Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Racism's Door

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm still worried about whether American racism - overt and latent - might be strong enough to tip this election to McCain? Frank Rich thinks it won't, according to his last column in the New York Times:

Well, there are racists in western Pennsylvania, as there are in most pockets of our country. But despite the months-long drumbeat of punditry to the contrary, there are not and have never been enough racists in 2008 to flip this election. In the latest New York Times/CBS News and Pew national polls, Obama is now pulling even with McCain among white men, a feat accomplished by no Democratic presidential candidate in three decades, Bill Clinton included. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finds age doing more damage to McCain than race to Obama.

But then the Columbus Dispatch thinks race could be enough to drag Obama to defeat in my neck of the woods. The Dispatch may be deluded enough to endorse McCain but it's in close proximity to the various Ohio bellwethers. As am I, minus the delusion (or so I hope?).

Here's my encounter with racism on the campaign trail. It's enough to make me plenty nervous, even as it stokes my hope for slow, slow change.

The first day I went out knocking on doors for Obama, I met a frayed-looking middle-aged couple enjoying the mild sunny Sunday afternoon on their porch. They were the very first people I found at home as a freshly minted canvasser. They lived in a neighborhood of modest homes built in the 1950s. I wasn't out in the impoverished countryside; I was among young families and retired professors.

The man said he was genuinely unsure who'd get his vote. And so I sat with them for a good half hour, asking what issues worried them.

It didn't take long to unearth a major concern. The woman said she planned to vote for John McCain. But even if she didn't ...

"I have to tell you something," she said. "I'm not racist." Long, long pause. "But I'd have a problem voting for a black man for president."

Before we were sent out to canvass, we'd been warned that we'd encounter open racism sooner or later. I still wasn't prepared for it in my maiden experience as a canvasser.

And so I circumnavigated. I asked them how they felt about the economy, which had just begun its meltdown. I inquired how they felt about the current president. Once they'd expressed their deep dismay at the status quo, I wondered out loud if they might want to take a chance on the new guy, even if they had to go outside their comfort level.

I wasn't trying to convince the wife, who'd made her allegiances clear. I was just trying to gently nudge the husband back into his self-declared role of canceling out his mate's vote.

But she was the one who eventually moved - not into the Democratic column, but possibly into a different sort of self-awareness.

"You know," she mused, "Maybe I am a little bit racist after all."

I tell this story not to open her up to mockery. In the late September sunlight, the day before my birthday, I took her reluctant but unforced confession as a gift, the more precious for its fragility.

As I said a day ago, canvassing is very much like teaching. You plant a seed. You hope for gentle rains. You never know for sure what will sprout and grow and blossom.

And then there are people who dash your hope altogether. My younger son, the Tiger, is having some trouble with a kid in his kindergarten class who's hitting and calling names. About half his classmates are also being bullied. The insults include "stinky black," aimed at one of the Tiger's friends who is half Latina, half African-American, coupled with taunts that "Obama is stinky."

Kids don't make this shit up on their own. I don't know if he's getting it from his parents - at least theoretically, it could come from other relatives - and I'd rather give the benefit of the doubt than judge them prematurely. Whatever the source, he's sure not inventing racism out of thin air.

Here's what we're up against. The Columbus Dispatch reported on the ubiquity of such attitudes a few weeks back:

Like most other Democrats in southeastern Ohio, Hendrickson, a single mother of two struggling to support her family as a waitress, voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the primary.

With Clinton out, Hendrickson says she plans to vote for Republican John McCain. She doesn't trust Democrat Barack Obama.

"I just don't feel comfortable with him," said Hendrickson, 36, of neighboring Portsmouth. "I don't think he's being honest about what he's going to do."

The political landscape of the 14-county southeastern region, a swing area of Ohio where chronic unemployment and poverty have left many feeling forgotten, would seem to favor Democrats.

But an uneasiness with Obama prevails in Appalachia, and for many it comes down to race.

"I'll be voting for a Republican for the first time in my life," Jeff Justice, a 46-year-old ironworker, said as he finished his lunch at Hickie's.

Asked why, Justice, a white former Wheelersburg resident now living in Florida, didn't hesitate.

"He's black."

But as the economy has tanked, people's willingness to set aside their prejudices has seemingly grown. At Salon, James Hanrahan suggests that racists fear lots of thing even more than they fear black people. As Sean Quinn reported at FiveThirtyEight, a canvasser in Pennsylvania witnessed the following exchange:

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

It may be cold comfort to those whose retirement savings have evaporated over the past few weeks. But if tomorrow's vote is close, we can reasonably assume it will have been the economic meltdown that pushed bigots into voting for a black man. If Obama does well enough to claim a mandate, we can still assume "it's the economy, stupid."

Either way, these elemental fears of economic survival are surely multiplying the number of people who call themselves - with a dose of charming self-mockery, to be sure - "Rednecks for Obama." I took this photo a couple of blocks from my house, but I've seen more than one similar sign since then, including one deep in the woods while canvassing yesterday.


