Sometimes you can just over-analyze something

02 Mar, 2008 by McQ

Print this article Font size -16+

And that seems to be the case with a bunch of feminists who got together to discuss Hillary, Barack, progressive politics and the state of feminism for The Nation. First noting that while they were “diverse”, they were still all “progressive” (yay for that), but they wondered why it was that the selection process for the Democrats was in such a sorry state. Typically, they define the “problem” in terms they understand, whether applicable or not:

Rather, the concern that united us all was the “race-gender split” playing out nationally, in which the one is relentlessly pitted against the other. We did not want to see a repeat of the ugly history of the nineteenth century, when the failure of the women’s movement to bring about universal adult suffrage metastasized into racial resentment and rift that weakened feminism throughout much of the twentieth century.

How, we wondered, did a historic breakthrough moment for which we have all longed and worked hard, suddenly risk becoming marred by having to choose between “race cards” and “gender cards”?

Well, the answer is very simple actually. Because that is the sort of identity politics to which “progressives” are prone.

To the rest of us out here, this isn’t a big mystery. It has nothing to do with race or gender, really. It has to do with one candidate being more attractive to a majority of “progressive” voters than the other. And had it have been the female instead of the black man leading, none of the soul searching and analysis about the “gender card” would be found anywhere, would it?

Nope – instead it would all be about racist America not ready for a black president.

However, the one part of the analysis that most “progressives” seem to continue to miss, at this point, is that these have been “progressive” primaries, not a general election. So any labeling that results stays with “progressives”, not the rest of America. I wonder how that’s going to sit when they finally realize it.
_________________________

First published at QandO.