well in comparison to other Asians.” John McWhorter, a sociolinguist,
conservative commentator and an African American, reports one such
experience, in which someone wrote a letter to praise him for speaking
SAE “confidently,” which he found to be insulting: “as if I have to take a
deep breath and ‘wield’ [SAE] and feel like I’m a pretty special fella for
being able to, with my ‘native’ ghetto inflections and expressions turning
up in my speech when I’m tired” (McWhorter, January 9, 2010).
Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat, was widely criticized when his
comments on Obama were made public. Reportedly Reid talked about the
fact that the Senator was “light skinned” and that he spoke “with no Negro
dialect, unless he wanted to have one” (Heilemann and Halperin 2010: 37).
Obama accepted Reid’s public apology with good grace. Part of the
reason for that easy acceptance may well have had to do with the fact that
Obama is indeed bidialectal, something he acknowledges himself. In his
audiobook recording of his biographical Dreams of my Father, long
passages are written in scene, with dialog reconstructed from remembered
conversations. Obama shows a real talent for voicing people from many
different cultures and language communities. He voices himself as an 18-
year-old in conversation with other Black men, switching back and forth
between *SAE and AAVE easily: “I learned to slip back and forth between
my Black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own
language and customs and structures of meaning” (Obama 2004: 82).
During the campaign Obama demonstrated his ability to shift into
AAVE intonation and style on occasion. When Obama was paying the tab
after lunch at a diner, the African American cashier asked him whether he
wanted change, to which Obama said, “Nah, we straight.” This small
example of his ability to shift into AAVE was caught on tape, and reported
on in a very limited way (March 10, 2009).
It is interesting to note that conservative commentators would try to
drum up negative feelings for President Obama on the basis of his
preferred mustard, but fail to draw attention to the fact that he can – and
does – speak a highly stigmatized variety of English in some situations.
Did the news media simply not notice these events when they happened, or
did they choose not to comment because the topic was too sensitive? They
had no such reservations when commenting on Sarah Palin’s variety of
English. So why the disparate treatment?
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