By the way, I'm not at all suggesting that self-proclaimed "rednecks" are racists. Only that the current crises are inspiring them to vote for a candidate who - for reasons of race, yes, but a host of other reasons as well - doesn't look like their typical guy.

I am suggesting that if "rednecks" are turning out for Obama, all of us who back him had better do the same.

A new, kinder chapter in American history just might begin today.

Antidote to McCain's Toxic Campaign

I've always liked Donna Brazile's plainspoken, no-bullshit manner. I've known she's a smart strategist and analyst. I had no idea she could be this inspirational. These words of hers - her refusal to go to the back of the bus - moved me almost as much as Barack Obama's speech last March on race in America.

This is the perfect antidote to the hatefulness of the McCain-Palin campaign this past week:

Signs of Desperation

Photo by Flickr user gitboy, used under a Creative Commons license.

My Obama yard sign got stolen last night. This was the second one to disappear over the last ten days. I realize that the perps were probably drunken students. That doesn't excuse it. What people choose to do while drunk tends to correlate pretty closely to their values while sober.

And while I don't want to push a metaphor too hard, my pilfered yard signs also strike me as a sign of the times. This week, the presidential campaign turned nastier than I've ever seen, with John McCain and Sarah Palin portraying Barack Obama as an un-American terrorist lover. Even Karl Rove never went quite this far. It got ugly enough that a slew of conservatives are now saying the smears have gone too far.

Yesterday McCain finally tried to calm the mob his team has roused. He was booed by his own supporters for stating that Obama is a decent family man. I'm glad McCain showed us this flash of his own decency, but I worry it won't be enough.

I worry that all this public hating-on will embolden someone to take a shot at Obama. Literally.

It almost doesn't matter whether McCain and Palin are deliberately trying to incite violence, as Jeffrey Feldman suggested earlier this week. I don't suppose that Sarah Palin intended for a supporter to cry "Kill him!" after she linked Obama with former Weatherman Bill Ayers at a rally. It's just that hate speech, terrorist smears, and race-baiting have a way of spiraling out of control. This is how you prod a lynch mob into a frenzy. Even if a latter-day lynching isn't McCain and Palin's intent, violent reactions to such smears can be easily, easily anticipated by any reasonable person.

When their supporters break into open hostility and threats, McCain and Palin need to stop their stump speech and squelch them. Until yesterday, neither of them made an effort to do that. (Let's not forget that this has a longer history: Last winter, McCain didn't discourage his supporters from shouting sexist comments about Hillary Clinton, either.)

The German language has a great, largely untranslatable word for what's happening here: Hetzkampagne. The verb hetzen is used when you set the dogs on someone. It refers to agitation, baiting, hunting someone down. The term "smear campaign" doesn't quite capture Hetzkampagne, because there's no telling what will happen once the hounds of hell are turned loose.

Both McCain and Palin let those dogs smell blood last week. If the worst happened, blood would be on their hands too.

Is it a stretch from my stolen Obama signs to death threats? Sure. They're not the same. Thank goodness! Still, both are on a continuum of "dirty tricks to try when you're losing." They're both signs of the Republicans' desperation and disintegration. Once a candidate abandons civil discourse and fair play, his supporters seem to feel they've been given permission to break the rules and the law in ways large and small.

White Privilege and the Republican Ticket

This week we discussed white privilege in my intro to women's and gender studies class. By coincidence, earlier this week Tim Wise published a nice list of thirteen ways John McCain and Sarah Palin have benefited from white privilege. Here are a few of my favorites:

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at 17 like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. ...

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action. ...

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

Go read the rest of it. The whole thing is pretty good. I just wish I could figure out a way to use it in my class without being perceived as overtly partisan. (In the interests of disclosure, I've told my students I support Obama, but I'm careful to be even-handed when it comes to partisan politics, making sure Republicans don't feel squelched and criticizing Democrats on such points as Bill Clinton's complicity with the Defense of Marriage Act.) Maybe one could ask how Joe Biden, too, has benefited from white privilege?

Anyway, what's missing for me in Wise's list is a serious attempt at intersectional analysis. While he rightly skewers white privilege, he doesn't attempt to address how it intersects with class privilege and male privilege. No, I don't expect him to throw around academese like "intersectionality" in the popular press. I would expect him to incorporate it implicitly into his analysis.

For example, the last paragraph quoted above shows how Michelle Obama was criticized as a black American for not fulfilling a public role - but as a black woman, she would be equally vulnerable to charges of bad mothering. This puts her in a double bind; she had no "right" choice in that situation.

More significantly, Wise almost seems to assume that white privilege negates the effects of sexism for white women:

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women and made them give your party a "second look."

As I wrote a few days ago, women have waited a long time to vote for a female presidential candidate. Some still yearn for it in this election cycle (even if the female candidate is only running for VP). Of course, unless they're conservative fundamentalists, they'd be loony to vote for McCain-Palin. But some of these women definitely are giving Palin a second look due to her sex. Luckily, they also seem to be giving her a third look, and what they're learning about her positions so far explains why her favorables are plummeting.

