• Foreword


• Showin Love


• 1 "Nah, We Straight ": Black Language and America's First Black President 12


• 2 A.W.B. (Articulate While Black): Language and Racial Politics in the U.S. 54


• 3 Makin A Way Outta No Way: The Race Speech and Obama's Rhetorical Remix 101


• 4 "The Fist Bump Heard 'round the World ": How Black Communication Becomes Controversial 144


• 5 "My President's Black, My Lambo's Blue ": Hip Hop, Race, and the Culture Wars 194


• 6 Change the Game: Language, Education, and the Cruel Fallout of Racism 248


• Index

H. Samy Alim is Associate Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Anthropology and Linguistics at Stanford University, where he directs the Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Language (CREAL) and the Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA). Some of his most recent books include You Know My Steez, Roc the Mic Right, Talkin Black Talk, and Global Linguistic Flows.
Geneva Smitherman is University Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, Co-Founder and Core Faculty, African American and African Studies, and Core Faculty, African Studies Center, at Michigan State University. A linguist and educational activist, she has been at the forefront of the struggle for language rights for over 30 years. She is the author of several books, among them Talkin and Testifyin, Black Talk, Talkin That Talk, and Word from the Mother.

Barack Obama is widely considered one of the most powerful and charismatic speakers of our age. Without missing a beat, he often moves between Washington insider talk and culturally Black ways of speaking--as shown in a famous YouTube clip, where Obama declined the change offered to him by a Black cashier in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with the phrase, "Nah, we straight."