random news
There's been a double homicide-suicide at a college in Louisiana. If this isn't the first school shooting perpetrated by a woman, it's one of very few.
Peak oil will lead to food shortages. Government (US and EU) subsidizing of biofuels will exacerbate the problem. (And what to say about gas rising to $10-15/gallon except Do Not Want ( Read more... )
Peak oil will lead to food shortages. Government (US and EU) subsidizing of biofuels will exacerbate the problem. (And what to say about gas rising to $10-15/gallon except Do Not Want ( Read more... )
As I watch Obama and Clinton I am convinced that I am seeing one of the wages of whiteness in action: it is easier to talk across gender difference than to speak across the racial divide. Americans share almost no common vocabulary across race. As a public opinion researcher, I consistently find that the greatest perceptual, cognitive and emotional gaps are between the races. We just don’t see our world, think about our world, or feel about our world in similar ways.
I have no cause to dispute that, but I wonder about the causes. Could it be because most men and women talk across gender lines every day of their lives, and the majority of multi-person households include males and females, but blacks and whites are still geographically/socially isolated from one another in many places in this country? (Also, wasn't Obama largely raised by his white mother/grandparents? If there are two languages/frameworks operant, wouldn't he be likely to be, well, bilingual?)
The unspoken assumption in her piece is that Obama has to translate his thoughts for white people, because white people either don't speak or aren't comfortable with black language/frameworks... but it also sounds like she may be implying that Hillary Clinton is speaking fluent white male? (It may be closer, but it can't be identical to white female...) With maybe just occasionally a female accent to appease people's gender modes, but not too much... gotta show "balls" about Iran, after all.
It seems to me that part of Obama's hesitance when speaking extemporaneously may be a function of the higher stakes, the closer attention, and the more obsessive/ridiculous parsing of every little thing they say now. The other day he apparently said something about "you change the status quo, and suddenly the claws come out," and a reporter decides that he was talking about Hillary, and the next thing you know it's a big fuss about whether that was a sexist remark. (And didn't someone else -- Hillary? get in trouble for saying "the knives come out" and that was said to be racist?)
Which may in the end only give evidence to her point -- even the same words used between or about white men (and the "claws come out" has been used about the Republican candidates) can become fraught when used by or about a black man or a white woman... either because people genuinely take them that way, or because the media holds a kerfuffle about them.
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Blacks and whites are socially isolated form each other even when they arent geographically isolated.
(Also, wasn't Obama largely raised by his white mother/grandparents? If there are two languages/frameworks operant, wouldn't he be likely to be, well, bilingual?)
This question is so... disturbing... all I can do is point you to the concept of code switching and leave it at that.
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True. I wrote both because in some places the social isolation is reinforced by geographic isolation, including Iowa where 2.5% of the population is black New Hampshire, where 1.05% of the population is black.
This question is so... disturbing... all I can do is point you to the concept of code switching and leave it at that.
I apologize; I realize that was glib and simplistic. Once I get ahold of an analogy, I can carry it too far.
*goes to read more about Code-switching*
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