I'm sure some white women will vote for Palin simply because they feel they can identify with her. The same may be true for a fraction of black men who vote for Obama. But would we attribute their choice solely to male privilege if they vote for Obama even though they mostly disagree with him on the issues? That's basically the move Wise makes for white women. Or can we empathize with the thrill that members of historically oppressed groups might feel - even to the point of irrational voting decisions - just to see someone like them who's running?

This isn't rocket science. But it's a point you can miss if you overlook the fact that racism doesn't operate independently of sexism, classism, and all those other charming -isms.

In Praise of Political Correctness

"Agonised Clowns" - photo by Flickr user tallkev, used under a Creative Commons license.

I don't usually have much use for political correctness. I'd much rather have a free-wheeling discussion. When I teach women's studies, I make that clear on day one, though it usually takes a couple of weeks until the great majority of my new students trust that I mean it. The result is that even Republican supporters of pregnancy crisis centers feel free to speak their minds - and I've developed nice relationships with people whose views are the polar opposite of my own.

But darn it, I hit my limit last night.

I was out at a beer garden with my family, having dinner before my mother-in-law took the night train home. This is something I love about Germany. A beer garden can be a perfectly nice environment for kids. This one, the Johannesgarten, has a slightly ramshackle, dusty playground.

I'm equally delighted by the fact that the Johannesgarten is run by the Johanniskirche - St. John's (Lutheran) Church - in the verdant space next to its sanctuary. Imagine even the United Church of Christ or the Unitarians doing something like this in the U.S.! The idea is to reach people where they live, and so this congregation also hosts puppet shows for kids and other neighborhood activities.

Last night, the Johannesgarten hosted a free variety show, and as always the intent was good. Right away it was clear that the emcee wasn't very funny. That alone would've been fine. I know lots of funny Germans - I don't last long with humorless people - and there's also a growing number of hilarious, talented people in the German comedy scene. Even so, lots of the mainstream, mass-media humor tends to be pretty hokey.

The show took an ugly turn, though, when his sidekick appeared onstage. The emcee introduced him as Blondie. The sidekick was a black man. And his schtick was the most unreconstructed Steppin Fetchit act I'd ever seen.

I don't know what I found more disturbing: That the show's sponsors at the church thought this was okay. Or that at least half of the audience convulsed in giggles at the name Blondie. Or that some unemployed black actor felt compelled to take on this humiliating role.

I wouldn't argue that German society is more racist than American. It's certainly more overtly racist, simply because "political correctness" hasn't pressured people to examine their stereotypes about race (apart from anti-Semitism, which is discussed at length in the schools). People of my mother-in-law's generation (over 70) have loads of unreconstructed racist notions. But then again, a lot of stand-up comedy in the U.S. plays with stereotypes - including racial ones. It's virtually never funny in the U.S. either. A lot of the laughter stems from embarrassment. I'd like to think that was true for part of the Johannisgarten audience as well.

At any rate, for a few moments I found myself yearning for a bracing dose of political correctness. Not just because I was offended and embarrassed - though that was my main beef - but also because there's just no way to be entertained after you've seen the Jim Crow era come alive onstage. Even the quite good Parisian juggler couldn't tickle me. I was just deeply relieved when it was time to get my mother-in-law to her train.

It turns out that it's not so-called political correctness but racism that's the mortal enemy of humor.

Obama Pregame

Photo by Flickr user brianc, used under a Creative Commons license. This is from the pregame of Stanford versus TCU last October, and theoretically I could be in this picture since the old fart (aka alumni) band was along for the ride. Ironically, the pregame show didn't actually happen because stadium security spent about 20 minutes frisking us old degenerates.

A few thoughts prior to Obama's arrival in Berlin today: People here really do adore him, and I'm trying to figure out why. A poll conducted for the Telegraph (UK) found that among five European countries surveyed, only Italy loves him more. In Germany, 67 percent would vote for Obama, versus a measly six percent for McCain. Obama would take 65% of the vote in France and a whopping 70% in Italy.

Where is all this adulation coming from? I think the main thing is that Germans - and Western Europeans in general - want to believe in America's better angels. Despite all the evidence to the contrary over the past eight years. Most Germans are appalled at everything the Bush Administration has done domestically and abroad. They see how the rule of law is being dismantled. They are dismayed at our barbaric use of the death penalty. They want nothing to do with our use of torture. They rightly resent our unwillingness to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They foresaw what a disaster Iraq would be back in 2002, and they aren't inclined to bail us out now.

And yet - I think most Germans want to see the United States live up to our ostensible ideals. Obama's candidacy seems to be inspiring many of them to set aside their cynicism and believe in America's potential - maybe to a degree that most actual Americans have abandoned. This summer, Berlin is marking 60 years since the airlift. That hasn't been forgotten, nor has the Marshall Plan, nor has Kennedy's solidarity with the city after the Wall was built. People remember the Pershing missile controversy too; Germans don't suffer from historical amnesia like Americans so often seem to do. They remember the good and the bad alike. But at the moment, they seem willing to believe the good can be resurrected.

