Michael·H·Prosser

Barack Obama: Culturally Transformational Identities and Accommodations

Michael H. Prosser, Ph.D.

Distinguished Professor, College of Journalism and Communication

Shanghai International Studies University

Email: michaelhprosser@yahoo.com
Website: www.michaelprosser.com

Intercultural Identity Theories
William B. Gudykunst (2005) notes and explains three intercultural theories related to identity: identity management theory (IMT) as
proposed by W.R.Cupach and T. Imahori, identity negotiation theory, developed in large part by Stella Ting-Toomey, and cultural identity
theory, presented by M. J. Collier and M. Thomas.
The identity management theory is based on the concept of interpersonal communication competence, which naturally relates to
intercultural communication competence (ICC). Identity theories can provide expectations for behavior and motivate individuals’ behavior.
Cultural and relational identities can be seen as central to the identity management theory. The Chinese concept of “face” can be applied to this theory as dialectical tension develops, which incorporates three phases, 1.fellowship versus autonomy face, 2.competence versus
autonomy face, 3.autonomy versus either fellowship or competence face. Because outside forces develop positive or negative stereotypes in intercultural communication competence and face, individuals must work diligently to utilize the positive stereotypes and overcome the
negative ones.
Identity negotiation theory demonstrates that individuals negotiate their concept of identity with their own perceptions of their
multiple identities and those perceptions of others with whom they communicate. Again, individuals’ resourcefulness in negotiating the
identity or identities which they see for themselves and those which others see for them helps them to manage their own
security-vulnerability and inclusion-differentiation. The more secure the individuals’ positive self identification , the greater is their own
identity coherence and global self-esteem, and the greater their membership in collective esteem, the more resourceful they are when
interacting with strangers, who may be positive or negative in their perceptions of the individuals under consideration. The specific
motivations to communicate with strangers, whether positive or negative in their perceptions of the individuals leads them to be
resourceful in communication with the strangers.
The cultural identity theory includes Collier and Thomas’ five axioms: 1. the more that norms and meanings differ in discourse, the more
intercultural the contact, 2. the more individuals have intercultural communication competence, the better they are able to develop and
maintain intercultural relationships, 3. the more that cultural identities differ in the discourse, the more intercultural the contact, 4. the
more one person’s ascribed cultural identity for the other person matches the other person’s avowed cultural identity, the more the
intercultural communication competence, 5.linguistic references to cultural identity systematically have important contacts with
sociocontextual factors such as participants, type of communication episodes, and topics.

Intercultural Accommodation or Adaptation Theories

Three theories in intercultural communication focus on accommodation or adaptation, including 1. communication accommodation
theory (CAT), 2. intercultural adaptation theory, and 3. co-cultural theory. CAT has four key aspects: 1. sociohistorical context
incorporating relations between the groups having contact and the social norms regarding contact, 2. the communicator’s
accommodative orientation which tends to perceive encounters with outgroup members in interpersonal terms, intergroup terms, or
a combination of the two. 3. the immediacy situation with five interrelated situations organized around the communicators’ interpersonal
or intergroup orientation goals and addressee focus, discourse management, behavior and tactics, and labeling and attributions. 4.
evaluation and future intentions, focusing on the communicators’ perceptions of their interlocutors’ behavior in the interaction.
Intercultural adaptation theory is designed to understand how communicators adapt to each other in “purpose-related encounters”; the
extent to which the setting affects the invocation of culture-based belief differences, and how the setting favors one or other participants. The co-cultural theory is based on social hierarchies in society privilege some groups over others, and specific positions in society which
provide subjective ways that individual
look at the world (Gudykunst, 2005).

