April 13 blog

I would say that in the More Perfect Union Speech written by Barack Obama, I think that Obama portrayed himself as relatable. He states that he had a white mother and a black father, that he lived in very rich parts of town, and very poor parts of town, and he has relatives in multiple different continents. Buy mentioning these certain things about him; it really draws supporters and even non-supporters to him. These certain details that he expressed about him self, made him relatable to a vast variety of people. I feel like when you have similar connections with someone else, you ultimately can see them as someone you can relate to like a friend, or as someone you can trust. So since Barack Obama made himself relatable to a wide variety of people in his speech, he ultimately became trustworthy. For the podcast, I am going to assume that the author of this is Ally. I am also going to assume that Ally is the woman talking in the podcast telling her side of what it is like having black roots but looks as if she is white. She tells people she is white even though technically her roots are black. To me, I think that Ally portrays herself as insecure. I do not think that she was intentionally trying to portray herself like this, but that is how it came across to me when listening to the podcast. Ally talks a lot about just wanting to fit in with the popular girls so she told people at school that she was white. This is because she grew up in a small town in Ohio that is around 97% white and so there are some racist tendencies because it used to be a white town solely. I guess because of the town’s history and current status, and having grown up in this environment, this story is credible. At the same time, I feel as if her persona is portrayed as being a victim. I say this because her certain aspects of her story seem super emotional like just so she could fit in with other white people, she helped her quote on quote “friends” help make fun of her own sister. To me that is just playing the victim card in a way. Overall Barack Obama did a good job portraying himself as being universal through his writing. He did a good job at making his persona seem trustworthy through all of his personal experiences. On the other hand, Ally made her character appear to be super emotional and insecure. After listening to her podcast it made me feel like her story of growing up in the predominantly white city in Ohio was very one sided, which made it untreatable.