Via email, this mildly humorous story found at not the wolverine:
Yesterday, TheNinja and I rode to Princeton for what has become a pretty regular weekend ride: ride – coffee – ride. Typically, we stop at Small World Coffee, so I can increase my bougy academic cred by drinking way too expensive organic fair trade coffee and listening to world music (and the baristas are way cute).
As we were putting our bikes by the door and removing our helmets to go in, I spied a woman talking on her cell phone with a button that read, “African Americans for Hilary Clinton.”
he was the typical bougy Princetonian: white.
I puzzled about this for a bit. Was this some sort of Princeton grad student irony? Does this woman feel the issues that affect the African-American community in a really deep way? Is it a little messed up that in a Democratic race that has come down to racial politics this woman is wearing an “African Americans for Hilary Clinton” button?
I stopped puzzling and went in to order coffee.
Whilst I was mulling over identity politics, racial politics, and their relationship to affinity, the woman had already gone in and was ordering.
TheNinja and I sat behind her in line and got treated to the most amazing exchange.
The very earnest barista took the woman’s order and then, having seen the button, said, “Are you supposed to wear that?”
I both gasped in horror and had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.
The woman was clearly upset.
The barista, realizing that this probably wasn’t the best thing to have said, tried to qualify, “I mean, don’t people typically wear ‘Women for Hilary Clinton’ or whatever group they are a part of?”
The woman clearly understood herself as too smart for such a pedestrian claim and tersely responded, “No, I support African Americans and I support Hilary Clinton.”
Her boyfriend had at this point appeared on the scene and tried to make light of the kind of tense situation in hopes of diffusing it.
They got their $5 coffee drinks and left quickly.
I ordered my coffee next and said to the now flustered barista, “I was kind of thinking the same thing.”
She remarked with surprise about the woman’s angry reaction.
I sat down with theNinja and talked biomechanics.
___
I sort of wonder about that exchange. On the one hand, I think it’s pretty damn righteous to call out the bourgeois liberal on identifying/occupying a position that she may not be able to claim but does so anyway because, like listening to NPR and eating organic flax seeds, that’s what you do when you’re a bourgeois liberal.
At the same time, I’m uncomfortable with specifying who can identify with what group based on my assumptions about his or her identity. It’s a little dangerous to start making claims about who can and cannot identify with what certain groups. Identity politics have their utility, but they tend toward the divisive and exclusionary by drawing lines and insisting on “authenticity” and “the real.” In doing so, identity politics can obscure the powerful ways in which identity is not some essence of our being but rather discursively constituted.
How “real” do you have to be to wear that Hilary Clinton button? Honestly, I don’t know.
[my emphasis]
Well, our narrator may not know how “real” one has to be to wear that Hillary button — or rather, he may find the question a difficult one, thanks to his having internalized so much of the convoluted social science on race and identity politics routinely preached from the secular pulpits of academe — but he’s in luck, because I know, and I’m willing to help out for well-under the going rate of a graduate school seminar on racialism or gender studies. And the answer, it turns out, is simple: to believe in race as a category beyond merely an accounting contrivance, you either believe race is an essential property, or else you believe it is a social construct.
To many contemporary social scientists and race theorists, the idea that “race” is something essential — that “blood” differences determine racial identity — is too close to the kind of thinking that has historically justified (and legally codified) separatism and, its civic offshoot, race-based social policy, bigotry, and racism. Which is why many theorists have worked so diligently to disarticulate race from blood, and reconstitute it as a product of human conception — a social construct — a maneuver that they believe allows them to rescue the category of race while simultaneously cleansing it of its least desirable attribute: the idea that it is somehow fixed and, by extension, determinative.
For my part, I’ve argued that the social construction argument for race — based as it is on dubious claims to history, memory, and heritage that collapse under the weight of logical analysis — is, at its heart, no different from the blood argument for race, in that both rely on an identical first cause, namely, an a priori belief in what one is.
And so it is no surprise that, when identity politics is situationally pressured, those who have bought into the rehabilitation of racial categorizations in its kindler, gentler sociological form, find themselves flummoxed by the persistent necessity of its essentialist underpinnings to be revealed in such things as coffee house anecdotes.
