal of Social Psychology Volume 42, Issue 5, August 2012 pages 564\u2013577 DOI: 10.1002\/ejsp.1868 Martha Augoustinos, Professor of Psychology University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia Stephanie De Garis School of Psychology University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia The election of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,125,8,20],"tags":[10490,10491,10492],"class_list":["post-22609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-european-journal-of-social-psychology","tag-martha-augoustinos","tag-stephanie-de-garis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}