Hillary is White
Zillah Eisenstein’s notion of gender decoys was very important to me (and my esteemed editor, De) in writing Sex & War, the book I did a couple years back on gender and militarism. So I am happy that Eisenstein has weighed in over at Commondreams on the execrable race-baiting of the Clinton primary campaign.
It seems clear that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president this fall. Nevertheless, it is crucial to clarify how wrong-headed Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been so that the legacy she leaves does no more damage to a multi-racial, multi-class based feminism/womanism both here and abroad.
None of the pundits and journalists appears to be wondering and worrying about black women in this post-Indiana-North-Carolina-West-Virginia moment. Instead, all eyes, and especially Hillary and Bill’s are on the so-called “white-hard-working working class”. Hillary’s preoccupation with white voters is a dead give-a-way of how she thinks about gender, and being a woman. Gender is white to her, like race is black. Bill and Hillary Clinton have thrown African-Americans to the wind because they thought they could play the gender card with its history of whiteness and win.
And here lies the rub. Hillary Clinton presents herself to the electorate as a woman. She argues that she wants to break the glass ceiling of/for gender. But the truth is that she is not simply a woman but both a woman and also white. The very fact that she ignores her own race, in a way that Obama cannot, is proof of the normalized privileging of whiteness. In this instance white is not a color, but the color, the standard, by which others are judged. So she silently, inadvertently but knowingly, uses her color to write her meanings of gender and mobilize older white women and angry white men by doing so. She presents herself as a woman but her real …
Stan:
This one from Jeffery St. Clari.
21 May 2008, 6:54 amDeAnander:
This seems to me inevitable. HRC is de facto a gender traitor (in the eyes of the malestream) just by being An Uppity Woman with Public Visibility — hence the endless slurs on her inadequate-in-some-way femininity. If she tried to be a race traitor at the same time, i.e. expressed anything other than white supremacist (even if coded) opinions, then her campaign w/b stillborn among the white electorate… and we know that a large chunk of the Black electorate has been disenfranchised thanks to draconian policies suspending prisoner and ex-prisoner voting rights, so her campaign advisers would never suggest that she play to that demographic…
An anti-white-supremacist HRC would be both a race and gender traitor in the majority view, and that would be one strike more than Obama’s hapa phenotype. We could almost keep score with a chalkboard: 2 strikes against loses to 1 strike against.
There’s a set of criteria, not published but ironclad, for attaining high public office in the US. You have to be (publicly) straight, white (supremacist), (mainstream) christian, pro-zionist, (respectably) wealthy, pro-capitalist, US-exceptionalist, and male. So… HRC fails to be male, Obama fails to be white; but she compensates by being stagily hawkish (threatening Iran, etc) and borrowing a few bars from the Iron Lady dance number popularised by M Thatcher — and he compensates by publicly dissociating from “too”-radical Black public figures, talking “unity,” and stressing the preppy/corporate looknfeel that makes him a “safe Black man” in the eyes of (some, not the hardcore racists of course) white Amurkans… As to the rest of the checklist, both of them wave the christian, zionist, US-exceptionalist, and capitalist flags, both are from wealthy backgrounds. I’d be amazed if we saw anything other than what is happening: half-bricks flying back and forth between the two campaigns, targeted at the weak spots of gender and race. After all, the candidates agree on everything else.
I hope to be proven wrong, but I expect absolutely nothing in the way of meaningful foreign or domestic policy change from a Dem Party Machine win; maybe a holding action, i.e. policies don’t get radically worse [though from where the US is now, "radically worse" is kinda hard to imagine w/o crawling back into bed and pulling the covers over one's head]. McCain is scary enough to make the Demo-rats look good, but that ain’t saying much. My only hope is that masses of people who really did believe the “change, change” hype from the O campaign will get so pissed off when nothing really happens, that they will upset the apple cart. But this is the US we are talking about, so more likely they will just get alienated, relapse into apathy and cynicism, and never vote again. Call me a pessimist (I am) but
as soon as the smoke from the funeral clears
we’re all gonna see (and how!)
she [/he] did nothing for years
it seems to me, will be a fitting eulogy for either of the leading contenders. I’m not sure anything else is possible. The power of one individual pol, even in the highest office in the land, is tiny compared to the enormous cultural inertia of a civilisation facing a radical course change (back to Diamond and Tainter). All of US policy is geared around finance capitalism and the myth of the vulgarisation of the AWOL. Those fundamental myths about energy, power, and entitlement remain unchanged until physical reality intervenes (which could be soon), but no individual, no matter how charismatic, has the power to overturn them. I think we overestimate the power of Presidents. Change comes from below.