Part of Obama's appeal is that he's seen as a healing force - someone who might help repair some of the rifts that Bush and his cronies have created. On the one hand, almost any Democrat would do in that role - even an uninspiring, standard-issue candidate in the mold of John Kerry or Michael Dudkakis. On the other hand, Obama is not a cookie-cutter Democrat. People love his youth and charisma; it's at least as appealing here as in the U.S., and maybe more so, since neither his opponents' mudslinging nor his recent craven pandering to the center-right have gotten much media attention in Europe.

And then there's the matter of race. It's possible that the very oldest people might still count blackness as, well, a black mark against him. But my strong sense is that all the post-war generations think it's a positive asset. An AP analysis from earlier this week concurs:

It's difficult to gauge how race is playing out in European attitudes toward Obama, but there is no denying that color is a big ingredient of the Obama magic here. One German newspaper has anointed the candidate "Der Schwarze JFK" - the black JFK.

But the "feel-good" factor that many pundits have identified among educated white Americans in their support for Obama may at least in part be behind Europeans' eagerness to embrace a black U.S. presidential candidate. All three countries on Obama's European tour have experienced ethnic flare-ups in recent years. And despite large minority populations across the continent, there are only a sprinkling of nonwhite legislators in European parliaments - let alone candidates to be a national leader.

Given Europe's troubled history with its own minorities, Obamamania may be an expedient way for some Europeans to convince themselves they are racially tolerant while brushing aside ethnic tensions at home.

(Source: Matt Moore and Melissa Eddy, writing for the AP)

I'm sure this cynical view is true in some instances. And I don't claim to know a representative cross-section of population here; my friends tilt pretty far to the left. Still, I think this is mostly a benign and healthy development - and possibly for some people, a way to warm up to greater ethnic diversity in their own power structures.

Berlin has its share of ethnic tensions: many Turkish immigrants are not very assimilated, and this translates into problems in the schools, for instance. But most Berliners are either quite open-minded, or at least they're trying hard. Several years ago, they elected an openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit. While running for office, Wowereit announced: "Ich bin schwul - und das ist auch gut so." "I'm gay - and that's a good thing, too."

This week, the cover of Zitty, a local magazine, features a photo of Obama in a pensive pose with the caption: "Ich bin schwarz - und das ist auch gut so." "I'm black - and that's a good thing, too." While I don't want to overgeneralize from the media coverage, my feeling is that most Berliners share that sentiment.

There are holdouts to Obamamania, though, and not just on the right-wing fringe. Last night at a potluck, I met a man - a neighbor of friends, perhaps in his early fifties - who told me point-blank that he'd heard Obama speak and was appalled. He thought Obama didn't offer any substance, and worse, that he could be a demagogue. (National Review writer Lisa Schiffren agrees - h/t to Salon, which has the link to the NRO if you really wanna go there - showing once again, I'm afraid, that left and right can converge at their extremes.) He also contended that there were no real differences between Obama and McCain.

I think it's fine to warn against demagoguery. Germany, of all places, knows its dangers. I don't think it's a fair charge against Obama, but the past eight years have shown that even a much less gifted orator can play the demagogue.

As for the charge that Obama and McCain are indistinguishable? As pissed off as I still am about the FISA sell-out, I still had to remind tell my new friend that the same was said of Gore and Bush in 2000. And we all know where that got us.

Update, 7/24/08: In comments, Molly asks where the demagogue accusation comes from. I think it stems from the ancient idea that if you have a silver tongue, you must have some nefarious agenda. And I should repeat that I don't think that's true for Obama.

Also: At lunch today, over a plate full of the health-food-store version of Nutella, one of my Bear's friends, a nine-year-old girl, said to us about Obama: "Alle finden ihn toll!" That is, "Everyone thinks he's great!" Of course, her political opinions are about as independent as my sons' - but I think she's a pretty accurate reflection of public opinion.

Jon Stewart on Baracknophobia

Via the Huffington Post, Jon Stewart does a funny takedown of the media's rumor mill and its love affair with "the audacity of fear":



The "lady parts October surprise" would deserve a post of its own, but I've got no time for it. I'm in a hotel room at the National Women's Studies Association meeting and I need to get to my session.

The VP Limbo

Limbo kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

We're sitting here in limbo ... waiting for Hillary Clinton's official concession. It had better be a real one and not just a deferral until the convention. I want to know what Hillary Clinton will do next: with her delegates, her candidacy, her talents, her life. As she herself asked in her non-concession speech Tuesday: "What does Hillary want? What does she want?" ROTUS has an inkling of the worst-case answer:

According to the Baltimore Sun, she is planning to “end her campaign and endorse Barack Obama” on Saturday. Clinton has no plans to concede and release her delegates, though. In August there will be floor demonstrations, drama and more food fights at the Democratic National Convention.

