Affirmative Action & the Election

Here's a video from my day job that I thought you'd enjoy over here...

UCLA Law Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw addresses the presidential candidates' support of affirmative action programs.



Crenshaw wrote a recent article in Ms. Magazine about deceitful initiatives that are seeking to eliminate affirmative action.

She paints a grim picture saying, "Women and black people were denied the vote in the past; today, they are deceived out of their votes."

Definitely check out the full article.

Super Tuesday Procrastination

It's 11pm on the eve of Super Tuesday and I'm trying to study up and figure out what to vote for. Well if anyone's being real strict, technically I'm writing this blog post and further putting off making my decisions for tomorrow.

Occasionally I'll wait until the last minute to decide about one or two obscure measures, but I've never had it quite this bad. I'm no news junkie, but I get some at work, skim a few newspapers daily, and listen to a lot of NPR.

I relate to a lot of what Rebecca Traister writes in Undecided '08: Should I vote for Clinton or Obama?

I'm undecided at a moment -- one I thought might never transpire in my lifetime -- in which I will have the opportunity to pull a lever for a woman or an African-American. I am undecided while many around me whoop it up, volunteer, yell and cry at rallies, and feel the thrill of political certainty that I cannot share.

From what I can tell Obama and Clinton's stances on the issues are ridiculously close, so that hasn't really helped.

And I'm really trying not to let the identity politics influence my decision. From the much debated Gloria Steinem NY Times piece to NY NOW's scathing press release to e-mails from local feminist groups telling me to "Go vote for Hillary Clinton tomorrow," I'm tired of the feminist=must be for Clinton equation. But I also don't want my rebellion from that equation to be the deciding factor in my vote.

Metacentricies says it well:

This election isn’t about either gender or race. It is a historic occasion that the Democratic party will nominate someone who will be the first in history. That is significant enough. NY NOW’s stance (National NOW has been conciliatory) is divisive, at a time that divisiveness is destructive. We are in deep, deep shit as a country, and we need to find a way out of it. If you think Clinton is best (and not just because she has a vagina) then great. And if you think Obama is best (not just because he has dark skin) that’s great too. Do we need to add identity politics to an already challenging time?

Well, I guess I'll sleep on it.

But first a very appropriate cartoon (thanks feministing!):

nataliedee.com

Hillary Clinton's Visit

So I promised to give a full report on Hillary Clinton's visit to my work last Friday. But the weekend passed and I've been putting it off because, well, it just wasn't that eventful. There was a whole lot of "hurry-up and wait, hurry-up and wait." I think the highlight for me was meeting the secret service. Mostly I had to sit and wait in a dark room and then run around like crazy, so it wasn't like I could really take it all in. A bunch of my coworkers ran smack into Hillary Clinton and saw her off in her motorcade when they went to get lunch, but I was inside working on getting her video online.

Her interview was interesting, but I didn't think it was anything earth shattering. She talked about being annoyed at the media for their obsession with her being a woman and showing her feelings. She tells this story about being at a meeting with other women leaders in Finland:

Here we were in a country where women have enormously achieved equal rights that we hardly can even imagine. What did we talk about?

How frustrated they were that every time they made a serious about monetary policy or defense policy, it was reported what they were wearing or what their husbands thought or what their children thought. So we're moving into a future that nobody's ever lived before, so I don't fault the press because they're doing the best they can to make sense out of all of this. But how many stories do they need to write about the same thing?

It feels weird to be outing the worker bee part of my life here, but now you know what I do at my day job. Sort of. Maybe. A little.