21 May 2008, 12:33 pmCharles:
Sojouner Truth would be proud of
21 May 2008, 1:17 pmZillah Eisenstein
Charles:
It is
not surprising that it is older white women who disproportionately support
her. They identify with old notions of womanhood-a homogenized notion that
all females share an identity, and race and class are not connected issues
to be named and spoken. This is why younger women and progressive women
from the civil rights and women’s movements, some of whom are older,
disproportionately support Obama.
^^^^^^
This is a good article. The author might add here that Black women, of all ages and classes, are voting for Barry overwhelmingly.
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-May/028541.html
21 May 2008, 4:12 pmpeggy:
One small correction:
“both are from wealthy backgrounds” is slightly misleading. Obama did not come from a wealthy family, and he has no kin among wealthy or politically well connected people. Obama is “from below” as much as anyone writing here.
21 May 2008, 7:26 pmDeAnander:
Obama’s personal fortune is not as large — by a big margin — as HRC’s, certainly not nearly so large as McCain’s. His personal fortune is not inherited from generations of blue-bloods and elite thieves (like the Bush family fortune). Still, with assets of about 7.35 million dollars, he is hardly in the same league as myself or — I fancy — anyone else writing here. $1M would be a fortune beyond my personal dreams of avarice; I wouldn’t know how to begin to manage (or spend) $7M. So to me, “they’re all wealthy.”
What I mean is that I doubt Obama has ever had to worry about being able to afford dental or medical care, paying the rent/mortgage, the cost of heating fuel, becoming homeless if he loses his job, or whether his pension will be enough to live on. Same is true of all the other Prez candidates in living memory, so that is not to pick him out as Mr Moneybags. But still, from where I sit the guy is fabulously wealthy. I’ve never personally known anyone worth $7M, has anyone else?
BTW “wealthy background” does imply family fortune and I apologise for a poor choice of words; what I shoulda said was “from a wealthy milieu,” “from the upper class,” or “from the affluent class.” Even the nouveaux riches are still pretty darned riches. I know plenty of people who are now affluent but were not so in their childhood, or whose parents were not wealthy, yet they still have all the attitudes and prejudices of the rich (and that’s with only moderate bourgeois affluence, not $7M or more)… of course in US culture even the poor can have the attitudes and prejudices of the rich, as many commentators have pointed out, since that is the POV the media feed us relentlessly…
21 May 2008, 8:18 pmpeggy:
Actually, De, I do know someone who is “worth” more than 7.65 million dollars. That person got to that point by dint of high intelligence, knowing what they wanted, and being in the right place at the right time. Also, that person is a highly moral person. I know that person very well. You may well be acquainted with such a person, too, but just do not know how much money they have in the bank. Such people generally do not display their personal wealth.
Forgive me for saying this, but I think you are exhibiting a certain amount of class prejudice, talking about “the attitudes and prejudices of the rich” without specifying what those attitudes and prejudices are, nor why they are not shared by people with less money. Some very stupid people, like G.W.Bush or Paris Hilton, without any discernible personal classiness, are on great display before our very eyes – showing what? Mainly that if you have a rich daddy, you can get away with anything, if that Daddy doesn’t specially care about you, and/or is not too smart himself.
What Obama has is *knowledge* acquired through education and incidentally through living in different parts of the world. Additionally he has tremendous *intelligence*, which in turn is a mysterious thing that some people are just born with. Finally, he has particular *values* acquired through upbringing. Maybe he really wants to make the world a better place, just as you do, and sees a way that he might do that, just as you do. Your brilliance is displayed in your thoughts and actions regarding food and biology. His brilliance is displayed in his campaign organization, which in turn is a great, history-making feat of teamwork, with a great team. To make the world a better place, what we need is teamwork, good teamwork, is basically what his campaign message is.