But what worries me more than the tornadic threat of disrupting the convention is the more immediate risk that Obama might offer Clinton the VP slot on the ticket to restore internal party peace. She's signaled she wants it. I can see why a dramatic olive branch might appeal to Obama's conciliatory side. What's more, as long as Clinton controls nearly half the delegates and holds sway with millions of disgruntled voters, she can create heaps of mischief if she's not appeased. It's not quite blackmail ... well, wait, exactly how is it not?

Bob Cesca predicts the trouble ahead if Obama passes over Clinton as his VP nominee:

What happens if she isn't offered the vice presidential slot? Will she continue to stomp her feet and draw attention away from the nominee? Yes she will. Will she carry her campaign (in name and support only) to the convention? Yes she will. Will she continue to distract attention away from challenging Senator McCain's awfulness? Yes she will. So should she be offered the vice presidential slot, then? No she shouldn't.

Yes, giving Clinton the VP nod would paste TP over their differences. The two candidates are often indistinguishable anyway in the policy realm, apart from that niggling little problem of war and peace. Their differences are mostly the product of the bitter primary campaign.

But the bitterness of the campaign still matters, and as I've argued before, Clinton has catered to our worst angels too often. She's the one who went on Meet the Press to tell Tim Russert that Obama was not a Muslim, "as far as I know." She's the one who brought us the 3 a.m. scare ad. She's the one who claimed that she could connect with white, working-class voters, implying 1) that Obama can't, and 2) that all such voters are presumptively racist. Too often, her surrogates who played the race card. She failed to disavow Rush Limbaugh's interference in the campaign on her behalf. She made a big deal out of the non-issue of Obama's title as a professor at the University of Chicaco. Sure, some of these tactics may have come from her henchmen, er, advisers. But she picked those guys. She chose to listen to their gutter-dwelling counsel.

Senator Clinton has run a campaign based on fear, not hope. How could she leave that behind during the general election? How could she subordinate herself to Obama's message of hope and empathy? How could she govern in ways substantially different from the last eight years of fearmongering?

Putting her on the ticket would set us up for untold turmoil as we head toward the general election for one other reason, too: because the Clintons are, well, the Clintons. ROTUS nails this, again:

Can you imagine a triumvarate of Barack, Hill and Bill squabbling over how to govern this country? Or trying to campaign together? It gives me nightmares.

Yikes! Who would be in charge in that unholy ménage a trois? Cesca connects the dots:

Because a would-be Obama-Clinton campaign would end up being entirely about the Clintons. What they said; what they're doing; who's in control; do they get along; is she undermining him from within. Me, me, me. And besides, if she really wanted to be on the ticket, she wouldn't have engaged in this infuriating slash-burn-point-clap strategy in the first place -- a strategy which, by the way, continued through last night's [Tuesday's] speech.

I'm a little weary of Bill Clinton, anyway. He bounded around the country like a big, untrained puppy, with none of his vaunted political self-discipline in evidence. He didn't help his own wife; so why do we think he could play third fiddle in support of Obama? I'm now picturing him at campaign events, earnestly explaining that as our first black president, he paved the way for Obama's candidacy.

So as much as I'd love to see Obama pick a woman, and as seductive as an Obama-Cinton ticket appeared to me back in February, that moment has been washed away by all the blood and bile of Clinton's negative campaigning. (Well, it's only negative if you're not a McCain fan, I suppose.) Odds may be against Clinton here, anyway; Jane Hamsher reports that "by all accounts Obama would rather lose a limb" than nominate Clinton. Let's hope he's not afraid of a little phantom pain.

Now, here's my alternative scheme. How 'bout promising to appoint Clinton to the Supreme Court? She'd have serious power - for life. As an accomplished attorney, she'd be well qualified. Her rulings would be as progressive as possible, within the constraints of the law. And a SCOTUS job would keep both her and her undisciplined hubby out of the executive branch altogether. And out of the campaign. It'd be a total win-win.

Embitterment and "Elitism"

Barack Obama is in hot water over his suggestion that working-class voters are bitter over their economic disenfranchisement and that they're seeking solace in such distractions as guns, God, and religion. Here's the quotation that's causing the brouhaha, in case you're even further behind the news than I am:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
(Source: Time)

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic rightly points out that the trigger words here are "bitter" and "cling." Also "guns" and "religion," which suggests we're in big trouble if you can't even mention either term except to praise them. I'll get to them too in a moment.

Aren't people embittered? On this score, Obama said nothing new. It's basically the same argument that Thomas Frank put forth a few years ago in What's the Matter with Kansas? Frank himself, interviewed by Sam Stein for the HuffPost, confirmed that he found a country rife with bitterness when he researched his book. Even apart from economic issues, there's plenty of cause for embitterment, starting with our lost war and eviscerated Constitution, and ending with eight lost years when it comes to energy independence and climate control.

"Cling" was a crappy choice of word, and I won't try to defend it. It makes people sound weak - and who wants to see themselves as a weakling? Had Obama left out that word, he might've avoided this shitstorm. Instead, both of his opponents immediately attacked him as "elistist."

