Yesterday I went to the doctor about a possible knee replacement. My caretaker went with me to ensure we both heard the same thing. The first individual that came in was probably a resident who worked with the surgeon... He was Black. He was wonderful to interact with... After we left, I asked my caretaker, who is in tune with my opinions... Wouldn't America be a sad world without our Black residents? Folks, I've heard enough about Project 2025 to know what is planned for the future. It will result in many non-white individuals being placed under scrutiny and possibly relocated from America! Please plan to vote in November...
Maxwell's book was published in 2020. It is my opinion that some of the book does not reflect an up-to-date evaluation of our president. That does not mean that I question what was being said. What it means is that, from the period during which he wrote a paper on what then became law under President Clinton, I believe that, as he says himself, he has grown wiser. Of course, that does not change his history, rather it is, in my opinion, to be taken as a measuring stick for all readers of this book, to what he did during the Obama eight years and now with Harris as his VP. You all know my support for which presidential candidate I will be voting for in 2024.
Now, let's get into the book. Some of you may have read The Author's Note that I shared earlier. If not, check it out by looking in my right column of do a search for the author... First, let me tell you that I had a Black best friend from 7th grade onto graduation from high school. Afterward, I was on the West Virginia University campus for 37 years and had routine interactions with all students, faculty and administrators... They included non-white individuals.
I recognize that I may have a unique perspective from others (or not, I really don't know). What I do know is that, when the Black Dean of Libraries and I, one of the rare female higher level administrators were both relieved of their services, at the change of presidency, I knew it was discrimination even though we couldn't do anything about it. We had positions that were not classified, but served at the pleasure of the president. And if that president wants to fire somebody at that level, it is permitted under policy. Even if there was no problem with our performance.
Let's specify immediately that almost no or few women and non-whites have been in control of almost all organizations since the beginning of America. Each advancement was fought for rather than considered routine. Many white men were fighting against us. And, so, we who were part of fighting for those rights, are very upset and angry...
Maxwell spotlights the problem as identity-based politics...
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley is the first black woman to be elected to Congress in the history of the state of Massachusetts. Pressley’s campaign slogan, #WeCantWait, emphasized the need for a shift in leadership for Massachusetts’s seventh district, a diverse, working-class constituency that includes the cities of Boston and Dorchester. When I interviewed Pressley for this book, she acknowledged how much pushback she got from the white political establishment about her focus on women of color. They wanted her to be less focused on women and girls of color; they bristled at her insistence that she wear her hair in Senegalese twists and traditionally black hairstyles. Her presentation needed to be more palatable to the white mainstream, especially in a city like Boston and a state like Massachusetts.
Yet, her message prevailed because voters of color understood her connections to their communities and stood behind her. Pressley’s unorthodox run focused on the fact that the systems that kept so many people down weren’t invented by Trump. She made people aware that the focus on only certain segments of American voters, while others are ignored, is in need of a fundamental transformation. “This is not just about resisting and affronting Trump,” she declared, garbed in a flowing red jumper. “Because the systemic inequalities and disparities that I’m talking about existed long before that man occupied the White House!” When Pressley won and shocked the political establishment nationwide, she said, “I’m accountable in working for more than just who voted for me, but you know, each morning I’m thinking specifically about those who we effectively and successfully engaged or reengaged who had been ignored, left out, or left behind.”
The traditional white male consulting class didn’t know what to do with an outspoken black city councilwoman from Boston who unapologetically ran her first race for city council on a message of protection and advocacy for women and girls of color.
