(NBC) Voting Race and Gender (was Dems deserve their fate)



Fenster wrote:

They EARNED this cluster*** for their 40 years of
appealing to identity politics of the worst sort--EVERYTHING had to be about
race or gender. And now they are fucking choking on it, and are too weak
and/or stupid to end it.

It's justice, I tell you.

I love it when certain people talk about identity politics (of women
and minorities, of course) as a bad thing and completely ignore the
workings of the dominant culture. Here's a great piece on what most
people are voting in these long-lived primaries - race and gender,
same as it ever was, whether they recognized it or not. If you
actually believe in the mythology of reverse racism/sexism, just skip
it.

Angela


Why Can't I Have the Opportunity to Sell Out?
Playing the Opposite Game
http://www.counterpunch.com/birkenstein04222008.html
By JEFF BIRKENSTEIN

“I don’t say this because he’s black, but the guy just seems
arrogant to me, the way he expects things to go his way.”

--Harry Brobst

“It was probably inevitable. The historic contest between a woman
and an African-American for the presidential nomination is now all
about white men.”

--Gail Collins

Discussing the presidential election in my university-level Writing
Arguments class recently, a student said that of course some people
would vote for their candidate based on gender and/or race. But, this
was to be lamented. Rather, a candidate’s stance on the issue--and
not identity politics--is what should matter. But if true, I asked,
how could it be that the first 43 presidents were all white males?
Coincidence? Or was not gender and race a factor, at least in part?

Silence.

This is a productive moment in class, a moment when students see that
things are more complicated then they at first appear, that what they
learned in history classes over the years is as important as what they
did not learn. Hopefully, over time a student will come to see that
being complicated is not necessarily a bad thing.

This issue does not exist in the vacuum that is my class. Harry
Brobst of Latrobe, PA won’t vote for Barack Obama. He takes pains in
a New York Times article to explain that in the Pennsylvania primary
he will vote “not so much for” a candidate but against one. And while
Brobst searches, if inelegantly, to clarify his position as being
based on something other than race, for much of the news media and the
chattering classes the issue is strikingly clear: race and gender are
at the forefront of the discussion concerning the candidacies of
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

For example, when Geraldo Rivera of Fox News gleefully exhorts me to
sit through the commercial to catch his interview with Charlie Rangel
(D-NY), head of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, it’s because he
thinks he has a scoop. Before the break, Geraldo explains that Rangel
is “African American.” But the kicker? Rangel “supports Hillary
Clinton.” Though unstated, Geraldo’s implication is that it is odd
that in this election a black man would support a white woman while
another black man is running.

This is hardly an isolated incident, for, if we are to believe the
media, women and African Americans have all the tough decisions to
make this election. At CNN.com Randi Kaye writes that for African
American women “a unique and most unexpected dilemma presents itself.
Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?” Bill
Kristol said on Fox News Sunday that Clinton supporters are only “the
Democratic establishment and white women,” adding also, jokingly (it’s
always jokingly from the Kristols of the world), that “[w]hite women
are a problem, that’s, you know--we all live with that.”

These are but a few examples of what seems to be an unending string of
them. The subtext of what the talking heads and typing hands are
telling us is that making such decisions based on the supposedly
irrational issues of “identity politics” is a bad thing. For how, the
thinking goes, could voters reject the apparently rational course of
looking solely at a candidate’s position on the issues? How, for
instance, could voters vote for Obama without--a favorite Fox News
trump card we will be hearing ad nauseam in the coming months--knowing
any of his “accomplishments”? How could voters choose Clinton just
because she is a woman?

Stanley Fish, trying to make sense of identity politics, observes
that, “If there’s anything everyone is against in these election
times, it’s ‘identity politics,’ a phrase that covers a multitude of
sins.” His definition:

(It may not be yours, but it will at least allow the discussion to be
framed.) You’re practicing identity politics when you vote for or
against someone because of his or her skin color, ethnicity, religion,
gender, sexual orientation, or any other marker that leads you to say
yes or no independently of a candidate’s ideas or policies. In essence
identity politics is an affirmation of the tribe against the claims of
ideology, and by ideology I do not mean something bad (a mistake
frequently made), but any agenda informed by a vision of what the
world should be like.