In this case (and to his credit), the author of the piece seems to be moving toward an epiphany — though his inculcation in postmodern epistemology, as it is traditionally (and lazily) taught, will require of him some extra work before he is able to place it, too, into its proper context.
But the fact of the matter is, these kinds of earnest, soul-searching “questions” are really nothing more than the intellectual backlash of social theory that is, at the outset, constructed out of flimsy material — causing identity politics practitioners (and their sociological handmaidens, the “social construct,” anti-essentialism crowd) to trip over the wreckage of what is the inevitable collision of their ideological world views, particularly when the conversation turns to the nature of “authenticity.”
Today’s academically-trained neo-racialists — good progressives with good intentions who demand what amounts to “blood” purity as part of the metric for authenticity — bump up against the underlying principles of their own ideology, which doesn’t allow for truly empirical categories (in the strictest sense), all categories being manmade and defined linguistically in a given context, under a given historical ethos, and inside a given cultural dialogic.
Of course, most of these anti-foundationalist folk never bother to follow the thread of their own beliefs to the inevitable bunching and snagging along the seams. Instead, they’re just in it for the fashion.
(h/t Adam)
****
update With the hope of helping Nishi work her way through my argument, more from the archives here and here.
I am going to start a Lesbian African American Women for Socialism coffee group. I intensely feel their issues.
I could probably have a lot of fun with a “White Women for Barack Obama” button.
Paging Perfesser Caric for a manly discussion.
you either believe race is an essential property, or else you believe it is a social construct
What it is, is something with fuzzy borders. It’s comparison that separates groups, and analogs that create groups.
“Are you supposed to wear that?”
Well, at least she wasn’t in blackface.
or rather, contrasts (vs. comparisons)
I find the phrase “supposed to,” as used here, almost Shakespearean in its pathos.
Jeff G – If they are not “supposed” to wear that pin, to whom are they supposed to direct the inquiries for permission?
I fucking love it when the lib identity groups collide.
Further, you project so as to see others, depending on perceived intellectual elitism, projecting race as an essential property or as a social construct. What’s more, only some may morally make that first essential projection. Secular pulpits, indeed.
That they project the right to so project only clarifies the, er, issue.
POLAR BEARS FOR BUKHARIN!
JD:
I fucking love it when the lib identity groups collide.
The Democrat Convention is gonna be a hoot.
Good to see you back, boss.
I’m busy transcribing some very interesting parts from Michelle Obama’s speech at UCLA (post and analysis to be later this evening) … here’s an interesting piece from Michelle’s list of Barry’s bonafides to run for office:
Sort of a reverse of Steve Martin’s “I was raised a poor black child”
Spiny – I have maintained that the Dem convention, if the selection goes to the floor, should be broadcast on PPV with Dana White and Joe Rogan announcing.
BTW – How great is it going to be to watch Jr win the Great American Race this afternoon?
“to whom are they supposed to direct the inquiries for permission?”
To a supervisory panel of “real people” of course – you know, not the kind of people you and I know, but people, who, through their struggle against oppression have found self-esteem (and not inconsequential teaching salaries) through non-white modes of self-expression like socialist poetry or anti-war dance or didactic street theatre or anti-male acapella or anti-capitalist indoor-deep-sea lesbianism.
are we sure it wasn’t Teresa Heinz Kerry wearin’ that button?
Had I been around, I woulda helped Billy Jack save the Freedom School.
BECAUSE OF THE CHANGYNESS!
“No, I support African Americans and I support Hillary Clinton.â€Â
Doesn’t this just mean that I am so not having this Baracky Obama bullshit but I’m supersophisticated see so no way am I gonna wear a Women For Hillary button cause that feels all racist and polarizey and I’m so not about that but it’s time for a goddamn woman president and y’alls is just gonna have to wait your fucking turn?
Also I do not know this word bougy.
Oh. Here we calls them coworkers.
