Is it just my foreign ear, or does Obama play around with accents when he’s with Afro-Americans, becoming down-home “folksy”?
No. It’s not just your ear. His tendency to alter his speech patterns is well-known.
Obama is bi-lingual: He speaks English and Ebonics.
It’s not just your foreign era, it’s the same way he tells blue-collar worker audience that he’s one of them, and then tells his home audience of socialist elites that small-town Americans are “bitter, clinging to God and guns”. He’s whatever he needs to be for the audience, because his core values—marxism and black liberation theology-wouldn’t wash with almost American audience (that he can speak to with media witnesses there).