Intercultural Identity and Accomodation Theories Applied to Obama’s and McCain’s 2008 Election Campaign

Utilizing a combination of these identity theories, I will especially analyze Barack Hussein Obama’s 2008 US general election
strategies of establishing his own persona, but also as a contrast, I must discuss the McCain campaign as well and its effort to identify
who McCain and Palin were for the American electorate, and their attempts to deny Obama a proper and respectful identity. In Obama’s
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995, 2004), he wrote about his constant need to come to terms with his own cultural identity, but it was only until he began to tell the stories from his father’s life, that he began to recognize his own multicultural
identity as a Hawaiian, Kenyan, Indonesian, African-American, and American.. Michiko , Kakutani (2006), in her review of his 2006 book,
The Audacity of Hope, writes about the first book:: “Most memorably, the book gave the reader a heartfelt sense of what it was like to
grow up in the 1960’s and 70’s, straddling America’s color lines: the sense of knowing two worlds and belonging to neither, the sense
of having to forge an identity of his own.” Speaking about The Audacity of Hope, she writes: “Enough of the narrative voice in this volume is recognizably similar to the one in Dreams From My Father, an elastic, personable voice that is capable of accommodating everything from dense discussions of foreign policy to streetwise reminiscences, incisive comments on constitutional law to New-Agey personal asides….
[he] has instead internalized all those roles, embracing rather than shrugging off whatever contradictions they might have produced.” In
The Audacity of Hope(2006), written in part as a prelude to his 2007-2008 campaign, and based on his 2004 keynote speech at the US
Democratic election, Obama has written: “There is not a Black America and White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.” In this sense, he attempted to make his own identity transcend race and ethnic stereotypes.

