Identity Politics

One of the difficult issues explored in Amy and Michael S.'s extraordinary exchange on faithful citizenship at UST last week was how to address the emotional volatility of this election, so we can continue to work together after Election Day to address the serious challenges we are facing.  Whoever wins in November, the anger being generated by and displayed in some of today's debates (including even here on the pages of MOJ) is going to make continued cooperation difficult.     

For the first time in my life, during this campaign, I feel as though I really understand what some of this anger is about.  I think I finally "get" both the pull and the danger of identity politics.   Governor Palin's nomination has evoked in me the strongest emotional reaction I have ever felt in connection with a presidential campaign.  Of course, I identify strongly with her as the mother of a child with Down Syndrome.  But even more powerful is my identification with her as a working mother of small children.  When I see her up on that huge stage interacting with her husband and her children, I think about things like the time I went to a meeting in New Orleans with a bunch of my banking clients, shortly after the birth of one of my children, and my husband came along to take care of the infant and bring him to me during breaks so I could nurse him.  I think about the hidden secret of big families -- that older siblings are wonderful sources of help and support -- and how I could not have gotten tenure without the help of my older children.  When I saw her clutching Trig, patting him furiously on the back right after the debate with Biden, I understood exactly what she was feeling -- the desperate need to be holding your baby, even when you know the adrenaline-fueled rush of your "job"-related performance is preventing you from really focusing on him.  I know one thought that MUST have flashed through her brain right before she grabbed him: I don't care if he spits up on my suit now -- I'm DONE with the debate!!!! 

I have never felt this before with respect to any politician.  I understand now how many other women must feel about Hilary Clinton.  I understand now how many African Americans must feel about Barak Obama.  It is intoxicating to allow yourself to imagine how much better the world might be if someone who was “just like you” in some very fundamental way, like motherhood, gender, or race, were really in charge.   It’s especially intoxicating if you don’t think that those currently in charge are doing a particularly good job at the things most important to you.

One of the things that has surprised me is that this close identification with a person under such intense media scrutiny can also be very alienating.  The very images that cause me to identify so closely with Governor Palin on a very fundamental level are having exactly the opposite effect on many people, including friends and family.  To many people, those images represent choices in life that have been rejected or are simply incomprehensible.  To many people, those images make Palin something to be despised – or even feared.

And this close identification does make you sensitive to aspects of the debate that might escape others who do not share that identification.  In the days after Governor Palin’s nomination, I heard an analysis on Minnesota Public Radio of the types of internet searches being conducted about her.  The overwhelming majority were searches like “Sarah Palin hot pictures.”  On mainstream internet news sites like CNN and Foxnews, I’ve seen articles supposedly about the media coverage of Palin, in which the “analysis” in the text was patently an excuse to run a photo-shopped picture of “Governor Palin” in a bikini toting a gun, or a photograph of Governor Palin making a speech at a campaign rally, in which the camera was focusing on a young male in the audience looking at her, framed by the bottoms of her legs in high heels.  When I see and hear these things, I feel exposed and violated myself.  When I hear people criticizing her for lack of intellectual substance, I can’t help wonder if their criticism is colored by the filter of images like that, instead of a sincere analysis of her intellect.  I know that women who identified closely with Hillary Clinton felt the same about her; I know there’s an analogue for the filter of race that people who identify closely with Barak Obama must feel in criticisms of him.

I do not know yet what I will do with this emotion when it comes time to vote.  But I do understand now how this emotion underlies so much of what people will decide and so many of the arguments people are making in the current campaign and that it will dictate much of the reaction to the results of the vote, whatever they are.

I find myself wondering if maybe this highly-charged emotionality is a phase that our nation has to go to on the road to a government that more truly represents the diversity of its citizens.  Maybe it is something like the hormonal surges of adolescence.  When we’re parenting teens, there’s nothing we can do to suppress overly emotional hormonal reactions, we can only wait for maturity to diminish their pull.   Similarly, when we feel ourselves and our fellow citizens reacting emotionally to the power of the image of – finally - seeing “someone like them” in charge, maybe there isn’t anything we can do to suppress that emotion.  We can only wait (and hope) for a time when our government does more truly represent the diversity of its citizens, when women and people of color are not novelties on the stages of presidential nominating platforms.