Talkin' Bout Real

I have something to get off my chest. I would be blissfully happy if I never have to hear the phrase "Real Americans" again. There's been a lot of talk about "Real Americans," both implicitly and explicitly, on this blog and almost every other blog I've been reading this week. Not to mention the newspapers. Reading it all day after day, taking it in, I've seen a common thread everywhere that I'm going to try and delicately extract. And then eviscerate.

(I know I'm mixing my metaphors).

It all sort of started with Douthat's column in the New York Times last Sunday about Sarah Palin. Douthat argued that the failure of Sarah Palin's political career was a failure of the "democratic ideal," which is apparently that "anyone can grow up to be a success story without going to Columbia or Harvard." I don't know if I can make a pithy statement about what the "democratic ideal" is, but whatever it is, it sure as hell ain't that. Yglesias pointed out why Douthat's asserted class divide didn't make sense (with bonus charts!).

Douthat's view of class is an incredibly simplistic one where the name of your Alma Mater is apparently what matters most. Where you can position Barack Obama in a higher class than Sarah Palin because of where he went to school. Sure, education matters. But Douthat wants to think it matters the most because, like many east coast conservatives--surprise!--he's the recipient of an Ivy League education himself. Hell, he parlayed his experience at Harvard into a whole book. But by his own description, then, Douthat is not himself a Real American, because the Real Americans are the ones who didn't go to college went to community college went to college in Idaho.

Liberals have tried to take back the Real American label from the Republican rhetoric of white populism, and I'm sorry to break it to you guys, but we failed. We'll continue to fail. I objected to Taddy's post the other day which talked about Real Americans. As long as we're bickering over who is and who is not Real Americans, we're fucked. Because the rhetorical history of "Real Americans" is white people. It has always been a dog whistle for talking about white people, and we can not change it into a dog whistle for talking about something other than white people. What else is it? Real Americans = people? No, it is far too loaded to be something as simple as that.

Besides, even if we could construct something non-racist about what constitutes a "Real American," it would inevitably exclude people who are not actually Americans. What about the people who just immigrated? What about people with dual citizenship? Our government should stand for and protect all the people living in this country.

If you make an assertion about what a "Real American" is, you are implicitly making an assertion that there is a group of people who are not "Real Americans." And you're wrong. I don't care who it is. People with stable jobs, rich people, white people, people who drink lattes, people who live in New York City, people who have no education, people with every degree in the book, unemployed people, welders, college professors, and CEOs. Even Sarah Palin. All real Americans.

Any concept you can envision about what a Real American is, unless you mean it to mean "every single person in this country" (in which case it's a pretty meaningless term) is going to leave out huge swaths of people that you actually might give a shit about.

I want to draw your attention to two particularly excellent posts on this subject. The first is from Ta-Nehisi Coates. You've got to read the whole thing, because it's great, but this part is particularly excellent:

For most of this country's history, being black and brilliant was not something that set you a part from other black people--it was something that could get you killed by white people. A study of this country's history reveals to not be hyperbole. This notion that white people of medium talents could rise to rule the world was not simply "the democratic ideal," it was the tyranny of our lives--with depressing, disastrous effects. The idea that mediocre white people could rise to incredible levels of power was not so much an ideal for us--it was the whole point of white supremacy.

So you can see here that the idea that average folk should be able to rise to the presidency isn't just weird and insidious, it's actually racist.

The second post comes from Amanda Marcotte, writing from a totally different perspective than Coates, but with some great observations about how white populism isn't even really about white populism. It's not even about identifying with middle-class white people in the South, because if you are a middle class white person in the south and you are a feminist, or a liberal, or you think being gay is okay, you're automatically disqualified. "Real Americans" really means "other people who are also bigots." She says:

I know how to two-step, and can probably sing every word to "The Chair". I’ve shot beer cans off fences, slept on trampolines, and I’ve had friends that don’t have indoor flushable toilets. I use the phrase “pepper belly” without a trace of irony. I was born in Texas, and have lived my whole life in Texas, and the two months I spent in small town Virginia drove me nuts in no small part because I thought most people put on too many airs. [...]

Despite possessing all the stated markers for being a member of the salt-of-the-earth tribe, I doubt Douthat would consider me a member like he does Sarah Palin, even though I think I beat her on many counts, including the fact that neither my parents nor some of my exes even have college degrees. [...]

The reason is obvious, if politely unstated: I’m not in because I’m not a believer in sexism, racism, or American imperialism. I don’t believe white people are better than everyone else, I don’t think that it’s such a great idea to force women to bear children against their will, and I don’t rally round the flag when some politician starts coming up with excuses to invade another country to steal their resources and/or start a libertarian experiment.

You should read the whole thing; it's really great. Read it and tell me that this fetishization of middle America or red states or salt-of-the-earth-people or Average Americans or, finally, Real Americans is not anything but a lie. It is a political tactic used to rally other people who are 1) white 2) afraid that giving rights to anyone who's not white/male/heterosexual might mean that mediocre people don't get a pass anymore just because they look like Everyman.

A lot of people call this identity politics. But is isn't really identity politics. For a long time, I instinctively got my back up every time I heard that phrase, because it's got very negative connotations. Identity politics is bad, right? Republicans say that the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor was "identity politics" because she wouldn't have been nominated if she weren't a Puerto Rican woman. Same with Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and and and.

Usually our response, as non-bigots is "no, [the person] is very smart and has accomplished this and this and this and this." But I propose another response:

So what?

Would Sotomayor have been nominated if she weren't a Puerto Rican woman? Probably not. If Sonia Sotomayor's name was really Joseph Miller and she was a white guy? No. Because Barack Obama was specifically looking for a highly qualified female judge, and if he could get it a highly qualified female judge of color, to put on the bench. And that's okay.

Let me repeat it: that's okay. Because it is good to have diversity on the court. It is good for the court itself. It is good for the decisions that that court hands down. It is good for the people who share a gender and/or ethnic identity with that person. This is what they mean when they talk about identity politics: picking someone because of who they are, what they look like, where they grew up. That's not only okay, it's essential in a multi-cultural society like the one we have. Because whites get to have one of their own on the court. Hell, they get to have eight of their own. Latino(a)s say, well, we want one of our own, too. And they should get it, if not all the time, at least once in a while, don't you think?

Identity politics shouldn't be a dirty word. I want there to be some identity politics. I want for African-Americans, and Latinos, and Asians, and gays and lesbians and people with disabilities to get one of their own up there sometimes. If people aren't qualified, don't pick 'em. It should be plain to everyone by now that there's more than one qualified person for any job, and you can't always just pick the best person. There's rarely any obvious best. So, sometimes, one of the things you consider in who you pick among all the people who have crossed the qualification threshold is race or gender or ethnicity or sexual orientation or disability.

And that's okay. That's good.

The "Real Americans" nonsense that the Republicans trot out every time there's an election and, well, any time they open their mouths, that's not identity politics. Because as Marcotte so ably argued, how you look and where you're from doesn't make you part of the tribe. It's whether you're a bigot (but you also have to be white/not-urban/Christian too).

So let's just stop with the those people aren't Real Americans bit. Even if the those people are racist populist assholes. Just like when it precedes any other noun, "real" just serves as a way to us-and-them. Just like "real women have curves!" doesn't do anything to fight the absurd cultural beauty standards we inflict on women (people without curves aren't real women?), "real Americans" only serves to divide us. And we are divided, yes. But real and not-real isn't where the division lies. It's fear of change against embracing change. It's exclusion against inclusion. It's bigotry against tolerance. It's hate against love.