Democratic guru Bob Shrum points out at the HuffPost that it's the other two candidates, Clinton and McCain, who are far more deeply rooted in the economic and political elites:

Ironically, Obama's the one raised by a single mother. He's the one who only recently finished paying off his student loans. He doesn't know what it's like to have $100 million. The opponents who are attacking him are the ones who inhabit that financial neighborhood. ...

The Clintons haven't lived in the real world for at least twenty-five years; they've been in a bubble surrounded by aides moving from one mansion to another. This doesn't mean they don't care or can't empathize. But it does make it awkward to damn the guy who was a community organizer helping laid-off steelworkers as someone who is out of touch.

The Clinton-McCain axis can portray Obama as elitist partly because it's clear to them, and to much of America, that as a half-black man Obama can't be part of the working class, no matter how humble his origins. This assumption is rooted in real material conditions, on one level: Those laid-off steelworkers are overwhelmingly white men. But it's primarily ideological. Ever since the Reagan era, many white Americans "know" that poor blacks belong to the underclass. It's evident that Obama's too well-educated for that, so he must belong to the elite. There's no middle ground in this ideological binary, which of course willfully ignores the actual existence of America's black middle class.

The elitism smear sticks a bit too easily to Obama because his education left an imprint on him that's familiar to anyone else who's enjoyed a highly privileged education. I didn't go to Columbia and Harvard Law, but I did study at two fancy-pants private universities (with oodles of financial aid, which Obama must have received too). I recognize his ability to project an almost aristocratic intellectualism and an aura of deserving to lead - both of which are by-products of that sort of rarefied education. I suspect this is just as recognizable to people who've been shut out of privilege. To the extent this inspires resentment, Obama's opponents can exploit it.

Probably more importantly, as long as Clinton and McCain are willing to kowtow to unreason and anti-intellectualism, they can paint Obama as elitist merely because he refuses to genuflect guns and fundamentalism. But why do "guns" and "religion" set people off? Why does their mere mention make a candidate vulnerable to charges of elitism? Like opposition to immigration, which Obama also cited in his remarks, NRA-style pro-gun advocacy and fundamentalist religion are rooted in profoundly irrational human impulses. These are pre-Enlightenment refuges.

By contrast, Obama expresses a faith in human reason, decency, and civil discourse that's rare in our political culture. This, more than anything, may be what's read as elitism. We live in a time when reason, intellectualism, and science have all been smeared with the mud of elitism. The Republicans have succeeded brilliantly in discrediting all of these things as weapons that a powerful class of liberal intellectuals wields against the common man. In fact, this is all a smokescreen for the Republicans' own manipulations, but that doesn't hamper them from casting people like me (me!?!) as the enemy of ordinary people. Does it make any sense? Let's just say I haven't shipped anyone's job overseas lately. Does that matter? Heck no.

Seen from this angle, a certain kind of elitism - leadership, myth-busting, wisdom, and discernment - might be just what's needed to dismantle the illusions the right wing has constructed. I'm not much of a Marxist, but the old Marxian notion of "false consciousness" doesn't seem like an entirely wrong label for those illusions. I'd prefer to see myself as a radical constitutional democrat (small D, this time). But when people have been so thoroughly misled about their own interests that they consistently vote against it, maybe a dose of benevolent elitism might be a necessary corrective.

Non-dogmatic kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Democrats Rolling the in Racist/Sexist Mud

Via Art Levine at the Huffington Post, I read today of a new Pew Foundation report that casts a disturbing light on the role of race in this presidential campaign:

In particular, white Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim.
(quotation from the Pew Foundation)

So, this is pretty straightforward. Except I'm not sure how equal rights can be pushed too far; you're either equal - or you're not. (This is a corollary of: you're either logical - or you're not!)

In other words, Obama's Democratic foes are more likely than other Democrats to be racist, xenophobic, and religiously intolerant.

And would someone please explain to me: Why is it considered a smear to call someone a Muslim? I haven't known that many Muslims well. But those I've known (I'm thinking particularly of a straight-A student from Indonesia whom I had the pleasure of teaching last spring) have tended to be a heck of a lot more reasonable and open-minded than many people who claim to be Christians.

Interestingly, gender is playing a more benign role in Democratic voters' attitudes. Says the Pew Foundation:

Gender makes a significant difference in personal perceptions of Hillary Clinton. Democratic women voters are much more likely than their male counterparts to view Clinton as honest and down-to-earth, and they more often report that Clinton makes them feel proud and hopeful.

That is to say, gender is creating positive identifications. The reverse doesn't seem to be a big factor. Pew notably does not report that Obama supporters tend to be more sexist than the average Dems. Instead, they found the reverse correlation:

Democrats with more liberal views on interracial dating, the country's pursuit of equal rights, and even the question of whether men make better leaders, hold a more favorable opinion of Obama than do Democrats with conservative views on these questions. [My emphasis.]

By contrast, most of these values are only weakly related to favorability ratings of Clinton. Taken together, they give little indication of a Democratic voter's impression of Clinton.