As a self-proclaimed “very unlikely candidate” for the American presidency, with a white American mother and Kenyan father and a
large number of Kenyan half brothers and sisters, he was forced constantly, first by Hilary Clinton in the primary elections, and then by
the John McCain and Sarah Palin campaign to create enduring and new identities for himself after charges by his opponents, both by
members of the campaign and by individual and sometimes hostile voters, of being too inexperienced to become president, to “paling
around with terrorists,” and to being “other,” but therefore not a real American, He had to counter the claims that possibly he was a
Muslim, or an Arab, or a socialist, to being a celebrity with no substance, and implicitly, as an African-American and therefore a member
of a co-cultural or inferior outgroup as untrustworthy to lead the United States as the first black [biracial] president. His former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who had performed the marriage ceremony for Obama and his wife, had made various incendiary remarks
about the US as an imperialist from his pulpit, and eventually, Obama gave a very strong speech about race and disassociated himself from Wright’s remarks.
One area in which Obama did less well in his attempt at a multiculturall identity was in the campaign’s benign neglect of the 8 million
Arab and Muslim population in the United States. While seeking to identify himself with various ethnic groups such as the Hispanics,
African Americans, and Asians, his campaign made very little effort to reach out to the Arab and Muslim community. In fact, in an early
campaign appearance, two women wearing the traditional Muslim veils, but not burkas, were asked to move out of the range of the
cameras as Obama was hesitant to be too closely identified with that group, despite the fact that his Kenyan father and his Indonesian
adoptive father both had Muslim backgrounds. However, immediately after the rally, Obama’s staff discovered the attempt to move the
women out of the camera range and got their names. Obama then called them to apologize, demonstrating his willingness not to negate
this part of his identity..
The McCain campaign seemed inconsistent in its direction and efforts to defeat Obama through negative identification of him, by
selecting a highly unprepared Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential running-mate who became the “attack dog” against Obama. By picking Palin, who was herself not involved then in politics outside of Alaska, he had the effect of lessening the Republican stereotype of Obama
as too inexperienced or as an international celebrity, but without any genuine national or international experience. Palin had obtained a
passport only a year before the campaign, and as Governor of Alaska, she thought that she had had significant international contacts by
saying that Alaska was between Russia and Canada. When questioned soon after she had joined the campaign by ABC’s’ Charlie Gibson
about the Bush Doctrine (of preemptive strikes) she was unaware of what the Bush Doctrine actually meant. In an interview with
television journalist Katie Couric, she gave the impression that she had very little national or international experience, and had really done
very little reading of the national print media or watching such channels as CNN, while sarcastically referring to the Eastern elite media.
She thought that Africa was a country and was surprised to learn that it consisted of 53 countries. Although she had traveled to meet
Alaskan National Guardsmen in Kuwait and Germany, she claimed that she had also been in Iraq, but she was only near the border on the
Kuwait side and that she had been in Ireland coming from meeting National Guardsmen, but it was only a fueling stop. Later in the
campaign at the opening of the UN General Assembly, the Republican staff in charge of making her appear more international in her
outlook had her meet several regional and world leaders at the United Nations. However, Obama had already met many of these leaders
in their own countries.
By McCain’s announcement in September, 2008, that the American economy was fundamentally in good shape on the very day that
Lehman Brothers collapsed as a financial institution, and by his decision to “suspend his campaign” to go to Washington to help solve the
impending financial crisis and to postpone the first presidential debate, he caused more problems than he solved. As this happened,
Obama suggested that if he wanted to be president, McCain should recognize that presidents need to be able to do more than one thing at a time. When Obama announced that he would be present for the first debate, McCain then hurriedly flew to join the debate after all. McCain’s inadequate performance in the three presidential debates included what appeared to be stalking Obama while he spoke in the
first debate. After the third debate, McCain accidentally started to walk off stage on Obama’s side, with his tongue hanging out, causing
endless jokes about him by the late night comedians and internet bloggers. McCain was hurt by his inability to show how his own identify
was vastly different than President Bush’s with whom he had voted 90% of Bush’s eight years as president. He had personally considered
his period as a prisoner of war in Viet Nam, his honor and his life-long service to his country a major part of his biography, but many
distortions of Obama’s record which he made and which were magnified by Governor Palin, were treated by the press as far worse than
any distortions that Obama made about his record. Basically, Obama ignored Palin, but most of the interest in the campaign was generated by Obama and Palin, rather than the Republican top of the ticket, McCain, or by Joseph Biden who was Obama’s choice as his vice
presidential running mate. McCain was also negatively affected by a very toxic year for the Republican Party’s election chances after eight
years of the Bush administration which toward the end was among the lowest poll approval ratings of an American president in recent
history. McCain’s and Palin’s very negative campaign tactics against Obama essentially were seen by many Americans as too irresponsible on their part. Essentially, it was McCain who kept trying to change his own identity from a war hero, and living his life as a man of honor, while promoting his “maverick” identity, and denying his own identity as so closely linked to President Bush. By calling himself a “maverick,”
McCain also caused many semi conservative and independent potential voters to distrust both McCain and Palin as their future elected
leaders.
In the New York Times Online edition of 8.September 14, 2008, I wrote the following comment:
Frank Rich and other intelligent columnists are more and more giving us
good analysis about the utter shallowness both of Palin and McCain. Then
of course, members of the "country first" St. Paul Convention, (isolationist
as they were) and others who love Palin, "because she is just like us," are
willing to accept this shallowness, cynicism, and host of mistruths, "anything
to win." "The View," what little I have seen of it on American and foreign
channels, clearly demonstrates that even these intelligent women quarreling
with McCain and later his wife, can hardly give him any credit, and that
McCain fumbles, saying that the recent outrageous ads against Obama, "are
not lies." When asked how he can have lost all of his principles, McCain
finds himself laughing nervously.
Charlie Gibson's ABC interview is a good start in trying to get Palin to
move beyond her scripted, generalized, and misleading remarks. We need
more and more media and Democratic Party vetting of this charming,
flippant, rather arrogant vice presidential candidate. Also, though McCain
has in the past had a sense of honor, which he says is his major value, we
see increasingly a candidate so out of touch with reality and the real issues
in the campaign, that he can only make it a contest of personalities and
identity, positive, but misleading for himself and Palin, and negative
for Obama/Biden and the Democrats, or as his campaign manager Rick
Davis has himself admitted that this election is not about issues but
character and personality.
We do not need two candidates such as Palin and McCain who know
so little about the reality of health care, economics, the misplaced war—
as victory in Iraq, the lapse of the President in understanding the importance
either of the Israel-Palestine situation or the problems in democratizing
Afghanistan. Women on "The View" asked McCain what Palin, the
supposed reformer, and slippery as more and more details come forward,
was specifically going to reform? Neither he nor she so far have been able
to give specifics. As one of the women said on "The View" who is Palin
going to reform, Senator McCain--you?"
If Palin's sex wins the election for McCain, solely on that basis of an
unprepared candidate, at the same time Obama's race could in the end be
his loss, and that of the democratic process, in an election which has
great importance for the Americans, as well as those overseas. Our friends
who can scarcely wait “to see the backs” of Bush and Cheney, fear greatly
seeing “the fronts” of Palin and McCain on the innaururation January 20, 2009
as the new President and Vice President….