Boogity, boogity, boogity
Let’s go racin’
For you JD
hmmmm
sry jeffie, but the Hapmap is real.
i completely dont unnerstand ur argument to Sailor.
/baffled
and if ur gonna read luigi-luca [cavalli-sforza]
this is much better
[…] A fun anecdote from a coffee shop. […]
GABACHOS POR CHE!
the inevitable bunching and snagging along the seams is pretty much what this sounds like they’re warning about here. No?
Race as a social construct.
Probably not in America. At least not in reference to Black and White.
But throughout the world and even in the U.S. for some groups, race is less about ancestry than it is about attitudes and beliefs.
For instance, throughout North Africa, the people are what we would in America label as white, black, “mixed-race” and many of them look like what some of us think Hispanics look like.
Yet they themselves self identify on the basis of language. If you speak Arabic you’re and Arab, whether your are very dark with African features or blond and blue-eyed. And if you don’t speak Arabic you’re African or Berber or a number of other ethnic categories.
Similarly in America, we make up silly ethnic and racial categories based on things like language and location. For example, Bobby Bonilla and Vincente Fox are both Hispanics as far as we’re concerned. Yet clearly one is of African descent and the other European.
Or and even better example, why is Barack Obama black? He’s (by blood) equally white and was raised by white people.
There’s nothing real about these categorizations. They’re just our perception. And the more people inter-marry, the less use we’ll for antiquated notions like race.
If you don’t understand my argument to Sailer, you need to try harder, Nishi.
And of course, absolutely no where do I deny that there are genetic variances. I just deny that they are tied to traditional ideas of “race” as that term has been culturally defined and utilized — which, as happyfeet points out, is the very argument being made in the excerpt from the site you linked.
Sailer doesn’t understand his own argument, is the problem.
They’re not just our perception. When you talk is it you talking or do you think you represent?
Um. Full disclosure. When I talk I’m pretty sure it’s just me.
nishi – I prefer Guido Sarducci.
What race is Tiger Woods ?
daleyrox – DW sure is fun to listen to. How could anyone not enjoy someone that is having that much fun ? That was pretty touching when he teared up talking about Senior in ’01.
’01 was a pretty shitty year. algore litigating an election. Senior dies. 9/11. My daughter’s birth saved the year.
okfine
feets, merci mille fois pour tous vos infintes des gentillesse
that helps A LOT.
i think….Salior defines race as genetically inherited..but jeffie’s definition of race is that it can be can be memetically (read culturally) inherited.
or expressed
for both definitions
“For my part, I’ve argued that the social construction argument for race  based as it is on dubious claims to history, memory, and heritage that collapse under the weight of logical analysis  is, at its heart, no different from the blood argument for race, in that both rely on an identical first cause, namely, an a priori belief in what one is.”
Scratch a lefty, find a fascist.
“What race is Tiger Woods ?”
IIRC, he told Oprah “cablasian” (caucasian, black, asian) which I interpreted as him clearly saying he didn’t want to be exclusively defined as associated with any one race.
I also seem to recall that Oprah wasn’t exactly pleased with his response. Understandably — how can someone be enlisted in the identity politics wars if he doesn’t pick a racial identity?
Check under your bed for the bougyman. Otherwise he might GET you while you sleep!
I believe it’s derived from “bourgeois,” and used among the hyperintellectualrrhoids with about as much connection to the true meaning of “bourgeois” as “fascist” has to its true meaning these days.
Sailer redefines “race” in a way that he admits Americans don’t (and won’t) recognize — and in ways that make determination of race by the average person inaccessible.
To which I asked him why he would bother attaching a new definition to a fraught and divisive signifier when a more accurate term to describe what it is he is talking about — say, hereditary genetics — would help move the discussion away from “race” (as it is commonly understood and opportunistically used).
Sailer wants to rescue the term “race” just as the constructionists do, and — in my opinion — for reasons just as self-serving and culturally minded. His is the “conservatives'” backlash to “progressive” racial politics, but it is still racial politics.
If Sailer were solely interested in the science, he’d see no need to keep the term “race” in play. Me, I’d like to see racial politics given a nice wake, then buried under a big slab of stone.
