telegraph29

Let everyone speak, be they right or wrong

One of my pet peeves is statements like this one by Ezra Klein:

...if you're a white male, please do not loudly proclaim that Hillary Clinton's election would be meaningless for feminism or for women because she's only in this position because she married Bill Clinton or because Barack Obama is the true feminist or because you don't like her. Having talked this through with some of the women in my life, I'm now convinced that, as a white guy, you, and I, have no idea what it would mean to see a woman elected to the presidency. It's just not within our universe of experience. That is not to say Clinton's run is more or less historic than Obama's,* and it's not to say that Clinton can't be criticized or should be supported. But 50+ percent of this country is female, a sizable majority of the electorate is female, and of 42 separate presidents, we've never had a woman. It matters, and that should be acknowledged whether or not you support her candidacy.

There are so many layers of wrongheadedness to address here. One quibble is that it isn't within anyone's "universe of experience" to "see a woman elected to the presidency" because it's never happened before. Let's be charitable and assume that Ezra means that women are likely to experience the event differently when it happens... which raises the question of why he only wants white men to keep quiet. Does this mean Ezra is amenable to Jesse Jackson proclaiming that Hillary's election would be meaningless for feminism? What about Barack Obama, who is half-white -- can he make that point so long as he whispers? Do Chinese and Thai men just understand women better? Or is Ezra just less comfortable telling non-white men to shut up?

Another puzzling aspect of this post is that Ezra isn't just saying it might be meaningful for feminism to have a woman president, he is arguing that it will be meaningful -- "it matters, and that should be acknowledged." (Never mind that he simultaneously claims he has "no idea" what it would mean -- can't have that both ways!) So if the contrary argument is wrongheaded, why does he call for only men to refrain from proclaiming it? Does he think it's more permissible for women to voice wrongheaded arguments? Why does he think this?

All this bothers me so much not only because Ezra's arguments are so self-evidently ridiculous or contradictory, but because he buys into the harmful notion that people should refrain from articulating things they believe due to their race and gender.

I'm sympathetic to the notion that most men and women experience the world differently in some ways due to their gender (and that Hillary's election would matter to feminism), but so what? One way these gaps can be bridged is through conversation! A member of one group utters an argument that he believes to be true... and a member of the other group articulates why she thinks that's the dumbest thing she's ever heard. (Those who presage arguments with "... if you're a white male" probably know this process as "a dialogue.")

Ezra seems to think that rather than hold these conversations, white men should take his word for it (by way of his unnamed female friends, who I'm sure represent women everywhere). Hmmm. Why does he prefer the 'Ezra decides the appropriate bounds of civil discourse' model? And why should I?

Mind the gap

Feministing posts the above cartoon, and comments:

Reminds me of a real-life troll who showed up when Jessica and I spoke at the University of Missouri a few weeks ago. The guy raised his hand and asked us, "How come you never talk about men? You don't blog about areas where men are underrepresented!" Exactly which areas those were, he couldn't say...

I can! There are innocuous areas of disparity -- single male homebuyers, for example -- and then there are rather troubling disparities: college graduation rates; the percentage of fathers who share custody of their children after divorce; and the biggest disparity, people who aren't in prison:

Not that college degrees, clean criminal records and getting to see your kids matter much in American society...

Obama's grandmother

Two of America's leading black intellectuals, John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, recently had the best conversation I've yet seen about Barack Obama's race speech, one that's worth watching in full, but that struck me as particularly interesting when it turned to the question of the candidate's grandmother.

Obama's critics have seized on the following passage, which refers to Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

 

These people are a part of me.  And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

These words inspired Rich Lowry, Ann Coulter and Powerline to dub the oration "the throw grandma under the bus" speech.

Said Dinesh D'Souza: "So what is the explanation for the bizarre moral equivalence that he seeks to create between his pastor and his grandmother?"

Discussing such critiques, Glenn Loury gives the most eloquent summation I've seen of why Obama isn't drawing a moral equivalence between his grandmother and Rev. Wright. It's worth giving a listen.

But I want to offer a separate observation that I haven't seen elsewhere.

Let's look again at the first bit of that passage from the speech: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother..." 

Obama juxtaposes Rev. Wright and the black community; using the same construction, he then juxtaposes Rev. Wright and his grandmother. If looking at that language you imagine that Obama is drawing a moral equivalence between Rev. Wright and his grandmother, mustn't you also conclude that Obama is drawing a moral equivalence between Rev. Wright and the whole black community? After all, Obama's grandmother and the black community occupy the same spots in the parallel construction.

Personally, I don't think Obama is drawing any moral equivalences here -- I can no more divine Obama's thoughts than I can divine God's thoughts, yet I don't think Obama and God are equally mysterious.

It is weird, however, that the people who do think Obama's construction implies moral equivalence are outraged that he is comparing his grandmother to a bigot like Wright... and apparently totally untroubled by the fact that -- by their logic -- he is meanwhile drawing a moral equivalence between all blacks and a bigot.

If they really buy into their own logic shouldn't they be outraged by that too?

(Crosspost at the Huffington Post)

Hillary Clinton, Messiah

So Bill Richardson has endorsed Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton's campaign has reacted about as I'd expect:

“An act of betrayal,” said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton.

“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.

I'd ginned myself up to pen an eviscerating rejoinder but Matt Yglesias has beat me to it:

Maybe the Clinton camp's inner circle has just totally lost touch with reality and they really think that sort of thing is appropriate. The mindset seems a little bizarre, though. When Richardson accepted the appointment as U.N. Ambassador from Bill Clinton was he supposed to take it for granted that that constituted an implicit promise to endorse Clinton's wife's presidential campaign years in the future? That he'd signed-on for lifetime service to the House of Clinton?

Meanwhile, consider the reverse proposition -- if Clinton's key backers believed the things they're saying about the need for experience then why weren't they supporting Richardson's presidential campaign? He played a more substantive role in the Clinton administration than she did. Plus he had more years in congress and six years as governor. He's just the "former members of the Clinton administration who currently holds statewide office" who happens to have the wrong last name.

UPDATE: Of course from a Christian perspective, there's also a wee problem with comparing Hillary to Jesus.