In the meantime, implicitly utilizing these identity and accomodation theories, Barack Obama remained calm, cool and unflappable,
accommodating and adapting to all of the charges and changing circumstances that developed and using his co-cultural status to draw in
large levels of electoral support by African-Americans, Latinos and Hispanics, the young and often new voters, and many independent and
some Republican voters. The endorsement of former Secretary of State in the first Bush administration, Colin Powell, identifying Obama
as a “transformational figure” aided him in being conceived as a serious and outstanding candidate who was more likely to lead the US
better than McCain could do. Powell’s stated disappointment in the McCain campaign, and Powell’s criticism of McCain’s choice of Palin
as his running mate had a serious deleterious effect on the respectability of the McCain campaign, while very strongly reinforcing Obama
as a candidate recognized both nationally and internationally as a “transformational figure” whom both Americans and those in other
countries could work well with in the future. Powell argued that the election of Obama could help to restore the tarnished identity of the American government over the eight years of the Bush presidency.
Obama’s three measured and calm nationally and internationally broadcast debates with McCain and his charges that a McCain victory
represented a third term for Bush were also reflected in his even approach to international issues and the financial crisis when McCain
became perceived as inconsistent and constantly changing his own identity. Obama’s decision not to attack Palin directly as another
outgroup member in terms of a co-cultural setting for women being a candidate for vice president all worked to Obama’s increasing
popular and Electoral College votes. The Obama-Biden team won 52% of the popular vote to 47% for McCain-Palin, with 97% of the
African-American vote, 67% of the Hispanic vote, and more than half of the Roman Catholic vote also indicated a more emphatic view
of his campaign by women, than men. He received 365 Electoral College delegates versus 162 for McCain. Not only did Obama-Biden win
in a “landslide,” but as a result of the election, November 4, the Democrats now hold 59 Senate seats (including two independent
senators who caucus with the Democrats to the Republicans’ 41 seats, and 255 Democrat House of Representatives seats versus 174
Republican seats. One meaning of this overwhelming victory was that more voters identified positively with Obama than with McCain.
Three of the most important reasons for Americans to vote for Obama included his ongoing campaign statements that he would
withdraw US troops from Iraq in sixteen months after taking office, his proposed tax reductions for 95% of Americans, and his convincing argument that he could reform health care better than McCain would do by saying in the third Presidential Debate “that health care is
a right for all Americans,” while McCain only said “that it is a responsibility for the US government to assist Americans to have adequate
health care.” As the election campaign took new twists and turns almost constantly, Obama readjusted as necessary, and adapted to
new national and international situations but without changing his own persona in the election itself.
Finally, Obama’s pre election Middle East and European tour, his address to 200,000 people in Berlin, his speeches to 50,000 to 100,000
individuals during the campaign, the general loss or the US’ global reputation during the eight Bush years, and his implicit application of
the identity theories, all led to a historic victory which was celebrated by leaders, newspapers, and ordinary citizens in many countries
throughout the world. Overcoming many challenges, which are related to these three intercultural theories, Obama assumeed office on
January 20, 2009 with a near mandate for his chief campaign slogans, “Change we can believe in,” “Change we can understand,” and
“Yes, we can.” In the end, these slogans demonstrated his ability as a first term senator to defeat Senator McCain who had been a
member of Congress and the Senate for twenty-six years, and to give a vision to Americans and others around the world for change. He
even forced McCain constantly also to argue that his election would bring about change. His references both to the Gettysburg Address
and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” made a very powerful impression on the 200,000+ participants at his victory speech in Grant Park, Chicago, on November 4, and to millions of persons around the world who held large celebrations in honor of his and Biden’s victory.
In this way, we can see that the identity and the accommodation theories noted by Gudykunst all were powerfully applied, at least i
mplicitly, by Obama in his election campaign for the American presidency. In his inaugural swearing in ceremony by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Obama deliberately identified himself as Barack Hussein Obama, thus acknowledging that while he himself is a Christian, he does have very significant Muslim roots, through his father in Kenya and his step father in Indonesia. This decision helped to clarify some of the confusion about his earlier apparent effort to distance himself in terms of his own parental Muslim background.