I understand your skepticism regarding the ruling class, and anyone who manages to break into it. Such skepticism will always, always be needed. Humanity simply cannot get along without it. I just don’t share with you this level of skepticism.
There are genuine revolutions in the course of human history, and I think the Obama phenomenon may be one. He has gotten the great bulk of his campaign money via small, personal donations, and that is a revolution right there. Others will certainly follow his lead, for better or worse. But the hegemony of personal wealth, acquired through inheritance or through unscrupulous means, is well and truly broken. Obama has been assisted in his past, prior to his presidential campaign, by unscrupulous people. But he has disowned all of that now. He doesn’t need it. If he gains the presidency, he will not be beholden to any lobbyists or big corporations.
Maybe personal arrogance will bring him down. But he has blazed a trail, and I am sure that American politics will never be the same after this.
21 May 2008, 10:48 pmpeggy:
p.s. De, you are unnecessarily demeaning yourself by saying you would not know how to handle seven million dollars. You certainly could handle it. All you need is an understanding of math, and basic common sense.
Getting it is the hard part. Too often, the acquiring entails hurting or cheating other people, which is one of the reasons why neither you or I is personally wealthy. But sometimes, just sometimes, the right door is opened for the right person – a decent, intelligent person. Then the right thing to do is to help that person, with whatever useful knowledge or skills or small bit of money you have,to achieve a goal that person has, that you also believe in. Just my opinion.
21 May 2008, 11:04 pmJames M:
I know a multimillionaire. Quite beloved by me, and one of the kindest, most enlightened people I know, actually; but s/he shares a condition I think is near-universal to people in that stratum of affluence: Being naively, embarrassingly out of touch with what the average person goes through. Wealth commands obedience, and so this person can simply aim a stream of money at any problem they might have, and poof! Magically it goes away. This person never, or seldom, sees the process between his/her wish and the enactment of that wish — or the life & struggles of the person who implements it for them. All this power over others is, by the way, actually a kind of weakness in many respects.
Like I said, it’s a condition that’s near-universal among the affluent, be they good-hearted or not, and I seriously doubt if Obama is immune to it. And while I hesitate to speak for De, this, I think, might be part of what’s meant by “the attitudes and prejudices of the rich.”
Obama has been assisted in his past, prior to his presidential campaign, by unscrupulous people. But he has disowned all of that now.
Can you expand on this? Evidence, please?
Look, I can see that the back-and-forth between the Obama’s True Believers and Doubting Thomases is mostly futile; if he’s elected, we’ll know in about a year or two what the score is, anyway. But in the meantime, whether we think he’s the Second Coming or Just Another Damn Politician or something in between, can we all simply agree that he’s not, by himself, going to solve the mountain of problems bearing down on this country? This state? This town? This household? What I mean is, I really *hope* that all this *Hope* Obama’s inspiring doesn’t translate into a kind of idle expectation that things will just get better.
I don’t think anyone who frequents this site believes that; I think a lot if not most of Obama’s followers, however, do. I think the activities this site tends to advocate, which correspond to the things which are more under our control (re-localization, preparing for peak oil, disembedding from the fake speculative economy, permaculture, community-building, etc.,) are going to have a much greater impact on our lives in the future than who wins the presidency.
22 May 2008, 1:16 amxenia:
I find the attempt to defend some of the moneyed class on the basis of their personal qualities morally despicable. Whether their money was inherited or earned by hard work (haha, I know they weren’t scrubbing toilets, whereas I did it to survive) is pretty much irrelevant to me.
This dream — the fantasy of becoming wealthy, or of having good-hearted wealthy friends/lovers, has made the US middle classes utterly heartless toward the poor.
As far as I am concerned, anyone who wants to join the top of the US society should not complain about what they are doing.