Given the relative youth of Obama supporters, this seems to reflect generational change, with young people rejecting their parents' and grandparents' tired old racism and sexism. I like to think that's true, and this Pew survey happily bears it out. (Follow the links for the detailed data, which show a striking generational shift away from open prejudice.)

Obama Breaks the Race Taboo

We live in a country where race is omnipresent but, as I've argued before, we rarely talk about it in constructive ways.

Yesterday Obama broke that taboo. If you still haven't seen his wonderful, not-digestible-in-sound-bites speech, here it is. You'll find links to the transcript below the video player.



You can read the full text of Obama's remarks at the Huffington Post or at his campaign's website.

Rence pointed me to reports at the Daily Kos that Obama wrote the speech himself, the first time a national politician did this for a major address since Nixon. I find it alarming that we have to hark back to Nixon as a sort of role model, albeit an evil one.

I'm not sure I've ever heard such a nuanced political speech - and I've only rarely read such an eloquent and precise analysis of the convoluted politics of race in America. I could easily assign it for one of my classes. His speech reflects the concerns of an intellectual deeply committed to public service, and not the pandering impulses of political consultants and speechwriters. I do recognize that speechwriters play a vital role, but this speech is wonderful precisely because it was shaped by Obama's principles and biography, not by focus groups.

My favorite parts are his analysis of white working-class and black resentment. He acknowledges both, which is exactly what has to happen if we're ever to move beyond it, and he also explains where they come from, historically. His point about the lack of opportunities for black families to accumulate wealth is one I make whenever I teach about race, though I use the example of my grandpa who bought Standard Oil stock around 1900, when most black Americans hadn't a penny to invest anywhere.

And boy - don't all of us have someone in the family tree who's prone to making impolitic and even offensive statements? (Venting is permitted on this in comments!)

Finally, I hope this speech lays to rest the pernicious idea that Obama believes that America is the Evil Empire. At times we've behaved like one; yet his candidacy expresses America's most generous impulses and reminds us that we all have better angels, individually and collectively.

In light of yesterday's speech, it's no longer possible to claim that Obama's call for unity is empty. It's not just acquiescence to mealy-mouthed bipartisanship in the style of Joe Lieberman. On the contrary, Obama calls us to work through some of the hardest elements in American history. As Jim Wallis wrote in the Huffington Post, he challenges us to bridge the gulf of ugly mistrust between blacks and whites that the fracas over his minister exposed again this week. That's not what I'd call capitulating to the Republicans. That's what I'd call transcending them.

But Sex Sells!*

This ad gets the distinction of "most sexist ad I've seen this week" ...



... and this one get the nod for "most racist."



Both ads via Feministing.

* The title of this post is courtesy of scores of students - mostly in the advertising sequence of the journalism major - who've argued that of course sex sells, so it's rational to make ads like this, and that's all you need to know about ads of this sort.

Breaking the Ties that Double-Bind Us

It sounds as though the Democratic candidates are trying to move beyond the race vs. gender sniping that threatened to mire the race in muck (though the media tried mightily to drag it there).

That's a relief. Not just because it's a mighty long time until November, and no one outside the media has the stomach for that much ugliness. And not just because the Dems only stand a chance if they can avoid eating each other alive.

I'm glad mainly because the candidates' truce reopens a chance to talk about race and gender in more substantial and fruitful terms. One such way is to look at how race and gender impose double binds on people - create "choices" where no matter what one chooses, it's a lose-lose proposition.

Matthew Yglesias of the Atlantic has suggested that a black candidate is less subject to double binds than a female one because all he needs to do is avoid confirming stereotypes, while a woman who avoids the trap of appearing too girly will quickly be labeled heartless and calculating.

Leaving aside his assumption (which pervades most of the commentary) that one is either black or a woman but not both, he's right about women. Clinton has been called ruthless and robotic, yet as soon as her voice cracked in New Hampshire, the punditry pounced on this flash of humanity and called it weakness. As Jon Stewart hilariously pointed out, she didn't even shed any actual tears. Ironically, we've reached an age where it may actually be more acceptable for male candidates to cry than for women, so long as they don't totally lose it. Maybe this is because by the time a male politician attains national prominence, he's already proven his masculine bona fides.

Women also face more pressure than men to prove they're ballsy enough to be commander-in-chief. Now, for purely anatomical reasons, this is tricky any day of the week. But in this election cycle, it's a true double bind: Clinton's macho posturing on foreign policy will never be enough to persuade voters who think women are too hormonal to deal with war and peace, but it surely will cost her a heap of votes, mine included.

For a black candidate, though, the situation is more complicated than Yglesias allows. Yes, Obama will have to dismantle straightforward stereotypes, such as the manufactured story that he's really a closet Muslim. But he also faces some true lose-lose choices.

Last week in my classes, my students had some perceptive things to say about precisely how Barack Obama is constrained by racialized double binds. For one, they noted that his bi-racial status can function in this way. Obama can lay claim to being black and thus fit cleanly into our pre-established categories but deny an important part of his own personal history. Or he can acknowledge his dual heritage, which however might imply he's trying to pass as white and deny his connection to the African-American community.