President Obama’s June 4 address, “Remarks by the President on a New Beginning”: A Case Study of Intercultural Theories Applied to Obama’s Arab and Muslim outreach.
In his first major positively received speech to the Muslim world in Ankara, Turkey on April 10, 2009, Obama announced the end of
previous American rhetoric about “the axis of evil.” His encounter in a somewhat tense situation with Prime Minister Netanyahu in
Washington on May 20 gave clear notice to the American Israeli allies that his government would provide a more balanced view than the
Bush government toward both the Israeli government remained “as an unbreakable friendship” while Palestine’s sixty years of “unbearable
suffering” under Israeli occupation could not be tolerated. On June 3, meeting with King Abdullah in Saudia Arabia, he announced that he
could not visit the Middle East without first coming to the location where Islam was founded, thereby identifying himself as a friend of the Muslim world, while accommodating to the importance in American foreign policy of Saudia Arabia. . Before his speech on June 4, at the
more than 100 year old University of Cairo in cooperation with al-Azhar, a major center for the study of Islam, he made personal
identification and accommodation connections with various Islamic and Jewish scholars, leaders of several Middle Eastern governments and
religious leaders. Beginning his speech with “Asslaamu Alaykum,” the traditional Islamic greeting, “Peace be with you,” and quoting frequently from the Qu’ran, he emphasized the need mutually to recognize the common ground supporting western and eastern dialogue, as has
been stressed as well by Professor Weilie Zhu in his article, “Dialogue among Civilizations: A Close Look at the Greater Middle East Reform”
in the September 2007 Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (in Asia).
Obama proposed that for several centuries there had been Western and Middle Eastern coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars, colonialism and the Cold War, all of which had left Middle Eastern and Islamic countries feeling highly marginalized. He argued that the sweep of sudden change through movements toward modernity and globalization had left many Muslims feeling that western
values were strongly hostile to the tradition of Islam. He called for respectful dialogue, and a willingness to listen to each other for a
better mutual understanding, and a common search for justice and progress, tolerance and dignity, thus implicitly challenging some ideas
in Samuel Huntington’s. Clash of Civilizations. (1996).
His seven part speech argued that the causes of tensions between the west and the east were: 1 violent extremism, 2 conflicts
between Israel and Palestine and the Arab world. 3 shared rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons, 4 the concept of
democratic governments through the will of the people, 5 religious freedom, 6 women’s rights, and 7 economic development and
opportunities. In his discussion of the second issue relating to tension between the west and the east, he emphasized on the one hand
that Palestinians must abandon violence and that Hamas itself has responsibilities to stop the rocket attacks against Israeli cities, but on the other hand, Israel must stop constructing settlements in the West Bank. (see Prosser, 2009) He forcefully stressed the existence of
Palestine as a present reality, rather than as a future prospect as the Bush administration had done. Additionally, he urged the Arab states
to recognize that their expansive peace initiative of Saudia Arabia in 2002 must be considered as only a beginning and not an ending,
despite the earlier unwillingness of the Israeli government to accept the terms offered. He argued again that while the US commitment
to Israel was “unbreakable,” the suffering of the dislocated population of the Palestinians for the last sixty years was “intolerable.” He
argued that progress for the two-state solution included having Israel stop its construction of settlements in the West Bank under the
banner of “natural evolution,” that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank must agree to a unity government, and that
all
of the Arab states recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s existence as a first step of cooperation on their part toward creating an informed
and productive dialogue. Specifically, he called on the Hamas leadership to eschew violence, “as violence is a dead end ” while Israel must
take progressive steps to end the sixty year occupation of Palestine. He emphasized that regional development and global opportunities
must coexist as human progress must be promoted everywhere.
Obama agreed that the US itself has a dual responsibility, to help forge a better future for Iraq and to leave Iraq in a timely manner
to
the Iraqis, as well as to help the Afghani people to defeat the Taliban. He offered several somewhat vague US initiatives for partnering
with the Middle East, which some felt were not concrete enough, but he concluded his speech by saying that as it was a first step in the American contributions toward peace and stability of the Middle East, American friendship for the Islamic world, and particularly between
Israel and Palestine. He committed himself to develop a two-state solution, with peace, justice, tolerance, and mutual respect for the
Palestinians and Israelis.. As the address was entitled “New Beginnings,” it remains to be seen whether the US under his leadership can
exert itself as an “honest broker” in bringing peace and security to Israel and Palestine through a two state solution. Generally, his efforts
to identify himself interculturally with the Middle Eastern and Islamic world were well received in the US, Europe, and the Middle East.
Summary
William B. Gudykunst argues that there are few concrete intercultural theories that can be tested empirically, but both the identity
theories and the accommodation/ adaptation theories can be studied both qualitatively and quantitatively in order to test their reliability
and validity. This study is in large part impressionistic based on my own observations of the US electoral campaign of 2008, but we can also note that Obama’s
Outreach to the Muslim and Islamic world demonstrates the practicality of these theories in a general way. As a future study, I would like
to do an analysis, using intercultural identity and accommodation/adaptation theories, to explore all of the accessible major statements
made by Obama in the 2007-2008 US election cycle related to the Middle East and Muslim world, and compare these statements with the more substantive identity and accommodation/adaptation efforts which he has made specifically toward the Middle East and Islamic world,
since his election and taking office on January 20, 2009
Huihou An (2009) argues:
There are three dynamics and five attributes for the
Obama administration’s adjustment in its Middle East policy.
The changing Middle East policy highlights the following
features: shifting anti-terror battlefield from Iraq to
Afghanistan, withdrawing troops from Iraq in a step-by-step
manner, taking a positive attitude towards Palestine-Israel peace
talks, striving to initiate a face-to-face dialogue with Iran,
settling international disputes by diplomatic means. However,
the solution to Middle East hot-spot issues hinges on some
uncertain factors which are the most important and most
challenging part in Obama administration’s foreign policy.