Are you saying I have to throw my ‘Igneous Rocks for Ron Paul’ button away?
im serious about luigi-luca…if ur gonna put in the work u shud read the best one, IMHO.
yessssss
this epiphanitic for me.
you and Steve using two different definitions of race.
i get it.
oh noes jeffie…i think Steve sees “race” as being coopted by the cultural evolution ppl, while he is a DNA purest, yah kno, out of africa, genetic drift, etc. etc.
hehe…YES!
i totally see Steve as a conservative geneticist.
i be an evolutionary theory of culture guerillero.
;)
i be an evolutionary theory of culture guerillero.
Or a pop science fashionista, getting kind of hard to tell.
see..there are conservative and liberal scientists too.
obama is not an african-american.
obama is a kenyan-american.
obama is not a descendant of slaves, and his forbears never suffered under jim crow, and never marched in a single civil rights march.
his biggest accomplishment to date is conning african-americans into believing he’s one of them.
hahaha
well….like the french say.
il faut suffrire pour etre belle
“Race” is not a scientifically rigorous category, and never was. Steve may see “race” as being “coopted by the cultural evolution people,” but it is just as fair to say that he is attempting to rehabilitate a concept of race that is tied to the beliefs of, say, the Klan, or the Nazis by insisting on terming hereditary or population genetics “race.”
Among people who look black, there are a variety of genetic differences (often tied to geography). Why would Sailer have us puzzling over many different black “races,” therefore, when he can simply detail “hereditary genetics,” and in so doing, make the older, less sophisticated essentialist arguments about race crumble?
Answer: because he wants to take back political control of the term from those he believes appropriated it. He is fighting a political battle over a concept that has never met the conditions of scientific rigor. In so doing, he weakens his own research by attaching it to such a fraught and abused signifier.
“Race†is not a scientifically rigorous category, and never was.
ok, right there.
wrong.
steve defines race as an extended consanguinous family.
that means alleles, bloodgroups, empirical data.
your definition of race incorporates cultural and memetic [unmeasureable] traits.
fuzzy race
heh
do u know fuzzy subset theory?
there are no fuzzy sets, only fuzzy subsets.
But leaves and roots are still all just tree. Little bits of branchy things are arbitrary. Just cause the roots have never seen the leaves doesn’t mean they have different DNA. Essentially.
No, nishi, YOU are wrong. “Race” is not a scientifically rigorous category. It started off as pseudo-science, and has since attracted to its bosom additional pseudo-science, in the guise of sociology.
None of which is to say that hereditary genetics is not a rigorous science. Not my argument, though you seem intent on believing it is. Instead, my argument is that “hereditary genetics” is not the same thing as “race,” particularly as “race” is commonly defined and understood (and how it was commonly defined and understood, even in the days before the constructionists got hold of it). Sailer himself admits this. Just before he tries to redefine “race” into something he wants it to be, based on the overlap between what population geneticists are doing and the kind of blood level categorizing common in early racial theory.
All definitions are cultural. There is no category of “race” that has been divinely determined and defined. Sailer would do well to call what he is studying hereditary genetics, and forget about the term “race,” which was a concept based on bad science. Otherwise he is simply adding to the confusion, and further enabling a broken concept.
Fantastic writing that makes me feel inadequate. Thanks alot Jeff.
hmmm
from back in the day when i was a gnxp co-blogger…i distinctly remember steve saying that race was extended genetic family. i thot that was a preety elegant description.
but such is the power of goldstenien neurolinguistic hackery….i find my self swayed to jeffies viewpoint.
the beauty and power of words.
i am not immune.
;)
We all know the one button that would never be permitted is “White Men for [Anything]”…
Thank you for these essays Jeff. I find myself borrowing your words when I talk about race with friends.
Lucky for me I’m no atheist. I believe in a stratified, universal order where humans are privileged above other animals, but we’re all equally flawed as compared to the Almighty. With that belief as a starting point, noting the genetic differences between individual humans seems rather petty, and bigotry/racism becomes utterly pointless.
Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but it’s a philosophy that’s served me well.
Also, this field is just riddled with comedic opportunity. When the lily-white Andy Levy deadpans on Red Eye, “Why Bill gotta perpetrate like we ain’t urban on Fox News?” it’s only funny because it highlights a collision of the two theories you write about. If he were a serious student of “race as a social construct” the humor would just evaporate. No joy. Secure the mirth!
I dunno, ask Halle Berry, who was raised by her white mother after her black father abandoned them both, yet it was her (biological) father’s putative “race” that she chose to honor when she won her Oscar.
Which pretty much supports Jeff’s argument wholeheartedly.
Whether it is determined by tribal association, familial matriarchy, or legal definition (the “one drop of blood” claim so prevalent a few decades ago), race is anything but an objective truth. It is purely a societal creation.
They have managed to trace back the various ethnicities to the original group in sub-Saharan Africa, using maternal genetic markers. That basically proves Jeff’s argument again – all humans are of the same race, with ethnicities defined as environment shaping the genetic mix to that which survives most successfully over millennia and travails. Geneticists have shown that it would take just two-to-three thousand years for external melanin content of human epidermis to change from Seal to Heidi Klum.
Would that society could change that rapidly.
Crazy yellow people walking through my head. One of them’s got a gun, to shoot the other one. And yet together they were friends at school.
haikuization
crazy yellow people walk
in happyfeets head
one shoots one falls sad school friends
I was channeling Seal, but I like yours better.
Words do work better when properly spelled, and strung together in sensible ways…
It started off as pseudo-science, and has since attracted to its bosom additional pseudo-science, in the guise of sociology.
What’s next?
Oh, yeah, the kettle of boiling oil.
Sorry, bosom. It was for your own good.
The reprehensibility of identity politics aside, I just came in to say I love the word bougy. Bougy bougy bougy. Whatta cool word. Like “smock.”
http://www.dontknockmysmock.com/
Night all.
btw i concede
i read all the linkage an jeff is right.
steve shud change his defn, race has been totally coopted by memedilution and memehybridization.
“It’s a gift. And a curse.” — Adrian Monk.
RE: comment #1 – I’m down w/ the lesbian part. I’ll bring my camera.
(Canon G9, 12mp!!!1)
What these disparate Identity politics groups battling it out reminds me of the various strains of Communism and their internicine struggles in the early 20th century. Except without the icepicks in the brain part. The new Marxists are such cowards, really. At least the USSR could command respect, because they’d actually try and kill you if you disagreed. These people are just posiers and pansies. Look how they bend over for Islamists. Russians at least know the Islamists need to be killed, rather than placated and catered to.
OK . . . I’ll say it–it is just me, or does Nishi remind one of someone else? She brings a certain “fr*sch-ness” to the proceedings. Or maybe I don’t stop by here enough, and it’s all some elaborate “in” thing that I just don’t get.
anyway, just sayin’ . . .
Maybe you should stop by more, really. nishi is without malice. She’s an Obamikin, don’t you know.
fair enough, Happyfeet. thanks for the clue-in.
nishi is without malice
awa .,:;'”?!
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
crazy yellow people walk
in happyfeets head
spring in their step and the ears
It really blows the whole concept of identity politics out of the water when someone of a mixed race (Tiger, Halle, Obama, etc.) has the ability to jump from one side of the fence to the other at will, collecting grass samples to see which one truly is greener on a given day.
Great post, Jeff. Sorry I’m such a stranger these days.
How “real†do you have to be to wear that Hilary Clinton button?
“Real fucked-up” comes immediately to mind, and it didn’t get any better from there.
It’s the color of your skin. Your skin is black metallic. Oddly, that lyric’s gotten me through.
Black metallic costs extra on the Volvo C30 and you have to also pay a “custom build” fee if you pick it.
Sorry ’bout the off-track; I’m just into Catherine Wheel tonite.
That’s ok. No idea who she is though. I will put her on my list under Clarence Carter’s Patches.