22 May 2008, 1:43 amxenia:
ps i speak seven languages and have lived in a bunch of countries. even with an ivy league phd (made during and after the aforementioned toilet scrubbing), i never made more than 23,000 USD a year. i won’t even bother to calculate how many years of my life-energy would be necessary to have a million dollars sitting in my account, since i consider my personal stuff as somewhat irrelevant and largely dependent on luck and the geopolitical decisions of the moment.
but now that i have travelled beyond europe and seen 70-year old men and women working as physical laborers in thailand or bagging food produce in a supermarket while standing all day in the us (in europe, they would at least give them a god-damn chair), i don’t “buy” the myth that hard work pays off. not after seeing that and then hearing people who went to school with me saying: “i worked really hard to get where i am” when their first job was at the wall-street, gotten through connections and diligent ass-kissing during internships.
but maybe i am gravely mistaken, and that ass-kissing qualifies as hard work and an exercise in creativity. maybe i am just not beautiful or good enough to join in.
22 May 2008, 2:01 amStan:
John Wesley said, “If I go to my grave with a single shilling, you can call me a thief and a liar.” His last six pounds were used to pay vagrants to be pallbearers. I love that story.
James makes the point, methinks. On money. Having it positions one in the money-system; and having lots positions one differently. Position inevitably forms attitude.
I used to see this awful bumper sticker, “Mean People Suck.”
Last week, I was working in a very shall-we-say comfortable neighborhood, where a third-acre lot with a portapotty will fetch $700,000. The people there go to boutiquy shops and restaurants, consider themselves progressive (more on this pernicious idea in a bit), and are always friendly and happy-acting.
Y’know why? Because they almost always have a really nice, non-stressful day. And most of them have not a ten-cent clue about the daily lives of their gardeners and nannies, when they are not there — there being at the comfortable person’s house, working, away from their own homes and kids.
Those mean people who “suck” (think on that little term for a sec) are most generally mean because — for one reason or another — things are pretty shitty and worrisome for them.
Now… progress.
Charles is doing the tautological flip, I’m afraid. Claim to support “progress,” then define progress as what he supports.
But “progress” is, was, and will be defined as “advance” and-or “improvement.” In this culture, it means — and always has meant — the simultaneous valorization of a putative escape from nature and denigration of any who did not measure up. You can give it all the personal redefinitions you like… and you can ignore Soviet industrialization, or CPUSA “industrial concentration” as part of an ongoing apologetic. But the cultural meaning is clear and present.
That’s why the idea of progress was a natural for eugenics until the Nazis came along and messed it all up by going so over the top. Human evolution is not defined in our cultural consciousness as emergence or change or diversficiation; it is defined as Advancement, ie, superiority and domination (not surprisingly, this corresponds historically to various imperial projects). Thermodynamically, of course, it is exactly the opposite… but even that is a valuation, no? The Spencerian mapping of Darwin onto cultural evolution is the very essence of the notion of cultural progress. That’s why I include Amy Laura Hall’s work on this, ecclesiastical as it may seem to folks here. The family we hold up as ideal, including the kids in those families, are implicitly (even explicitly) seen as superior to the kids who are from other kinds of families… and this pernicious, awful, inhumane shit is part of the progress-meme.
I had this run-in with a friend a while back… painfully. People in my family have never “planned” a family (hear the echoes of rational management there?). And the pruveyors of “progress” judge those unplanned families as RE-gressive. Throwbacks. Atavists. Backward. Less-valuable.
No more “come as you are” to humanity. The implication, getting back to those boutiquy-people, is that only the humans who have the means and education and willingness to discipline themselves to the notion of Progress are even entitled to live. And you can trace this attitude right back into both liberalism and conservatism as we popularly understand it. It is embedded in modernism, in the notion of civilization, and in industrialism. Conservatives are often more honest about their attitudes; liberals are often more willing to use these lesser-ones as foils to demonstrate their own magnanimity and… I love this word, tolerance. We, the unplanned atavists, are tolerated.
Is there class resentment in my response? You bet. Can I get past it with forgiveness? Yes, but I’ll have to say… it’s a challenge.