Thus it remains to be seen if Obama’s intercultural efforts to identify, accommodate, and adapt to the reality in the Middle East and
Islamic world, and many other issues which he faces as president, will indeed prove him to be the internationally “transformational figure”
that Colin Powell has predicted for him, or whether he will fall short of
that opportunity. So far, he appears on the world stage to be such
a transformational and charismatic world leader that he is reshaping the
US reputation throughout many parts of the world, which was badly
damaged during the eight years of the Bush presidency..

References
An, H. (2009, June). Adjustment of Obama’s Middle East policy and the trend of the region’s hot-spot issues. Journal of Middle Eastern
and Islamic Studies (in Asia)..

Gudykunst, W.B. (2003). Intercultural communication theories. In W.B. Gudykunst, Ed. Cross-cultural and Intercultural Communication.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Huntington, S.P. (1996). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order.
New York: Simon and Schuster.

Kakutauni, M. (2006, October 17). Books of the Times: Obama’s Foursquare Politics, With a Dab of Dijon. New York Times.

Obama, B.H. (1995, 2004). Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Obama, B.H. (2006). The audacity of hope. NewYork: Crown Publishers.

Obama, B.H. (2009, June 4). Remarks by the president on a new beginning. Washington, D.C.: The White House.

Prosser, M.H. (2008, September 20). Comment: Shallowness of McCain and Palin New York Times.

Prosser, M.H. (2009, June). “Unrelenting, uncompromising war!” GAZA diary, 2008-2009 and the aftermath. ” Journal of Middle Eastern
and Islamic Studies (in Asia)..

Zhu,W. (2007, September). Dialogue among civilizations: A closer look at the greater Middle East reform” Journal of Middle Eastern and
Islamic Studies (in Asia).

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