I've always had a hard time swallowing social studies/government classes. One of the biggest obstacles between me accepting the good govt. message, besides the misperception that America is a Democracy (it's a republic - if you don't know this crack an 'effin dictionary), is the notion that we have representatives.
I'm not gonna go look up census figures, but I'm pretty darn sure that there aren't ~10 black senators (just Obama), I'm also really damn sure that there aren't 217.5 women in the house (insert your minority of choice latino, GLBTQ, etc, in here. it's all
good saddeningly true).
Whence cometh the disparity? Without delving into a hokey post-modern treatise on race and political identity (saying this as philosophy grad student), I think that it can be fairly well summed up by the word "Gravitas".
Gravitas often appears in aging white male populations. Signs of gravitas include jowls, gray hair, wrinkles, straight laced suits. Symptoms include an unending love for one's own voice, and an insistence that, expertise or qualifications be damned, you're to be trusted with issues of national importance.
**NOTE this is not a slam against middle aged white males generally speaking, but rather those who presume to govern with little more than those credentials.
When middle aged white men are jowly enough (but not fat) and dressed decently, many people unconsciously yield to them because they "seem" authoritative. How many infomercials, especially be your own boss ones (I'm thinking Carlton Sheets) use such a middle-aged white guy, because he seems like he knows what he's talking about. How many truly useless bosses have you had that were white males vs. other demographics? I've had more than my fair share (I can think of one good,
deserving straight white male boss and all others were of diff background, despite the fact I've mostly worked for white males). This is, I believe, due not just to the obvious good ol' boy network, but one of its core premises--that white men are more trustworthy and naturally better leaders than all others.
I swear to the invisible, but all powerful sky spirit that if I were white and older than 40, I'd put a few suits on credit and open a consulting business (in what? doesn't matter), simply becuase somewhere around, oh I don't know, 33% of the population would accept me as an authority on whatever subject, so long as I looked the part and didn't say anything complicated.
Think I'm kidding, imagine an alternate universe where Dave Chappelle's Black Bush loaded up the executive branch with unqualified black sycophants in the mold of ol' Michael "heckuva job" Brown. Setting aside the question of how Black Bush would get to power (let's say he ascended from VP), how many voters, pundits, and reps on the various confirmation committees would give the useless black wonks a free pass like they currently do with the useless white wonks who look the part? My guess is not too frickin' many. My reason why, gravitas - the percieved quality of being substantial and "weighty" on the real tasks of government.
Women, of course, continue to be marginalized, even at the highest eschalons of power, because of a lack of gravitas. No matter how qualified, the voices of your Pelosis, Slaughters, Boxers etc will never be given as much benefit of doubt as any anonymous baritone delivered from an empty suit and a haircut. Rational women are meek and too submissive to govern, while vocal women like Pelosi et al are basically written off as shrill harpies on the rag. If only their voices resonated more, maybe their views would as well...sigh.
Even looking at the dark side this is sadly true. If Harriet Miers were instead Harry Miers, an equally unqualified man, I bet that the combination of loyalty to BushCo and the public's misperception of gravitas would've carried the day. Disagree? Look at how many women of genuinely low intelligence make it to elected, non-appointed office vs. men. Even though I sometimes question the intelligence of Republican women like Liddy Dole and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, I bet that even in their ranks, it would be hard to find a number of genuine, truly low IQ numbskulls that would be proportional to their Y chromosome counterparts.
Oh and if you're GLBTQ, you can pretty much forget all hopes of entering the gravitas club. That is, unless you're an effectively closeted self-hater (Mehlman) or maybe a useful idiot (Cheney, M).
This is why I've always wondered how congress people, particularly those in the house, could have the gall to call themselves representatives. You were voted in with a rigged system that still appeals to and furthers people's basest stereotypes about what a leader and social better is supposed to look like. How dare you have the audacity to call yourself a representative?!
If my congress looked more like the census and less like an Elks meeting, maybe I'd be willingly yield that title (don't get me started on "the honorable"). Until then, I'll be calling even the best of them elected-officials (i.e. El. Off McDermott [WA 7]).
So I guess what I'm saying is that either I want the public to percieve thoughtful, knowledgeable leaders of all stripes with the gravitas they deserve, or
I want the same opportunities for criminally incompetent and corrupt non-white male politicians that white males of a certain age have handed to them
Who's with me? What do we do?