22 May 2008, 6:22 ampeggy:
Who said anything about the virtues of hard work? Not me. Any sane and intelligent person hates hard work of any kind. This is the fundamental tenet of a religion newly adopted by me. Xenia, your writing shows that you inhabit the most literate of the top one percent of Americans. Your literacy will get you some kind of desk job, anyway. I’ll bet you’ve read ten times more books than toilets you’ve scrubbed. Please don’t take this speculation as an insult. James, there are many ways that the large number of millionaires in the world today can be classified and characterized. But it’s there in plain numbers on the websites of many popular newspapers. There are two types of millionaires: 1) those who were born to millionaires, 2) those who were born in more humble circumstances. Of those two types, which of the two would you expect to be more intelligent and accomplished? Don’t look it up!
22 May 2008, 6:37 amWinston Warfield:
“The implication, getting back to those boutiquy-people, is that only the humans who have the means and education and willingness to discipline themselves to the notion of Progress are even entitled to live.”…
22 May 2008, 10:00 amand so we have both Dem prez candidates, ironically symbolic of oppressed population sectors here in Americorp, enthusiastic about Progress, madly endorsing what amounts to (here’s that radioactive word) “genocide” against Iraqis and Palestinians. The scene: in Obama’s case, people who look like him; and in HRC’s, women (and kids) cowering under the AC130 Spectre gunships. I mean, to the extent that language has any meaning and value anymore, genocide is what it is. Just because it’s stretched across a longer historical window, and/or takes different forms over time (seige, starvation, ethnic cleansing, military slaughter), than the historically accepted ones, doesn’t alter its actualization and meaning for the victims. This is why I’m so abysmally disgusted with this crop of candidates, and have absolutely given up hope for any macro-solution within the current toxic paradigm. It isn’t for me even about amelioration, or stumbling-through, or “lessening the effects”, any more. Democracy is now just a brand, and that brand is in service of mass murder. Words like these are what are need to be slung into the public discourse, chewed and fought over. This blogsite is one of the few places where people actually have a clue, so I guess there is some hope. And I’m sorry to have to piss off Obama’s supporters, but unless they can come up with a counter to what is his unequivocal support for crimes against humanity, then I hold my ground. I would rather see him tell the truth and probably go down in flames, than get the big desk and (maybe, but unlikely) slow the torrent of blood and misery.
John Lee:
Frankly I don’t give a gd whether Hillary or Obama is a white woman or a black lesbian or a misching hetero! What I do care about though is what they have to say on a large range of subjects including: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran, Nuclear disarmament, UN relations, trade policy, ethanol subsidies, energy policies, health care reform, education, transportation, campaign reform, banking treasury and finance regulation, and global warming. Have I mentioned enough important issues? I can go on in case anyones favourite issue has not been mentioned, but I don’t think I really need to. But the even bigger problem is why doesn’t anyone in the media hold the candidates feet to the fire about the significant issues facing us today? Why does the media get all wrapped up in flag pins, crazy pastors, supposed racists tendancies, which candidate is truly more god-fearing if they aren’t closet muslims, character flaws and pimples on their asses.
22 May 2008, 12:29 pmStan:
Get your point, John; but its not totally honest to suggest that there is nothing going on here except an election run by the — surprise surprise — white male bourgeoisie. Not exactly a news flash.
It is inescapable and therefore pertinent that Clinton IS a woman and Obama IS Black. You can’t abracadabra that away with a dismissive prologue. These conditions mean something.
There is something more going on, however; and it does matter… because it matters to millions and millions of people. Policy is not the ONLY thing. The attention, orientation, and preoccupations of the masses matters, too. Maybe more, and maybe more significantly than our systemic analyses at the end of the day.
There’s trees, but there’s also a forest.
Vijay Prishad’s piece in today’s Counterpunch makes no apologies for the process or the system, but the article makes the clear and absolutely correct point that this election matters to a lot of people — Black people especially — in very important and historically contingent ways (even if VP is more optimistic about the meanings than I am).
Here’s what is nagging me on this election, and why I think empirically reducing it is a mistake: Everyone’s intuitions and assumptions about the issues of race and gender have been blunted and bewildered by the longed-after belief that maybe, just maybe, some shit changed somewhere along the way. That’s why the C-word, change, even though we can objectively demonstrate its vapidity, is a reflection of a real and powerful need deep inside the culture to absolve itself. This longing is a Good Thing once the rationalizing clutter is swept off of it, even if we have the lefty (and boy) tendency to belittle those mushy intangible affective phenomena and favor good, clearheaded facts stacked on facts.