Fish then makes the argument that there are some perfectly acceptable
times to vote according to such politics, if that vote is based on
“interest-identity politics” (“based on the assumption…that because of
his or her race or ethnicity or gender a candidate might pursue an
agenda that would advance the interests a voter is committed to”) and
not “tribal-identity politics” (“politics based on who a candidate is
rather than on what he or she believes or argues for”). Fish also
provides examples of non-default Americans (a Jew, an African
American, a woman) who someone might support based on “interest-
identity politics.” Ultimately, the non-default American is anyone
who is not a white male (though this is endlessly variable when
considering such factors as religion or education or socio-economic
level or…). This is not inherently a bad thing or a good thing, but
like so many things, it’s what you do with your position in society
that counts.

But Fish, like just about everyone else I have heard discussing this
issue, avoids the choice that I will have to make.

Since all politics is local, I’m starting with myself. Yes, as an
American voter, I see two roads diverging in the woods and know I’ll
have to cast a vote. While I avoided the path altogether in the
Washington State primary--because I don’t want to be aligned with
either party--I will vote in November. But this choice that I and
millions of other people “like me” will have to make is not the one
people are talking about.

No, it is the one everyone is avoiding.

What people are comfortable discussing, even when claiming that it is
not or should not be important--from Fox News to the op/ed page of the
New York Times to whatever it is that passes for a water cooler space
these days, blogs maybe--is a variety of what ifs. What if a person
of this gender and/or that race votes for someone outside their gender
and/or race based on these very aspects of identity politics?

What if?

But what are people like me supposed to do? I am a white male, who,
though not a registered Democrat, leans politically to the same side
of the country in which I live. And although we don’t yet know
whether Hillary or Barack will be the Democratic nominee, it appears
as if, in the general election, I will be vote either for my race or
against it and/or for my gender or against it.

But you probably need a little more information on me before you can
know just what and why I might be selling out come November. I’ll
generalize and say that I am a literature professor at a small,
Catholic liberal arts university, an agnostic/secular American Jew. I
had one set of grandparents escape Nazi Germany and another set (also
Jewish) stationed in Germany post-WWII with the US Army. As such,
there are a few things I think I know. And even if Jews are now
white, as Karen Brodkin writes in How Jews Became White Folks and What
That Says about Race in America, there remains a heavy “but…” hanging
over her book. I have known all my life that Jews in America, though
integrated, successful, overly educated, and whatnot (I’ve heard we
run Hollywood and probably at least one secret world order, though I
have yet to get my access card), are still not quite the American
default.

For my part, though, I’m not complaining. I can do just about
anything legal I want in America without interference from others.
Well, almost. I can’t be president. I know, I know, I’ve been told
many times that I can do anything I can imagine. “Good job,” I
think, “that’s exactly what unquestioning fealty to the American Dream
demands that they (i.e. parents, teachers, the media, the
corporations, the movies…) tell us Americans.”

But consider this. Besides Ralph Nader (who got my vote in ‘00,
because I knew that in my then-state of Kentucky, Gore had a
snowball’s chance in hell...), I think another reason Gore didn’t win
the election outright is because he had a Jew on the ticket. True,
Gore ran an anemic campaign with a running mate who even Rush Limbaugh
endorsed, but because the election was so close I believe this was yet
another factor. Even though Lieberman tried to out-God Bush with his
incessant public appeals to faith, there were plenty of Americans who,
I suspect, could not vote for a Jew to be a heartbeat away from the
American presidency. Of course, I don’t have the “facts” on this
because we don’t discuss it. Given the mythology of the American
Dream, such an admission makes us too uncomfortable.

But in any case, this situation doesn’t apply to me, for Lieberman is
a religious Jew. I am a secular one, thus disqualifying me outright,
at least according to Lewis H. Lapham’s satirical, if accurate,
understanding of the presidential job description: “…to be of service,
believe in God, and never forget that the customer, although sometimes
weird, is always right.” Two out of three just ain’t going to cut it
in early 21st-century America. Maybe later, but not now.