I was just reading through the comments of Dan’s post on Greenwald, and sure enough, one of Greenwald’s readers was over there attacking me — though I had nothing whatever to do with the post.
Man. I must really drive these folks batty. Either that, or they just hate martial arts.
Jeff G – They do seem to have a very specific animosity towards you. My guess is that it mainly rests with you ability to deconstruct their linguistic sleights of hand so deftly. That, coupled with a sense of homor that they could only hope for leaves them flummoxed. And they are idjits.
cynn,
Whatever disagreements I’ve had with you in the past, you won me over tonight with Catherine Wheel. Thought I was the only fan. Glad to see you’re another. Too bad they’re no more.
Feet,
Catherine Wheel is the name of a highly underrated English band from the 1990’s-early 2000’s. They broke up sometime in 2000-2001. You can find their stuff on amazon, i Tunes, etc. The lead singer, Rob Dickinson, is related to Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, and has a solo career at this time.
That’d put us right around The Winstons’, Color Him Father, wouldn’t it, hf? Just so I stay oriented here…..
Sorry, guys, back to the Gleens.
Oh. I will get them. Long story but I can’t download anything right now cause my hard drive is kind of not very happy with me after I tweaked to where I was getting 700 kps down and so I have to build a new computer but until I get that done I’m keeping a list. I’ll go ahead and move them above Clarence Carter though.
Amen, JD: and why the Progs seem to think that all they “are” equates to a bunch of deeply felt word salads is beyond me. But there it is anyway.
You can win anyone over with the Catherine Wheel“>Catherine Wheel.
Doh! Proper linkage here
If it were a concept, yes. It’s not. It’s a strategy. That it allows for such opportunistic grass-sampling while forbidding its being condemned as such is its strength. Blatant contradiction is a virtue of political ideas, from the point of view of those who gain power or the feeling of safety from power through them.
E.g., this open secret
must be passed over in silence. Always. We sit here and know it and say nothing. We certainly don’t mention that not only isn’t Obama descended from American slaves, he is descended from their owners. Almost none of us “white” people are. By any not purely RACIST! standard, he’s one of the whitest motherfuckers on earth.
Forbidden knowledge. We have it. We keep it to ourselves. He wins. He pisses in all our faces and laughs at us — those whose political identity he falsely lays claim to, especially.
People whose vocabulary descends from Marx — “bourgeois liberal” — and his Nietzscheanized kids — “discursively constituted” — should understand this, and why this is so, precisely how it’s so, how it came to be so, and cui bono. Some do. They just don’t talk about it. Because they bono.
Others’ discoursively constituted bourgeois-liberalness consists of their using those terms derisively without knowing why they’re talking like that. But it makes them feel safe. They’re not. They’re just cowering.
Or here?
Preview used to be my friend.
Can you imagine if we actually used anything close to that, as opposed to “belly slaps”, Pablo? I think Andi’s head would explode…not that anything would come out of it these days.
For Progs, everything’s a tactic, starting with their own dedicated self-deception as self. Winning makes it all better, and them “right” – but barely even temporarily, then repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s got to be a fucking zoo in there.
My friends in France view race as Jewish, Morrocan, and other; In Holland: Nederlandish, Indoneish, Turkish, and other; Germany: Brits, French, Russian, American (including blacks,) Turkish, and other.
Here: Old thoughts are white, black, yellow, and red. Then there is Hispanic, Asian, and Muslim – all forms of racism if you think critically of any.
When did a country of origin become a race? anti-illegal-immigrant is racist?
And WTH is African-American? Someone from and to? and if they go to Britain? and if they are white?
feets – Are you hatin’ on Clarence Carter now? That song Patches is like Jude the Obscure rolled neatly up into 2:30.
Oh. No – not at all. Loved it. That’s on my list of things I’m gonna get.
Misunderstood.
GREENWALDS FOR GOLDSTEIN!
Think about it.
There’s only one race that counts and as long as we keep quibbling about various shades of brown the rats are winning it..
well…..i would just like to say.
words matter
that is why jeff and this site are unique on the interwebs.