This election is incinerating that longed-for belief.
All the work of the media — where we are inundated with “its all in the past” race/gender reconciliation propaganda– shot to shit in one election, where the demographic numbers emerge like an infective pus from the polls, polls that show clearly, it is not – repeat, not — in the past.
It’s not the change in Obama’s phrasemongering. But this unmasking is a change in the body politic itself. I wouldn’t dare give a prognosis of this change, but it will engender sequelae… and we ought to pay attention.
22 May 2008, 6:44 pmpeggy:
One of my genuine beliefs is that everything is always changing – everything in the universe and every human being and larger structure on earth. Some things change incrementally and some things change quickly. Nobody can predict how change, big or small, will happen. Only the fact of change itself is absolutely predictable. A person can try, and every person does try, to influence the direction of short term small changes. Politics in the U.S. is changing and will continue to change. Race relations and gender relations are tough as can be, with different crowds pulling in different directions, but in the end, more than Brownian motion will be involved in the long-term trajectory of such things, I think. This is because, in evolution, nothing once done can be undone. The process blindly builds on what has gone before, all those things that happened in the past that cannot be undone. The fact of slavery in America cannot be undone. It is part of what Americans – African-Americans and Americans descended from European settlers, and the countless ones of “mixed” descent (and ultimately we are all of mixed descent) – have no choice but to build on, or build from. This biggest, worst historical fact about America, together with the facts of American militarism and imperialism, past and present, cannot be ignored. Most of those who post on this blog agree with that last assertion, I think.
Whoever becomes president in this next election will make a part of history that cannot be undone. Whatever whoever becomes president does in the years ahead will have big consequences that people during and after that person’s term will have to deal with. It’s easy to say that basically the system will not change, so why should anyone care who get elected this time round. I have ignored elections in the past, but this time I can’t. Neither can millions of other people in the U.S., and indeed around the world. Maybe we millions are deluded – how can I know? Undoubtedly some of us are. But maybe some of us aren’t. Maybe we see very clearly exactly what we have to do, just this once.
22 May 2008, 8:55 pmCharles:
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3602
Barack Obama Wins the Sojourner Truth Vote
Run Date: 05/16/08
By Rev. Valda Jean Combs
WeNews commentator
West Virginia primary polling data has underscored Hillary Clinton’s claim to the allegiance of white voters who aren’t comfortable with black leadership. Rev. Valda Jean Combs says that helps explain why so many black women are going for Obama.
WOMENSENEWS)–The post-primary polling data out of West Virginia this week has been hitting us with the central message that race strongly factored into Sen. Hillary Clinton’s lopsided victory.
So now, as the race cards are spread right out there on the national table, I have a question: Does anyone still wonder why so many black women are going for Sen. Barack Obama?
Some of Clinton’s backers this campaign season have tried to make a vote for their candidate seem like a vote for all women.
Younger women drawn to Obama’s message of change have demurred. So have peace activist women horrified by Clinton’s vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq.
Black women also have our own
24 May 2008, 11:43 am(see the rest)
Charles:
“Gender and Race in the Presidential Race”
Kudos to Rev. Velda Jean Combs for her article “Obama wins Sojourner Truth vote”.
With a woman and a Black person in the final contest for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Americans have two historic firsts before us. Thus, revolutionaries also face the dilemma of choosing between a potential reform of “sexism” ( genderism ) or racism.
The logical group to lead in making this choice are Black women, victims of both racism and genderism. Black women are voting overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, and radicals should follow their lead ( although the contest is actually over at this point).
Race in the Presidential Race
The Presidential campaign has the central issue of American history – race – in our faces. Race is always important in U.S. politics, but it is not always so explicit as in the current situation.
As Barack Obama’s slogan – change – appropriately declares, there is a potential big change, a possible reform of racism. To wit, a large number of white people are voting for a Black person for President. When White Iowans voted in a plurality for the Black candidate, they signaled that White Americans might be ready to make history this time.