And while I don’t want to be president, I will vote for one. So what
part of my American-ness, my humanity, to sell out? And how can I
even be facing the decision to sell out, you might ask, when I am
neither female nor African American? After all, though Jewish, I am
firmly in the white-American-male camp. I have all the evidence I
need from a simple trip the chalkboard on the first day of class.
People see a white male up there and act accordingly; that is, I am
afforded a certain level of respect which I have done nothing to
earn. With my own eyes I have seen many times how this is different
for people who are not white or not male or both.

There are two major possibilities: will I vote, in part, my white
race and go with John McCain or will I abandon my race and vote for
Barack Obama? Or, as seems less likely now, might I face instead the
choice of voting, in part, with my male gender or abandoning it to
side with Hillary Clinton?

Even if these choices are only part of the equation, all of my fellow
American white males will face some part of this calculation.

The catch is that no one wants to discuss the possibilities that I
face. Vote on the issue of white maleness? Nobody does that, the
talking heads would have you believe. Bill O’Reilly, typical of the
people who desperately want to pretend we live in a race and gender
neutral country, complains: “I don’t think gender should be a factor
at all!” And, yeah, well, maybe it shouldn’t, but it is. So, the
question then becomes: what will we do about it?

O’Reilly’s repeated and vigorous efforts to deny minority status (I
watch him over dinner a couple times a week; he’s good for the
digestion) proves how powerful is the default, how invisible the
whiteness and maleness to those who would see it continue
unquestioned, not even out of malice perhaps, but out of ignorance,
willful or otherwise. (Though maybe willful ignorance is malicious…)
The reason the O’Reillys--that would be willfully ignorant white males
in this case--want to deny the importance of whiteness and maleness?
Because they know that if they ever--ever--acknowledge our country’s
continuing, even if lessening, inequality, then they will need also to
acknowledge a certain responsibility that comes with this knowledge, a
responsibility to work for change.

This explains part of the need of the O’Reillys to crush Obama’s
pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and, in turn, Obama. Historian Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar (my dad tells me he also used to play a little
basketball) writes: “The recent uproar about Barack Obama’s pastor
has pushed a very explosive issue into the presidential campaign. The
issue of our country’s history with regard to race is one that Senator
Obama literally embodies in his physical being as well as various
political stances he has taken.” This is only partially true. Race,
of course, was always present in the campaign, from the very first
presidential election to today. The Wright videotapes have not forced
race not into the race but rather the discussion of it.

To some in the chattering classes, this is the biggest sin, for they
want nothing more than to avoid discussing race honestly and openly.
I think their anger comes not only from the fact that some of the
things Wright said may be, as Christopher Hitchens argues, “wicked and
stupid and false,” but that some of the things Wright believes come
from a deeply rooted past and present of racial injustice that as a
society we don’t want to acknowledge. Obama’s speech on race--forced
out of him after Wright’s comments were seen and heard by everyone--
was the first time in my lifetime (I was born in ’69) that a major
presidential candidate has been so refreshingly open on the topic of
race. The problem for the O’Reillys is that they don’t like the
subject even being broached and demand that we pretend this is an
issue relegated to the past.

Obama, trying to will change on a system that garners a great deal of
money and power from schism, said “If we simply retreat into our
respective corners, we will never be able to come together.” However,
we are coming out of a presidency where division has been not
something to avoid but a deliberate political strategy. Nevertheless,
the conversation about minority status, sidelined for so long, is upon
us. Even Condoleeza Rice, looking to extend her political career
beyond Rove and Bush, recently said that the “descendents of slaves”
in America are born with “[t]hat particular birth defect [which] makes
it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard
for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are
today.” Bad phrase? Maybe. But good point? Yes.

