NYT: Judith Warner
January 17, 2008, 6:56 pm
For Clinton and Obama, the Burden of Identity
The “biggest fairy tale” in this year’s Democratic contest may be the hope, expressed with renewed vigor by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at Tuesday night’s Democratic debate, that, as the campaign moves forward, they will be viewed as “individuals” and not as representatives of their gender or race....
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Can progressives part ways with identity politics? Is it a betrayal of their liberal principles to do so? Or is it time, as Obama has consistently suggested, for a new generation to redefine what is truly, productively, “progressive”?
And is it realistic even to hope – as both candidates appear to – that voters will make their ultimate choices based on policy, philosophy and personality differences, and not by falling back on gut-level feelings of racial or gender allegiance?
What I have always particularly found fascinating and admirable about these two particular candidates is the fact that they are both sui generis – true individuals who transcend received notions about what a black or female candidate should be. Yet Obama, with his mixed race parentage, multi-national upbringing, upwardly mobile education and generally self-created way of being in the world, has had to fight accusations, early on at least, that he wasn’t “black enough.” Clinton – wonky, cerebral, controlled, hyper-logical, has had to battle perceptions that she isn’t “real,” because, by the standards of pop culture and received opinion, she comes off as not-woman-enough.
In each case, rising above lowest common denominator ways of being and appearing has made the candidate more than a little suspect. (Is Obama pandering to white voters? Or does he really mean what he says? And who does Hillary think she is, anyway?) And yet, for all of us in this country who sometimes feel like freaks because we don’t fit the standard definitions of how People Like Us are supposed to look, think, and, above all, feel, Clinton and Obama both have offered a very particular and precious kind of hope....
http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/
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