Let me explain a little more. Major reforms of institutional or structural racism can only be made by shifts in the thinking , general conduct and political activity of white people . (And , yes,votes for powerful offices are institutional). It is not the activity and habitual conduct of Black and other people of color that constitutes racism. That is only reaction to racism. So, it will be a change in what white masses do in relation to people of color that will be the substance of reforming racism.
The current election is a major test of white masses: Are they willing to make a significant divestment of racism ?
The Democratic primaries have seemed to indicate that there are _W_hite people and there are _w_hite people. In Iowa and Oregon, the White people were in the majority. In West Virginia and Kentucky white people were in the majority. The historic question before us is : Will White people or white people pick the next President ?
24 May 2008, 2:37 pmJames M:
No more “come as you are” to humanity. The implication, getting back to those boutiquy-people, is that only the humans who have the means and education and willingness to discipline themselves to the notion of Progress are even entitled to live.
This, I think, is what’s behind so many superficially well-intentioned attempts at “developing” the so-called 3rd World, and yes — as said — the supposedly humanitarian rationale used to soften the image of so many imperial projects. E.g. A guest on NPR the other day said that the Iraq War was justified because the Iraqi people have “a right to live like we do.”
It’s as if the teeming masses of dark, impoverished Others only earn the status of human being, in the eyes of the 1st World, when they’ve got Ipods, cellphones, and a house full of plastic shit that they’ll throw away within a year of buying.
The rebuttal, of course, is that the rest of the world simply cannot live like America. Not ecologically possible, much less desirable. But the boutique-y lifestyle isn’t even something that can be attained by anything more than a minority of people in this country, no matter how much bootstrap-pulling they do. This is something that’s always seemed ridiculous to me about the right wing’s love of hating on the poor, of demonizing them as lazy and lacking in self-reliance and entrepreneurial spirit. The obvious fact that escapes them is that, as long as we live in a hierarchical society, some group of people has to occupy the bottom slot. This cannot be a nation of 300 million self-made millionaires. And that poverty is relative; poverty in this country is way different from poverty in Bangladesh, for example.
(Once I was in my father’s office, looking at photos on his wall from Vietnam. One was of a pair of women who came from their village every day to do laundry on the base. I asked him about their living conditions. I wanted to know, were they poor? “Yeah,” he replied. “But they didn’t know they were poor.” A little lightbulb went off in my head right then.)
I think this truism about the necessity of an impoverished class in a capitalist society is stashed somewhere in the back of the conservative brain, but is continually shouted down by the aforementioned rationalizations. A study came out recently claiming to show that conservatives were happier … precisely because of this ability to rationalize away inequality.
And while I’m at it, let me (apropos of not much) take a swat at this “Atlas Shrugged” notion that the “little people,” the ones who dream small, are the ones who handicap and hold back the uber-achievers. Good grief! It should be obvious that it’s the “little people” — the nannies, gardeners, laborers, middle managers, etc. — who enable the “grand achievements” and comfortable lifestyles of the rich, who (I’m told) got there “by dint of high intelligence, knowing what they wanted, and being in the right place at the right time.”
24 May 2008, 11:17 pmCharles:
By Rev. Valda Jean Combs
“Out of that demand grew the movement we call “womanism,” a term that Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Alice Walker coined in the introduction to her 1983 book “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose.”
Womanism recognizes that–at least for now–only black women can articulate the complex nature of our history, our theology, our community, our voice and the fierce power of our love.”
^^^^
28 May 2008, 4:38 pmCB: Here Sister Combs makes the point I tried to make a while ago concerning the terms “feminism” and “womanism”. Also, note that the significance of Alice Walker endorsing Barry Obama, another issue I tried to write here before. Alice Walker’s _The Color Purple_ and another piece are scathing indictments of some Black men’s male supremacist violence/rape vis-a-vis Black women. Thus my posts include implicitly criticism-self-criticism. She is clearly a Black radical womanist, as “radical feminists” here define themselves. That’s why her endorsement of Obama has extra-signifcance.