“I also had a multigenerational [strategy], you know, multicultural, every sexual orientation, gender identity—and that mattered. That informed everything. It’s to ensure that you don’t have blind spots.” That’s just never been done before in politics. Politics, in this day and age, is all about blind spots because, traditionally, the people who craft our candidates’ messages don’t look like the people they are speaking to. They don’t always know what it’s like to be a victim of racial prejudice when they’re crafting messages to communities of color or what it’s like to experience workplace sexual harassment when they’re crafting messages to women. We have not made it a prerequisite for our speech writers and campaign managers to actually be of the constituency that the candidate is looking to speak to, so it’s no wonder that, even today, we’re still hearing candidates speak in a way that doesn’t fully engage all of their constituents. These messaging blind spots have created a need and an opportunity for candidates like Pressley to use their own experiences to speak directly to those Americans that share them, rather than just parroting what their out-of-touch campaign strategists tell them to say. That was her strategy, to speak what she knew from her own lived experiences—and from the lived experiences of those she was seeking to represent—rather than just listening to what her campaign consultants told her to do when she knew it wasn’t right for her constituents. Pressley’s challenge of Mike Capuano, a veteran, ten-term incumbent, ruffled the feathers of establishment insiders. Incumbent candidates for Congress tend to win reelection 90 percent of the time, so any challenge to them that can upset the balance of establishment power is seen as an unnecessary annoyance to the party. Running against a reliable incumbent Democrat—someone who votes on policy the way the majority of Dems want them to vote, someone who’s unlikely to challenge the status quo in return for being able to keep his or her seat of power—is normally seen as something that isn’t worth the effort. You’re probably going to lose, and for what? But Pressley didn’t see running her campaign as something not worth the effort because, in her view, it’s not just about voting the way the party wants you to vote, and it’s not just about having someone in office who is a Democrat—a warm body who isn’t actively working to help his or her constituents. It’s about having someone who can speak truth to power and loudly advocate for constituents too at risk or too vulnerable to speak for themselves. Pressley’s vision harkens back to the true meaning of representative democracy. In Pressley’s eyes, “The people that are closest to the pain need to be closest to the power.” When Pressley announced her candidacy, the advice from some of the consultants was to play it safe and smooth out some of the edges to appeal to a more moderate and probably white electorate; she shouldn’t make explicit appeals to communities of color by running on the protection of women and girls of color. She was told that identity-based politics wouldn’t and couldn’t work. Imagine all of the women of color who needed to hear that message, who were moved to vote for Pressley because of the truths she so bravely spoke in her campaign. She spoke about overcoming her own history of abuse and trauma to become an outspoken advocate for girls of color who were living through those same experiences—an unorthodox message. In a time when politics focuses on messages of economic prosperity, Pressley focused instead on the most vulnerable and unprotected people in her constituency, speaking out against physical abuse and speaking up for gender equality. This all gets down to the systemic ways in which we come up with “the message” in the first place and how that system needs a complete overhaul.
How will political consultants, who shape political candidates and their messaging, know how to speak to the people in the candidates’ constituency when they themselves may not understand the people? A huge part of learning to harness this power correctly lies in learning how to articulate one’s message to the people. Each demographic is different—they have different lived experiences and are searching for the fulfillment of different needs in public policy to help shape their lives. We are not a one-size-fits-all coalition, so a one-size-fits-all message is doomed to do more harm than good, alienating entire factions of the Democratic base with a single ill-fitted mantra or campaign slogan. Democrats need to be able to speak to men and women of color of all walks of life. They particularly need to be able to speak to black women. Black women will play an especially crucial role in determining the election outcome in the 2020 Democratic primary race because, as Fortune magazine noted in a June 20, 2019, article by Melanie Eversley: “In the wake of the general election last year, black women stand out as a demographic group with one of the largest voter turnouts. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 55% of eligible black women voters cast ballots in November 2018, a full six percentage points above the national turnout.” That part of the Obama coalition also needs to be understood as a persuadable yet pragmatic bloc that does regularly participate in elections. The key to harnessing the votes of any member of yesteryear’s Obama coalition is tailoring a message to tackle the specific issues of the voter demographic while making it clear that they and their lived experiences are seen, acknowledged, and included in the mix of the political conversation.
