The Redstar Perspective

This post has been marinating for awhile, and is a plea for us to call out the Clinton and Obama campaigns on the respective racism and sexism being dished out/tolerated.  It’s spurred in part by the dissonant experience of finding incredible solidarity in the anti-misogyny and emerging Clinton supporter pride in my blogosphere at the same time that I’m defensively arguing with Obama shippers who otherwise speak the truth about structural racism, sexism, and discrimination in this frenzied primary season.   I could bore you with the research I’ve studied and conducted about group identity; group threat; race/class/gender schisms in urban politics; and how all those social phenomena shape and re-shape our political, social and economic power structures.  But instead I’m going to return to the personal, as these debates seem to be getting increasingly so for most of us, to both our individual and group benefit and detriment.

All my life, I’ve been a boundary-crosser.  Many of you already know this litany: my 4th generation Boston Irish-Catholic maternal cousins and I were the first to grow up in the suburbs; I’m the first grandchild to go to college on my mom’s side and the first person ever to attend on my dad’s side; I’m pursuing a PhD while a potential majority of my cousins have G.E.D.s; I was raised mainly by my mom and my aunt and my dad across multiple households and among multiple cousins; and I feel way more at home in public housing than I do in a Hamptons (NY) summer home, having been a long-time visitor to the former and a first-time visitor to the latter this summer.  I’ve achieved these things in large part because my white family is dominated by strong mentoring women who have been encouraged to pursue new opportunities whenever we can - opportunities that unfolded along a familial path from public housing to college/military service to first-time suburban homeownership; because my dad and my mom both broke educational and professional barriers previously (and for my dad, currently) unsurpassed by their families; and because both made a bunch of money in doing so, such that I moved from a working-class income bracket to an upper-middle-class income bracket in my 30+ years. 

But worldviews and attitudes change much more slowly than economic status, and I’ve retained a strong, white ethnic working-class affect that is variably interpreted as a chip on my shoulder or a tough/cool personality.  This identity causes me no shortage of introspective agita given how education and privileged I’ve become, and, as such, I feel like an outsider in virtually all social settings.  I’m thus reactionary, loyal, a fighter, and have a tendency to find and befriend other outsiders.

Given my social and professional settings, these outsiders - my friends, advisors, and colleagues - are predominantly persons of color, foreign born, of lower-SES status, or gay/lesbian - others who I met on the margins of whatever social setting we were in, even if we appeared to be in the midst of it.  This is one thing I love about my blogosphere: it appears to be constructed largely of outsiders who have found their voices on-line (albeit alongside white, male talking heads). I suppose this is a non-ironic twist on the “some of my best friends are _________” schtick but, for me it’s not some, it’s most or arguably (if my fantasy bridal party is any indication!) all of my peers and colleagues.  I’ve been taught mainly by Jewish intellectuals and black political activists, and my white female mentors are foreign-born, or in one (amusing?) case, a Marxist.  Particularly in my elite academic world, those of us who feel like outsiders in an industry that is not only predominantly white, male and privileged but still even majority Protestant have come together to explore academic and personal interests.  When I work in the Gulf Coast or float around the blogosphere and engage in or feel attacked by the on-going debates about social difference and privilege, I often have to remind my overly sensitive self that I’ve done a good and non-deliberate job of finding people and community that I love and would be proud to show off should I ever find myself interrogated by the Oppression Olympics judges. 

Because I might need to be interrogated if I continue to sit here and defend Sen. Clinton’s candidacy from exhausting and rampant sexism and don’t address the claims of racism being lobbed at her campaign.  Because I’m hearing them, loud and clear, from my black colleagues, folks in the blogosphere, and witnessing them first hand in my campaign volunteering.  Last week doing random dialing calls to get out the vote, I heard a) Obama’s making this a racial thing (white man), b) “Osama” for Obama (white man and McCain supporter), and that c) Obama was insulated from racism from the media but Clinton was the repeated victim of sexism (several resentful white women).  Beyond the usual discomfort of failing to call out strangers on their assumptions and perceptions, I find myself with the additional thought, these are my fellow HRC supporters??  Why in this Campaign social setting am I’m lacking for the diverse coalition in which I usually and naturally find myself?  Why do I feel like an outlier in my support of Clinton among my peers?  That I don’t have solid confirmation of this fact indicates that some of it is brought upon by my on-going discomfort with my choice.  Because, all the young emerging Clinton supporters aside, I don’t normally find myself among a mostly older white crowd stumping for a political candidate (I also don’t find myself stumping too often, but that’s a different story entirely). 

This allegiance to the Clinton campaign feels starkly unfamiliar to me: until now, I’m mostly interpreted my working-class-white identity to be my connection to new people, communities and opportunities.  Now, here I am, feeling like I’m standing on the other side of the black/working-class-white divide.  But I am genuinely repelled by the zealous rhetoric emanating from the Obama campaign.  Mentors I respect who are supporting Obama are doing so because they like how he is inspiring young people, or because they’re tired of (the) Clinton(s), and not because they think Obama has a better stance on *the issues” or will necessarily turn out to be the more equal opportunity candidate.  Bloggers whose policy opinions I respect repeatedly label Clinton as stronger on domestic policy, which is what I care about.  In reading their anti-poverty proposals, I found them both excellent if differently positioned, and Clinton’s actually more direct in re: the link between ethnicity/race and poverty.  I strongly prefer getting a relatively known quantity in Clinton versus Obama.  And after all my gender research and experience, I’m going to support the older woman who has had to defer her time to lead versus the younger man who arguably has more opportunities to mount his campaign.  But I’d be lying if I said I was campaigning for her without a troubled and reflective heart.

One small thing all us activists, volunteers and citizens can do is mount a call to the candidates to confront the sexism and the racism being dished out from the Campaigns and supporters.  If we spent more time calling them out on this bullshit, and less time arguing with each other, we might make some headway.  Sure, some will find me naive, but it seems to me that all this refereeing of which Campaign is failing us on social inclusion and progressive values might be better channeled internally towards our respective candidates.  I don’t want the tainted victory of a race-baiting victory for Clinton, and I don’t want to grudgingly support Obama’s nomination after all the misogynistic crap Clinton weathered.  Nor do I want Obama to clinch the nomination based on his current coalition of young idealists, affluent whites and African-Americans, just as little as I want Clinton to win primarily from the votes of white women, the elderly and Latinos and Asians.  Neither of these coalitions is complete (nor are the descriptions wholly accurate, obviously), and I don’t want to lose voters for either Democratic nominee this fall.  Maybe it’s too late to bridge the gaps that have been exacerbated this primary season, but I know I can at least send Clinton as many messages as I do commenting in her defense on others’ websites. 

At her website, we can send Clinton a message telling her to stop her Campaign’s race baiting.  I couldn’t find a similar feature on Obama’s website, but perhaps his supporters know how to *reach* him.  And both sites have blogs where we can share some of this sentiment.  As this primary season has demonstrated, it’s millions of tiny little actions like this that is making all the difference!