I felt like being geeky today, so I thought I’d take a look at Sen. Clinton’s mistake. Normally I wouldn’t care, but after all of the fuss over Sen. Obama’s comments about clinging to guns I figured she’s fair game for slips. So, without further ado here is the comment:
“There was just an AP article posted that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
And of course the most important part:
“Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”
If you want to jump down past the grammar discussion click here.
Now a comma is used for several things. And I’d like to point you to this site from which I got my examples. First is the listing use. For example:
Noun: He brought coffee, sandwiches, cheese and soda.
Verb: She caught, cleaned, cooked and served the fish.
Adjective: The weather today is cool, dry and windy.
Verb phrase: I closed the door, started the car, pulled out of the driveway, and switched on the radio.
Clause: Mayuki made the sushi, Yung-Hee cooked the meat, and Izabella chopped the vegetables
There is one thing that you must remember when using a list. At the end, before the last item, you MUST use the word “and”. Without that, it’s not a list.
The next use of the comma is for conjoining two clauses:
It was raining, so I took my umbrella.
To do this you need to use one of the coordinating conjunctions: and, but, or, so, and several more.
Most of the rest of this will have the examples taken from Wikipedia.
Commas can also be used for introductory phrases: Once upon a time, I didn’t know how to use commas
Parenthetical phrases are those bits that can be pulled out of a sentence without changing the meaning. They fall into restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. I’m not going to go into it much, but if you’re interested, I have a lovely worksheet I do with my students. But, there are several forms of parenthetical phrases. The following are the ones which interest us right now:
My father, a jaded and bitter man, ate the bagel (appositive)
My father, chewing with unbridled fury, ate the bagel (free modifier).
My father, in a fit of rage, ate the bagel (prepositional phrase).
My father, with no regard for his health, ate the bagel (adverbial phrase).
My father, despite his lack of teeth, ate the bagel (adverbial phrase).
It is also used to separate dependant and independent clauses: “After I brushed the cat, I lint-rollered my clothes”.
And back to the politics. The most important parts of this discussion on grammar are Parenthetical Phrases and Listing.
“Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”
The only two possible types of comma that this could be are Parenthetical and Listing. Lets look at listing. As we know, a list is a number of points joined together by commas, and ending with the word “and” before the final. Now we can assume that Clinton was attempting to give a list, meaning:
“Obama’s support among hard working Americans [of all colours], and white Americans [in particular] is weakening again.”
After listening to her comments though (which you can do here), I’m afraid that that’s not what she said. She used the distinct pauses which indicate commas. Also, she lacks the all important “and”.
Before we continue, it is important to remember that her comments were full of “ums”. Thus, I’ll rewrite what she said slightly.
She said “among working, hard-working”, but, from that, and from the “ums” which are included in it, she said “working” but then changed that to “hard-working”. Her comment then is:
”Obama’s support among hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”
Now, as we said, this is not, much as she might wish otherwise, a list. It is a parenthetical phrase. With the commas as they fall, she is saying:
“Obama’s support among hard-working Americans, is weakening again”
But, in order to assume this, we need to think that the introduction of the words “white Americans” does not change the sentence. If it did change the sentence, the commas would not need to be there in that order. Which means that “white Americans” is not adding to the sentence, but rather defining “hard-working Americans”. Thus she has said:
“Obama’s support among hard-working Americans, [and they are] white Americans, is weakening again”
And that is where the problem happens. She has verbally equated white with hard-working. Which on the flip side implies that Obama’s largest ethnic group (black Americans) are not hard-working.
To be clear, when I started this I felt that people were simply taking their prior ingrained racism and applying it to the quote, seeing racism simply because it was a white person making a comment about white people. However, after looking at the comma use, I feel that I must conclude that the comments made, though I’m sure it was a slip of the tongue, are in fact saying that hard-working Americans are white.
