It's Kamala!

[Dill]

(08-17-2020, 12:02 PM)hollodero Wrote: ?? No, I am not offended in any way. Just to be clear about that. Also, while you say you don't see my views as Ignorant, you go on within the next sentence and describe a form of ignorance. But that is totally, 100% fair. I am ignorant of many things for sure, it's just that at times I feel the distance also gives me a different perspective, which at times can not be that disadvantageous. No offense, but at times I feel you're a bit too caught up with historical examples and drawing up connections that are a bit far fetched.

Your distance does give you a different and valuable perspective, and offers us Amis a chance of seeing things we don't see because we are too close. (For which reason I have previously encouraged you to keep hammering us.) Still, I can make a case for distance as a deficiency in one instance without denying the principle or implying you are "just plain" ignorant. (And as a case it has to be demonstrated, not just asserted.)

I doubt my historical examples and connections are "far fetched," at least in this case, though they may yet be  unclearly framed. You are likely tired of the back and forth, but that you have endured so far will help me in constructing future arguments. 

(08-17-2020, 12:02 PM)hollodero Wrote: I also have a habit of more or less always being annoyed when an important post is to be filled and the first thing people say is "let's first decide to put in someone from this or that group and move on from there". It annoys me in my country as well, where we treat women's rights a bit similar. When we needed a surrogate chancellor in dire political times, folks just claimed it has to be a woman, it is the most important thing, and it would be sexist not to choose a woman, just look at how unfairly women were treated throughout history... - and I consider this approach quite wrong. That's maybe just me, but that's one of my main issues with the black female VP pick.

For one, I hate the underlying message of "if it's not a black person, this person can't do good by your community", or at least significantly less good, which is just not true. I also dislike it then when someone non-black would have been chosen, blacks would have been told that they somehow got victimized by that. I get annoyed when self-declared black leaders claim that Biden can either choose a black woman as VP or is a devil. What nonsense. Or all the hysteria of deep offense to a whole race, a slap in their collective faces and whatnot when no black person won an oscar... ah this leads too far now.

LOL too far indeed. Your mention of the Oscars reminds me of my surprise in 2002 when I learned that Halle Berry was the first black woman ever to win an Oscar for best leading actress. EVER. I'd never noticed there were no black female winners before, but Halle certainly had. And she is still only one, somewhat less than 13% of the 93 female actresses who have won it. Of course, how many black women have been cast as leads since 1929?  Not many. Far smaller pool because of merit? Perhaps because part of an actress' talent is in appealing to people who can identify with her visually, accept her as standard of beauty or class or some other merit? And for a long time Black actresses could not sufficiently meet those standards in "the business." Chosing one would have indeed been a bad business decision for years. How many talented Black actresses never went to Hollywood figuring they didn't have a shot. How many did and found out when they got there? There is always a range of selections at work in this process--self selection, teachers selecting students, agents selecting clients, directors selecting actresses--before we even get to the nominations. At some point "race" stopped being an openly stated criterion when directors hired actresses and nominators nominated them, but then did racial selection then just give way to pure merit, continuing that way until and after Halle too?  Are our politics at the highest level similar to the film industry in any aspect? Do we exclude that identification factor? The series of selection hurdles?

I remember when I was about 12 years old, an older man told me that, although Blacks could make good football players, one could never be a quarterback. They lacked the intelligence and leadership qualities required. How many never tried out back then because they never saw themselves in that position? Now few think a quarterback is ever passed over in the draft because he is black. And few young athletes would self select out because they don't see people like them in that position. The black coach barrier is similarly broken. Ownership next? The hurdle there is higher and more difficult because it involves a wealth gap, another kind of selection. By "the economy"? Another long history of "selections" being slowly overcome? But are our politics, especially at the leadership level, like the NFL in any aspect?

Trump recently argued that schools should open because children are less affected by the Coronavirus. They slough it off. Dems, of course, reminded us all that children can still get sick, and they can communicate the disease to teachers, parents, and grandparents. That one demographic unit, children, could not be treated in isolation because of the way it was interconnected with, embedded in, other groups.

I think one problem with the discussion about Harris and "black women" is that critics of the pick are often not viewing demographic groups in the US as a variously interconnected and mutually defining, but rather as individual, disconnected things. You pick a black woman and it helps "her group" and not another, or maybe doesn't help them at all, because competence is really the issue and, unlike with whites, that's an either/or. Besides we already had a black president. Some other group's turn.  As if a black woman, from the most historically reviled minority, wouldn't be breaking a barrier for Latinas or Asian Americans or Native Americans as well as Black women and women in general. The first female vp in history. Like that wouldn't be a statement about commitment to equality for all, not just that one whiny group that finally got theirs. And a statement about the ideals and commitments of the party that chose her. As compared to the party of "merit." 

I guess what I am trying to say here is that I don't see picks for offices like the vp as simply about the individual and whether he/she has the typing skills. And they are not simply about helping this or that one group, though reward may indeed be a factor, along with the more pedestrian considerations of state or regional appeal. It's also about what the party will work for, whom it will IN FACT seek to include. It implies what a cabinet will look like, and that implies what policies will look like as well.

Harris' right wing opponents understand this very well. They know 95% of Black women were already likely to vote for Biden. Their goal now is to shape what this choice says about the party--to disconnect all the connections I just made.