One Ever Feels His Twoness: Understanding the Service and Rhetoric of Barack Obama

Abstract

Du Bois believed that African Americans were, "longing to attain selfconscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self" (Du Bois, p. 215), without compromising their black heritage. Robert E. Terrell argues that the fundamental necessity of rhetoric to democracy depends on dualities, and uses W.E.B. Du Bois' "double consciousness" as a lens through which one might understand race and the black experience in America, particularly during the lowest point in African American history often referred to as the Nadir (Terrell, p. xi). Initially, he considered a collection of rhetorical situations, but as he was doing so, the then-Senator Obama became the central focus of the Democratic Party's primary election. Terrell combed through speeches of Obama's before settling on those he chose for this book, noting that they appeared to be "doubled tropes" which he saw in Du Bois' idea of double consciousness civil rights, he is also an extension of W.E.B. Du Bois, and there are some comparisons to be made. Both attended Harvard University for their postgraduate education-Du Bois for a Ph.D. and Obama for a J.D., and both had very clear ideas that African Americans needed to gain full and equal citizenship. Dr. Campbell's research and teaching interests focus on the middle 19th and early 20th century urban U.S., and has taught a range of specialized courses on U.S. Religious History, History of the West, Gender History, and History of Los Angeles, as well as surveys of American and African American History.