October 8, 2020
Oct. 8th, 2020 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
falcongrrlHi again,
So the debate last night was interesting from the perspective of a woman. The whole, "Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking," moments were telling as Senator Harris struck a balance: assertive but not mean, smiling as she said the words, firm but not angry-seeming. I thought, how much effort must it take to project exactly the right tone throughout the whole hour and a half. But she did it and made it look relatively easy.
There's an article in Cosmopolitan of all places. It starts out talking about the senator's hair, but quickly shifts into more political directions (and manages to make the case that hair is political, particularly for black women). The article articulates the tone that Harris hit well.
"Harris walks a fine line, but she’s able to visually appeal to so many different groups at once, thanks to the softly bent hair, the glowy and natural-looking makeup, the pearl earrings (and in the past, colorful Converse and Timberlands). She’s the girl next door, no matter what neighborhood you live in. And last night, she was able to nudge away any ideas voters might have about female politicians being too 'aggressive' or too 'ambitious' with her style."
It strikes me that I'm calling her Harris and Senator Harris instead of the overly familiar "Kamala." I feel like it connotes more respect. It's a performative gesture - maybe she genuinely prefers Kamala - but it bugged me last night when the moderator, Susan Page, addressed Sen. Harris as Kamala but "Mike" was called Mr. Vice President.
That reminds me that someone on Twitter (perhaps a lot of folks, or maybe I just saw RTs of the same person) was talking about how Susan Page seemed to favor the vice president over the senator. Basically, the message of the tweet was, "white women, this is why we (black women) don't trust you."
And I get it. When it comes to white supremacy, I keep thinking of the old Palmolive dish soap commercial: you're soaking in it. It's covering us, hiding in plain sight. I believe that we white women have been taught since childhood to favor...not all men over ourselves but white men over ourselves. That's a big difference. We kid ourselves, I think, when we don't call out what this is - a toxic mix of both sexism and racism. I'd like to say that I'm not a "Susan" - that I wouldn't blatantly favor someone of my race over someone of my gender - but this stuff goes really deep and I think sometimes we react instead of respond. Ideally we catch ourselves, get better at catching ourselves. And yet we may still make these kinds of mistakes.
In general, as a US populace, we're very comfortable saying that "women" got the right to vote in 1920, when what's accurate is that "white women" got to vote in 1920. More info on race and suffrage here. I think white women have got to start making these sorts of distinctions. Not out of separation but out of empathy for another's differing experience. And out of an acknowledgement of how in the past (see the link to the wikipedia article in this paragraph) we have historically shown ourselves to be untrustworthy.
So the debate last night was interesting from the perspective of a woman. The whole, "Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking," moments were telling as Senator Harris struck a balance: assertive but not mean, smiling as she said the words, firm but not angry-seeming. I thought, how much effort must it take to project exactly the right tone throughout the whole hour and a half. But she did it and made it look relatively easy.
There's an article in Cosmopolitan of all places. It starts out talking about the senator's hair, but quickly shifts into more political directions (and manages to make the case that hair is political, particularly for black women). The article articulates the tone that Harris hit well.
"Harris walks a fine line, but she’s able to visually appeal to so many different groups at once, thanks to the softly bent hair, the glowy and natural-looking makeup, the pearl earrings (and in the past, colorful Converse and Timberlands). She’s the girl next door, no matter what neighborhood you live in. And last night, she was able to nudge away any ideas voters might have about female politicians being too 'aggressive' or too 'ambitious' with her style."
It strikes me that I'm calling her Harris and Senator Harris instead of the overly familiar "Kamala." I feel like it connotes more respect. It's a performative gesture - maybe she genuinely prefers Kamala - but it bugged me last night when the moderator, Susan Page, addressed Sen. Harris as Kamala but "Mike" was called Mr. Vice President.
That reminds me that someone on Twitter (perhaps a lot of folks, or maybe I just saw RTs of the same person) was talking about how Susan Page seemed to favor the vice president over the senator. Basically, the message of the tweet was, "white women, this is why we (black women) don't trust you."
And I get it. When it comes to white supremacy, I keep thinking of the old Palmolive dish soap commercial: you're soaking in it. It's covering us, hiding in plain sight. I believe that we white women have been taught since childhood to favor...not all men over ourselves but white men over ourselves. That's a big difference. We kid ourselves, I think, when we don't call out what this is - a toxic mix of both sexism and racism. I'd like to say that I'm not a "Susan" - that I wouldn't blatantly favor someone of my race over someone of my gender - but this stuff goes really deep and I think sometimes we react instead of respond. Ideally we catch ourselves, get better at catching ourselves. And yet we may still make these kinds of mistakes.
In general, as a US populace, we're very comfortable saying that "women" got the right to vote in 1920, when what's accurate is that "white women" got to vote in 1920. More info on race and suffrage here. I think white women have got to start making these sorts of distinctions. Not out of separation but out of empathy for another's differing experience. And out of an acknowledgement of how in the past (see the link to the wikipedia article in this paragraph) we have historically shown ourselves to be untrustworthy.