So, how do you harness and secure the votes of blacks, Latinos, and the younger generations? Here’s a thought that rarely occurs to the Democratic old guard: What are the lived experiences of black and brown people? The simple answer is you have to first ask this question before you can realize that the answer is that it’s something very different from the lived experience of a white male leader. Often, data gurus on campaigns come up with a message they think might resonate with the most people based on feedback from focus groups that they set up to get a pulse on what the constituents are feeling. These focus group administrators are all well-meaning experts with stats and numbers, but that doesn’t mean that they are actually of the constituency they’re trying to learn more about or that they understand them beyond what is said within the confines of the focus group setting. Going forward, campaigns need to understand that cultural biases cannot be learned and accounted for within a single focus group session. Using this focus group data, campaigns then poll the candidate’s policy positions and messaging to see what gets the highest marks.
But this ivory tower approach isn’t the best way to win. Data can show only so much, and it can’t tell lawmakers what people are thinking and feeling. The PowerPoint presentations and graphs don’t reflect human impulses and biases like sexism and racism, which impact voting preferences and which are best spoken to through shared lived experiences. This is why, as Democrats, we need to convene focus groups in real communities, not in manufactured settings, where candidates can get our feedback, or the candidates should be creating these groups. The listening sessions that these groups provide candidates and their staff are essential in opening up the line of communication between the people and those in power. But that line of communication often closes as soon as the data is collected or utilized instead of creating a feedback loop that persists as long as that person is representing the public. On campaigns, this feedback loop is necessary because political messaging needs to consider factors like bias that may impact the behavior and the needs of the people candidates are trying to reach and represent. Pressley’s candidacy and model in Congress are a template for the future. She represents what is possible when the people in power have been through some of the same obstacles that they are in Congress to legislate against.
If the political strategists who are giving candidates advice are not people of color and they are not on the election consultancy team, we need to look for a new lawmaker. Symone Sanders, the press secretary for Bernie Sanders in 2016, was a senior adviser for Joe Biden in 2020. The campaign manager for Julián Castro moved over to advise Elizabeth Warren’s campaign once he dropped out of the race. These people of color are advising candidates who haven’t lived their experience but who want to understand it deeply so they can put forward workable policy solutions. Without the expertise of people of color, the plans these candidates hope to implement could seem out of touch with the constituency’s lived reality. The folks working beside government officials need to be diverse, as diverse as the voters the officials hope to represent, much like Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns were.
I’ve been on the inside, and a lack of diversity in a candidate’s campaign directly relates to campaign messages and whether they are in or out of step with the people. If you want a diverse coalition of voters to support your candidate, you’d better hire people who look like the coalition you are trying to build. But there’s no campaign school for little black kids. There’s too little infrastructure in place to train young people of color to intern or work on a campaign, and young people who work on campaigns are better positioned to become future candidates. Democrats can gain a big opportunity and build up a pipeline of candidates if they work to include young people from the community in political campaigns. The old way of listening to a white man in khakis who has only seen the city of Baltimore because of the Stringer Bell character in The Wire is over.
I was 18 when I took my job in the Office of Personnel at WVU. I was the records clerk that did the paperwork for all classified employees hired. The people ranged from service staff, such as custodians and mail carriers, up through to professional and technical personnel, some paid as much or higher than some faculty. I was quickly interacting with people of all people--no matter who they were. I helped them understand their benefits and get them on the payroll. Many of them I worked with through my years on campus. And, when I began to supervise others, I took each employee and learned enough about them so that I could help them do his or her job. It is quite easy for me to recognize what Maxwell is talking about! And I wholeheartedly agree. All of us are American citizens. We should all be just the same in being represented effectively!
To me, this is just logical! I was elected to Staff Council at West Virginia University. Individuals were chosen based upon their job classification. ALL classified positions at the University were included... So, I have to ask, why aren't representatives elected based upon some type of identity for purposes of politics?!