I know the charges already, of course, because I teach in class that
in order to know your own argument, you must know the opposition’s.
People will claim I’m playing the race card, the gender card, even the
joker card. On March 25, Bill O’Reilly threatened to “get” anyone who
dared to play the race card. “Everyone will know about it,” he said.
I guess this means I’ll be on his show? Someone calling himself Ralph
McGaughey of Boston emailed me after my essay on the anti-Harold Ford
commercial (also in Counterpunch) and told me that I “have racial hang
ups that the rest of society does not.” (He also said “Harold Ford is
far more Caucasian than he is Negro.”) That, given the topic, I see
the irony in his phrase “hang ups” maybe proves him right. Or, maybe
I know the history of my country and am ever trying to understand how
it affects us today. I would counter that such cards are already
being played every day, whether or not I mention them, by both people
who are racist and by people who are not.

What I am actually doing is playing the Opposite Game, pointing out
that many things in our country work also in the opposite manner of
the way people acknowledge publicly or even understand.

I have long liked to play the Opposite Game (though I have only
recently starting calling it this, thanks to my good friend David
Price). As a teacher of argument, this is a great strategy for
getting at alternate or not as easily viewed versions of the truth.
It’s pretty easy to play. The instructions: take an argument out
there, look at some form of its opposite, and see where that gets
you. That’s it.

Let’s practice; we’ll start with an easy one. Fox News’ slogan:
“Fair and Balanced.” You can see immediately how this works.

Now, a harder one. The charge mentioned above that voters might
actually vote for Hillary and Barack based on their gender and/or
race. Look for an opposite. When Obama gets in trouble for
“skipping” an African American event--in this case, the “State of the
Black Union” in New Orleans--I immediately wonder a kind of opposite.
Which events have McCain or any of the candidates gone to, or skipped,
because of, in part, race? I know, I know, such questions should be
kept to a whisper, but we can’t fully explore the possibilities or be
true to our complicated American experiences in this presidential race
if such questions are asked just of the non-default candidates.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not claiming that John McCain or
the O’Reillys or anyone else is racist or sexist. We all have to
decide such things for ourselves. Instead, I am attempting to address
a brave student of mine (who appears to be white; I make no
presumptions) who says, “I am just tired of hearing about race all the
time.” I am sure that he is. And he is no racist; rather, he doesn’t
understand how the history of this country is not something only in
the past. He has probably been taught, after all, that he should not
acknowledge gender and/or race. That in today’s society (my favorite
phrase in student papers) we have moved beyond such things.

And now that the mere presence of a viable black candidate and a
viable female candidate appear to raise the very issues this student
thought were not supposed to matter is indeed confusing.
Nevertheless, race and gender are factors on all levels, on all sides,
and at all times and to deny them is, once you are aware of them,
disingenuous. After all, when this country imported slaves and
sanctioned the practice in the Constitution with the Three-Fifths
Compromise (even while the Preamble, you’ll remember, begins with a
distinctly non-exclusive plural pronoun, “We the people of the United
States…”) it was certain that inequality would be around for a very,
very long time. “America’s cult of whiteness, after all, was never
just about skin color, hair texture and other physical traits,” Ellis
Cose argues in Newsweek. Rather, “[i]t was about where the line was
drawn between those who could be admitted into the mainstream and
those who could not.”

Which is precisely what is at stake in this election.

Writing at Poltico.com, David Paul Kuhn explains that even now “[t]op
Republican strategists are working on plans to protect the GOP from
charges of racism or sexism in the general election, as they prepare
for a presidential campaign against the first ever African-American or
female Democratic nominee. . . Republicans will be told to ‘be
sensitive to tone and stick to the substance of the discussion’ and
that ‘the key is that you have to be sensitive to the fact that you
are running against historic firsts,’ the strategist explained.” That
people need to be told such things says an awful lot about where we
are as a country.

But who can deny that John McCain is running, in part and by default,
on his gender and race? Further, if the charge is that some might
vote for Hillary or Barack based on issues of identity politics, who
can deny that some people will vote for McCain for these reasons, even
if they don’t know it or can’t see it? (That’s why it’s called a
default.) Actually, I know the answer to my question, because I know
the defaults in this country. The answer is that most people will
deny this.