“bougy” maybe with a hyphen? boug’y?
minor incident of no import. Really, I think it’s the gender issue that’s got the Clinton supporting women upset. They do identify with her and are afraid their champion will be trumped by Afro-Amer sympathies for Obama….. the person with the button was just trying to split sympathies or confuse her intended target: women “of color” to consider Clinton. She was probably warned by her boyfriend that “must” people see that self indentifying lapel button as being a sign of who you are but then what about men out of sympathy wearing anti-Breast* button ribbons etc. or yellow ribbons for troops while they are civilians?
*a typical PW response would be…ah, there ARE men breast cancer victims…a very small minority I’ve heard.
she was a little cheesy in stretching the self identification but hardly a threat to the republic..unlike Fisa etc and other force of arms by the Bush administration. The conservative libertarian CATO http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/02/14/congress-ignores-fear-mongering-world-doesnt-end/ bunch are more focused on issues of substance not some ‘bourg’y’s lapel pin. eh, that word is French and hard to spell.
spelling too.. ‘most’ people see lapel pins as self identifying.
bour·geois
That looks like English, in that it has some English-looking words in it, but it doesn’t read like English.
Can we get a dave-to-English dictionary, stat?
dava – It is not about fisa, or bougy, or self identification. It is about raising taxes on taxpayers !!!
dave:
Did you get a quantity discount on strawmen? Inserting FISA” into a discussion of racial identity and definition is selfish and unserious.
Nobody’s treating this woman as some grand destroyer of the Republic. We are amused and perplexed by the convoluted reasoning (or, possibly, the complete absence of same) that went into her choice and what that might say about people making political choices with societally created identities in mind.
One should take a moment to consider what her message might be. Is she giving tacit “permission” for blacks to abandon skin color loyalties? Some of that group may resent the idea that plantation whitey says it’s OK to support the white woman, my sistah/bros! Is she making an appeal for substance over form? Her comment of “supporting African-Americans” means what, exactly? Hillary is better for teh black people? Barack is not good enough? Why should a black woman accept the stated “support” of gender whitey which contains, by inference, a self-perceived deep understanding of both racial identity and the “experience?” I suspect that some blacks, both male and female, would be more than happy to cast derision upon miss caucasian bougy academic and her “experiencial” understanding.
If one chooses to drink the Identity Politics Kool-Aide then the arguments morph according to both race and gender and are alomst purely subjective and, quiter frankly, distracting. The discussion changes from button wearing black men, black women, white men, trangendered, lesbian activist, take your pick. All of the arguments become convoluted, left to flap in the breeze of some internally contructed house of identity, where there aren’t so much a variety rooms as rooms that “evolve” and “become enlightened” as the narrative perspective is altered.
Again, none of this translates into shaking the foundations of the Republic but does provide a sharp connection to Jeff’s well articulated argument about the the problems and confusions associated with artificial racial constructs and those who seek to quantify for political and social engineering purposes.
None of which, dave, have anything to do with FISA. I know you are trying to engage and I appreciate your efforts but this sort of strawman misdirection at the end of a serious topic and discussion labels you as narrowly focused and unserious.
I find it amusing that Whoopi Goldberg (nee Caryn Elaine Johnson, born in Manhattan) is considered “African-American”, while Charlize Theron (born just outside Johannesburg, South Africa) is not.
Yeah, Drumwaster.
That explains why I giggle uncontrollably everytime I see Ms. Theron. Oh and the sweating and the dry throat and …
Err, what was I saying?
I find it perplexing that data dave took the time to write (I’m being generous) out a response to something that wasn’t really worth his time.
Ok, no I don’t. I find it rather sad, actually.
I find it amusing that Whoopi Goldberg (nee Caryn Elaine Johnson, born in Manhattan) is considered “African-Americanâ€Â, while Charlize Theron (born just outside Johannesburg, South Africa) is not.
A few years ago an Atlanta TV Newstard was trying to read a story about some racial problems in South Africa and referred to the parties involved as white South Africans and African-American South Africans. I shit you not.
I will put this here.
