Lectures from the Allen Room & Wertheim Study: Enacting Innocence: Barack Obama's Speech on Race in the Context of American Exceptionalism

Barack Obama's election has been understood as the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, tangible proof that the African American community's pursuit of full equality in America has reached a high-water mark.  The key to Obama's election, however, was not the calls for reform that characterized the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement, but a ceaseless invocation of American exceptionalism that supported - indeed reinvigorated - the premise of American innocence.  This is most evident at the pivotal moment in Obama's campaign: his speech, "A More Perfect Union," delivered during the tumult resulting from Reverend Jeremiah Wright's critical comments about American foreign policy.

Jonathan W. Gray, a writer in residence in the Allen Room, is Assistant Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Jusitce.  This talk is adapted from his forthcoming book, Innocence by Association: Civil Rights in the White Literary Imagination.

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