Discussing the Opposite Game in my African American literature class,
some of my students were at first incredulous at the idea that McCain
was running in part as a white man. It’s a hard opposite for many
people to see, though they have all heard, and on some level
understand, the questions about voting for Hillary and Barack based on
gender and race. Some of my students had even been asked by their
friends if they will vote on such issues of identity politics. So
concerning Hillary and Barack, the questions are out there and are
seen as legitimate by many people.

But McCain running as a white male? Voters voting for him for these
reasons? Crazy.

I next asked my students if they thought that someone might vote
against Hillary because she was a woman. Or against Barack because he
is black.

Nodding heads all around, some reluctant, some eager.

If so, then must not the opposite also be true? That some people will
vote for McCain, in part, because he is a white male? There are many
people who think the country is “not ready” for a black or female
president, even if they really mean, but won’t say, that they are not
ready for one. Playing the Opposite Game, this means also that such
people think the country continues to be ready only for a white male
president. There’s even a term for this, Derek Shearer reminds us:
the “Bradley effect” (named after losing African American
gubernatorial candidate from California, Tom Bradley), which states
that in polls “about 10% of likely voters will not tell the truth
about their willingness to vote for a woman or a black.” This same
10% could make all the difference in November, divided as we are.

But that McCain is running on his whiteness and maleness is not only
true by default. No, McCain is overtly championing these aspects of
his candidacy, even if he is unaware he is doing so. “Why is Chelsea
Clinton so ugly?” McCain reportedly joked a decade ago. “Because her
father is Janet Reno," was the answer. But maybe this bit of ancient
sexism from before McCain boarded the Straight Talk Express should be
dismissed. Ok, then consider this widely reported question from last
November: “How do we beat the bitch?” queried a female supporter,
referring to Hillary. Though evidently uncomfortable, perhaps because
he knew the video was headed straight for Youtube, McCain called it an
“excellent question.”

And then there was the extended exchange between McCain and Huckabee
as to who had the more kick-ass supporter: Huckabee’s Chuck Norris or
McCain’s Sly Stallone. However, it was an odd appeal from both of the
candidates, because they were saying not that they could kick ass, but
a particular muscular supporter could. In a debate, McCain said that
Stallone could take care of Norris. General guffaws. It’s like that
guy in the home security system commercials. He can’t protect his
wife and family in this scary age, but he can pay for a surrogate male
to be on the other end of the phone in an emergency.

On Hannity and Colmes, Republican Strategist Pete Synder weighed in on
Hillary’s daring to challenge the men for the presidency: “Someone’s
going to have to take her back [behind] the barn…because this campaign
is all about her personal ambition.” Neither epithet, the b-word and
the a-word (ambition), would be lodged against a male. And the non-
stop comments about Hillary’s pantsuits? The unstated charge is that
that Hillary is cross-dressing and seeking male power.

Okay, perhaps this is all “just” fun and games. Boys will be boys,
after all. But this fun comes with the time-honored traditions of
female degradation and threatened violence for women who overstep
their bounds. I’m not saying McCain should have corrected that
supporter. If this is how he views women, fine; it is better to know
about it. But clearly, he is appropriating stereotypes of masculinity
and femininity (or the perceived lack thereof) to make his point.
Thus, he is, in part at least, running as a male. That he might not
be aware of it doesn’t make it any less true.

So if we can ask female voters if they will vote for a woman, then the
opposite question must also be asked. What men will vote for McCain
because he has a penis?

But even more strangely to some people, McCain is also, in part,
running as a white male. On some level his Johnny-come-lately
defenders understand this, which is why they are so incredulous when
the topic is broached. “White value system?” Sean Hannity asked on
his TV show. “I have never heard of this in my life,” he said,
exasperated, both hands in the air. It is true that he may not have
heard of it referred to in these words. But Hannity’s success hinges
on his ability to sell the idea that we live in a post-race world
where the white male value system governing this country is known
merely by its default name of the “American value system.” He isn’t
looking for actual equality, but for people to stop challenging the
hegemony of whiteness and maleness generally, and his world-view
specifically. Sharon Begley points out in Newsweek that Obama rejects
the term “post-racial” as “naïve.” We are not there yet.
Nevertheless, the Hannitys make their bread and butter claiming we
live in a post-racial, 21st century America.