For real Dan’s right. I saved it but I haven’t even read Fish yet cause without more framing it’s not like really an inviting read. I did skim the comments and this kind of jumped out at me…
This one is not discussed much so far. It all is supposed to add up somehow to a “truly egalitarian society,” and I think this is seductive to a lot of people. I hope you will do that post, but no hurries. I needs to do my weekly breast self-examination cause I skipped last week.
When women, people of color, LGBT people, etc, gain the status and power of elected officials there is implicit social acceptance that enhances the power of that minority.
Well, as long as they remember their place and are beholding to the Democrat Massa that put them there. Unlike Clarence Thomas or Condi Rice, it is imperative they be authentic minorities.
Ohnoes. I think B Moe found a lump.
BMoe: Especially if it’s a Democratic bougy academic white woman/massa wearing an “African-Americans for Hillary Clinton” button.
BECAUSE OF THE THE ENLIGHTENED CARING!
Happy,
Whenever someone uses the word “will,” as in “…will be an accompanying elevation of [this or that] group [blah, blah]…,” I find it prudent to pause, and to ponder the truth-iness of the prediction – and to ask, just who made that dude Delph-for-a-day.
It’s just creepy is all how his argument deconstructs itself right there in front of you and yet my feeling is that it’s very seductive. Personally I find Obama less formidable with each passing day. He’s New Coke all over again.
The blood calls.
Sort of like an aristocrat insisting that he be an officer because his ancestors were all warriors (which was how his family got it’s station).
Funny how identity politics heads that way, eh?
“Scratch a lefty, find a fascist.”
No, N.O. Brain. Scratch a lefty, find an aristocrat. An aristocrat that should have been if those fools would just acknowledge the lefty’s wonderfulness.
hf:
Clarence Carter
I had to sing my oldest to sleep when she was a baby because she had collick (sp?). Unfortunately, I only know the complete lyrics to three songs: “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” “Patches,” and “Amazing Grace.”
Color me eclectic, but no doubt there are therapy payments in my future.
Heh. When I see someone use “will” like that, I always mentally append, “…weather permitting, of course.”
Having representation in government by people of diverse backgrounds and experiences is critically important if we wish to have a truly egalitarian society, each brings a unique viewpoint and understanding to the challenges our country faces, and we can only achieve unity in our country by having a representative government that looks like the governed, and brings to the table every concern, every strength, and contributions from every quarter.
So…. if everyone in leadership positions has a unique point of view, that helps us achieve unity? Because to me that looks like a recipe for some serious squabbling over whose point of view gets to prevail and who has to knuckle under.
Kinda like we find today, ya? If everyone insists on belonging to their own “authentic” (a fascist watch-word, BTW) tribe and holding to their own “authentic” PoV and grievances, then nobody is going to unify so quick.
Because that would be “inauthentic.”
I just heard him the first time in Dan’s youtube thread the other day. You can’t not love the guy I think.
I really hope JG looks at the Fish post where that came from, dicentra. I’m not sure if he specifically will address that part, but at least to me it’s a new argument in this cycle, and it’s disturbing in its glibness I think.
[…] This won’t mean anything unless you’ve read Jeff G’s post “Of pots, kettles, and the making of “blacknessâ€Â: some thoughts on identity politics”…. […]
The fetishistic worship of “unity” is one of the aspects of fascism. The dream of “everyone pulling together to achieve one goal” — as opposed to the ideal of liberty, in which cooperation is a byproduct of our own self-interests.
Race is crap. It has neither moral, intellectual, nor economic value.
It’s only value is social/political. To be dedicated to consistent and politically charged discussion of race, even if the stated goal is “defusing” it, is to be, objectively, a racist. QEfuckingD.
Bougy is a commune of the Calvados département in the Basse-Normandie région in France. Its postal code is 14210. The INSEE code is 14089.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bougie
[…] Wisdom’s esteemed host Jeff Goldstein has argued: [T]he social construction argument for race  based as it is on dubious claims to history, […]
[…] PW readers.  Tiger Woods has called himself a “cablinasian” in response to the twaddle of this sort of identity politics, but why let that stand in the way of a good […]