Charles:
http://www.uga.edu/~womanist/rodriguez2.1.htm
Anthropology and Womanist Theory:
Claiming the Discourse on Gender, Race, and Culture
Search WTR
by Cheryl Rodriguez
Anthropology is an ambitious science which, from its earliest origins, has sought to answer questions about the infinite complexities of the human experience. While scholars often trace the origins of the discipline to the Greek philosopher, Herodotus (5th century B. C.), there is evidence that every group of people (including those who would become the “primitive” subjects of anthropological inquiry) has questioned the human condition and sought to derive explanations for human behavior and human purpose. Thinkers from every group of existing people have sought to understand the meaning of human constructs such as kinship, war, migration, social structure, and political organization. Further, anthropological explanations of the human condition by nonliterate people have been expressed through art, mythology, religious practices, ceremonial displays, and, of course, through the oral tradition.
5 June 2008, 11:18 amShaukat:
Chomsky on Obama and the elections:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20080403.htm
5 June 2008, 5:50 pmCharles:
quoting Chomsky, “By that I mean the kind of objection that was universally expressed when the Russians invaded Afghanistan ”
^^^
6 June 2008, 12:37 pmCB: Opposition to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was not universal. This reminds of Chomsky’s atrocious anti-Sovietism and anti-socialism.
Charles:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-June/029586.html
McKinney congratulates Obama
10 June 2008, 3:47 pmCharles:
Barack Obama’s Record on Women’s Issues
From Women for Barack Obama
http://www.womenforbarackobama.com/
ANTI-VIOLENCE
Obama Passed Law to Help Combat Violence Against Women. Obama co-sponsored a bill that would authorize increased appropriations for FY2006-FY2010 for grants to combat violent crimes against women, revise provisions specifying purposes for grants to include use for under served populations and for forensic medical exams of sex offense victims, increase set aside amounts for grants to Indian tribal governments and U.S. territories and possessions, prohibit law enforcement officers, prosecutors, or other government officials from requiring sex offense victims to submit to a polygraph examination as a condition for proceeding with an investigation or prosecution of a sex offense. The bill would establish a sexual assault services program, directing the Attorney General to make grants to states, territories, and tribal entities for rape crisis centers or other programs and projects to assist those victimized by sexual assault, culturally specific community-based organizations for various services on behalf of sexual assault victims, and state, territorial, and tribal sexual assault coalitions. The bill would also award grants to accredited schools of medicine to develop interdisciplinary training and education programs that provide health professions students with an understanding of, and clinical skills pertinent to, domestic violence, sexual assault, and dating violence. [109th, HR 3402 (S. 1197), Passed by Unanimous Consent, 12/16/05; PL 109-162, 1/5/06]
and Obama sponsored or otherwise played a leading role in several other laws against violence against women or rape
18 June 2008, 8:57 amCharles:
Obama Passed A Law To Create The Victims Economic Security And Safety Act(VESSA), Which Helps Victims Of Abuse Seek Treatment Without Losing Their Job. Obama was the chief sponsor and voted to created the Victims’ Economic Security and Safety Act. The bill provided that an employee who is a victim of domestic or sexual violence, or who has a family or household member who is a victim of domestic or sexual violence, may take leave from work to address domestic or sexual violence by seeking medical attention or obtaining health or legal services. The Chicago Tribune reported, “But VESSA, as it is known, allows time off for personal issues not covered by the FMLA and is designed to help victims keep their jobs.” Obama said he sponsored the bill after being approached by several advocacy group for battered women. “They came to me and indicated how difficult it is for victims of physical and sexual abuse to deal with the repercussions of an assault and then try to balance it with work and everything else.” [93rd GA; HB 3486; 3R P 58-0-0, 5/20/03; Signed into law 8/25/03, PA 93-0591; Chicago Tribune, 8/20/03; University Wire, 8/22/03]
18 June 2008, 8:58 amObama Passed Law To Increase Penalties For Repeat Domestic Offenders. Obama was the chief co-sponsor and voted for House bill providing that domestic battery or a violation of an order of protection is a Class 4 felony if the defendant had a prior conviction for