“Is race going to now be an issue for them?” Hannity spat, wanting us
to believe race is only an issue when anyone who isn’t white raises
it. This is the same Hannity who is also troubled that Michelle
Obama’s Master’s thesis reveals her true nature: “black first…student
second.”

When Barack Obama says that race has been a “national obsession of
ours for a long time,” America generally believes him, but much of
America wants to deal with this fact by pretending that it was
“solved” during the Civil Rights movement. America understands that
race remains an issue in many ways, some good (historic firsts), some
bad (racism, exclusion). But it’s the vocal champions of intolerance
that demand we decry anyone who might vote for a black or female
candidate based on, in part, identity politics. The real fear, of
course, is that people might start asking if identity politics might
be a factor in a person voting for…John McCain.

Ultimately, McCain is just running as McCain, even if part of his
identity is as a white man in America. This is not bad or good; it
just is. A recent ad triumphs--in case anyone still didn’t know--his
service in the military and his imprisonment in a North Vietnamese
camp. But McCain is not separate from the larger fabric, indeed, the
entire history, of America. We know intuitively that if his service
to his country is a strength, it has also been, for much of the
history of this country, the province of white males. If being a
fighter pilot and a POW is to his credit, then the opposite game tells
us that it is to his opponents’ detriment that they did not or could
not have had such an experience. And, yes, women have now flown in
combat and, yes, there were black male pilots in Viet Nam, but these
were and are the exceptions and not the rule. McCain’s long family
history of military service which he is rightly proud of is also only
possible for the white men in his family. In the year 2008, there can
be no equivalent long history of service for women or African
Americans.

John McCain is inescapably part of that American continuum--as all
Americans are--that began centuries before he was born. He need not
apologize or feel guilty for any of this (a common defensive position
I hear when discussing this topic, for most people can’t get past the
personal, thinking this is all an attack on their individual life),
but he--and all of us--must be aware of the lingering effects of this
history that exist all around us. I don’t know, though, that he would
understand or acknowledge this (I would like to ask him), but white
males are not exempt from dealing with this complicated history just
because they want to pretend we live in a post-racial America. And if
it takes a presidential race to bring this out into the open, I say,
bring it on.

One wonders if McCain would have ever tried to make amends for voting
against the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday in 1983 if he
wasn’t now running for president. On the 40th anniversary of King’s
assassination, McCain said:

We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I made
myself long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of
Dr. King…I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give
full support for a state holiday in Arizona. We can all be a little
late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this
about his fellow Americans. But he knew as well that in the long term,
confidence in the reasonability and good heart of America is always
well placed.

Taking him at his word, if McCain was ignorant about King’s
importance, well, now he is not. I argue in class all the time that
ignorance is not a crime, but willful ignorance is indeed very
dangerous. If McCain can finally acknowledge that growth is possible,
surely the same is true for our country.

As this country’s default, white males have learned to not triumph
their white heritage--the ultimate American entitlement program--in
words, even as they benefit from this status in countless ways every
day. As a white male, I have learned that if I remain quiet, then it
is left to minorities to define themselves against my whiteness and
maleness. If a genuine post-racial America is the goal (I don’t know
that it is), then willful ignorance will not get us there.

We must engage in the conversation, even though it is difficult,
because our silence allows too many Americans to not have an equal
chance at the pursuit. Perhaps even O’Reilly is getting the message
that this is more complicated than he pretends. On April 8th he told
his viewers he would be more “precise” when discussing race so that he
wouldn’t be attacked and misunderstood in the future. I look forward
to the O’Reillys and the Hannitys of the country asking white males
how race and gender will influence their votes, because it’s time we
all played our cards honestly with each other. Maybe once we get past
the spin, we can get closer to claiming that Constitutional “we” for
all of us.

.

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