In my own view, the most important double bind that Obama faces is that he's criticized - often by fellow Democrats - for trafficking too much in the rhetoric of hope and unity. He's seen as not aggressive enough. He appears too nice. But let's imagine an aggressive black man. What image does that call up: A polished politician who knows how to win an election? Or a cocky pimp from the 'hood?

And so this particular double bind condemns Obama to take the high road. On the one hand, I'm afraid that this double bind will tie his hands if he wins the nomination and the Republicans try to Swift-boat him into oblivion. On the other, I'm grateful for his rhetoric of hope. We could all use some.

For this Martin Luther King Day, Obama delivered a beautiful and gutsy speech (via Pam Spaulding at Pandagon, who has great commentary on it). In calling for the black community to rid itself of homophobia, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia, Obama said:

So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others – all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face – war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.

Let us begin to bind those wounds and break those double binds.

Race and Gender on the Campaign Trail

Gloria Steinem lit a minor firestorm a week ago when she argued in a New York Times op-ed piece that sexism is trumping racism in this season's primary campaign. True, she noted halfway through her piece:

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.

But she also stated:

Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House.

Steinem got plenty of richly deserved flak - even from her own goddaughter, Rebecca Walker - for playing the "I'm more oppressed than you" game. (Check out the links for some great critiques of her piece. They hash it out so thoroughly and well that I really can't add anything.)

In response to a piece on Alternet by Sally Kohn, Steinem did back off from her latter statement. But as Kohn and others pointed out, the rest of Steinem's op-ed built an argument for sexism being more pervasive, virulent, and persistent than racism, based on such evidence as African-Americans gaining suffrage 50 years before women. (Never mind that Jim Crow laws prevented many African-Americans from actually exercising the right to vote until a good 100 years after they won it.)

Arguing that sexism trumps racism is just plain stupid. For one thing, it doesn't describe the real world. Sometimes racism is obviously more salient than sexism. For example, very few women have been targeted as potential shoplifters and tailed by retail clerks or even store detectives just because they're women. This has happened to a great many African-Americans just because they're black - irrespective of how well-dressed they may appear, which says this is about race rather than social class.

Secondly, it's politically simpleminded to pit race against gender. If the Democrats want to retake the White House in the fall, they've got to ditch their traditional circular firing squad behavior. Why should the Republicans stoop to divide-and-conquer tactics when the Democrats are busy doing the job for them?

I think the reason Steinem's op-ed nonetheless resonated with some women - including some young feminists who really ought to know better - is that Hillary Clinton's gender really has been a liability in certain ways. This is particularly true if you look at some of her treatment by the media. Exhibit A: Maureen Dowd's latest column in the New York Times (which Jon Swift spoofed marvelously). Exhibit B: This cartoon, which appeared in the Washington Post last week:

Exhibit C: Washington Post Columnist Joel Achenbach, who suggested Clinton "needs a radio-controlled shock collar so that aides can zap her when she starts to get screechy" (via Feministing). Exhibit D: Any broadcast featuring über-blowhard Chris Matthews, who outdid himself last week when he attributed Clinton's New Hampshire primary win to sympathy she gained due to her husband's infidelity.

I think it's also fair to say that certain overtly sexist verbal slurs are still acceptable in a way that the "N" word is not. In fact, the term "bitch" is increasingly allowable in polite company, on TV, and in public places. The media have largely given this a pass. Sure, they reported on the incident where a McCain supporter asked the candidate, "How do we beat the bitch?" and both McCain and the crowd laughed in response. Now, maybe McCain laughed partly in embarrassment. Let's give him that much benefit of the doubt. But swap the N-word for the B-word and imagine the outcry had the same question been asked about Obama. You can be pretty sure McCain would've reacted much more soberly. And might the media have kept the story alive for more than 24 hours?

But racism is equally potent in this campaign. It's just expressed in somewhat different forms. We need to be able to acknowledge that racism and sexism don't need to look the same to be equally pernicious. And apart from overt racism on Fox News, it's less the media than Clinton's supporters who are playing the race card.

For the past few days, the Clinton-Obama mudslinging has occurred mostly on racial issues. While Obama's campaign has sought to make hay from Clinton's remarks that played down the importance of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, it's Clinton's people who have really made race an issue, and not in any constructive way. Probably the most egregious example of this is their repeated references to Obama's self-confessed cocaine use as a teenager. This *not* about drugs, though, or even Obama's character. It's about race. It plays into all those familiar stereotypes about black men as drug users, dealers, and gangstas. That's still just as true even if the Clinton ally invoking it is himself black.

In fairness, it's unlikely that Clinton herself is directing these racist attacks, and her husband has denied her involvement. But she's tolerating them from her underlings, despite calls from Obama's campaign to renounce them. Also to be fair, Obama has not denounced the media's use of sexist stereotypes, and he should. But sins of omission are not as severe as sins of commission. And so far you don't see him or his people feeding the sexist media beast.

Who wins in the gender vs. race wars? Not Clinton. Not Obama. But maybe Huckabee, McCain, or Romney.