Maxwell begins the book with the chapter called, "Demonized Politics." It is not hard to imagine what might be covered first... But let's be very specific. Pay differentials!
One of the most important things we have to remember about identity politics is that it essentially creates a broader spectrum of politics, a framework that establishes new parameters for the people whose issues we consider and the person who is elected to represent those interests. Equal pay is an issue that illustrates this point. The often-cited statistic is that women make only 77 cents for every dollar a white man makes. But that’s the statistic for white women. Black women actually make only 64 cents on the dollar, and Latinas make only 54 cents. That disparity illustrates how race and gender can affect economic status, and thus, policy solutions must take that into consideration. No policy to solve equal pay can truly be effective unless every aspect of people’s lived experiences is taken into consideration, and those differ depending on what color skin we were born with. I wish this wasn’t the case, but it is, and we have to deal with it. What most detractors to identity politics fail to realize is that in 2016, Donald Trump ran on identity politics too—white identity politics. If not explicitly, he certainly ran on prioritizing the interests of white Americans over everyone else. “Trump went against the traditional Republican platform by promising to expand government, to protect Social Security, to protect Medicare and basically to provide government benefits that white people wanted.… Trump’s appeal is about whites wanting to feel like they’re getting some share of government benefits and support. This is of course wrong: White Americans receive a disproportionate share of resources whether that’s from the government or just the overall economic, social and political resources in the United States,” Duke University professor Ashley Jardina explained in an interview with Salon magazine. Jardina defines “white identity politics” as “the group of voters who feel attachment to their whiteness as a thread of solidarity and belonging.…
How sad that this same issue was addressed in the 1960s when Civil Rights was addressed resulting in Equal Pay for Equal Work... But that only works in, perhaps, non-corporate organizations. And, even at the University, I was quite aware that, for my level of responsibility, I came into another department where young and unclassified staff were making more than I was... Part of this was that, new people coming in would have a chance to negotiate their salaries, while if you were promoted internally, there was a standard percentage increase across the board. Yes, many new people were being paid higher salaries than those in similar positions who had years of experience! The point is that we--women and non-white individuals have known for decades that white men were paid more! Surely the question must be asked--WHY? And, everybody knows that the minimum wage rate hasn't been updated for too many years!
Readers, I'm not going to spend more time on this book, not because it doesn't deserve it. But because, I do have one critical point I want to make. Having lived in the 1960s and seen the improvements that were being made by the federal government, only to now see just how easily white men have worked to move us backward rather than forward. I want to close with this. Zerlina Maxwell is right on point on what needs to be said and even how to begin to look at things... I highly recommend this book, if you are younger, to all non-whites. Further, if you are white, but very concerned, such as a female white individual, I also recommend this book. Women have also been forced to fight in the area of employment and equal rights, even though it has been worse, in my opinion, for non-white, especially in the area of salary...
Now, without giving specifics, I want to spotlight, finally, what Maxwell shares about racial/sexual discrimination within politics! Apparently it is rampant... In my opinion, although I haven't been in the work field for a very long time, but I DO know that when our former president started calling names of women such as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, you can be sure that all men saw it as open season for all those harassments that had been calmed down through the earlier improvements in federal regulations, which are now being questioned once again. So, to me, I see this period of time as a "reinvention of the wheel" once again if indeed we get the wrong party in office.
What do I mean? In my opinion, normal communication has been so corrupted since 2015, that if we don't at least move back to that level where we had achieved some level of success in many areas, then we cannot possibly hope to achieve what Maxwell has rightly said must occur. Instead, if our former president is elected, we would be moving backward until cave men were once again pulling their captured females back to their caves... NOT trying to be funny...
It was quite clear that our former president favored big-money corporations in relation to taxes and regulations and eliminate many safety and financial constraints...for those same corporations to whom he gave major tax cuts... Also, two major issues about guns and women's bodies will continue to deteriorate until women are not working but kept pregnant and working in her kitchen, waiting for her husband, the breadwinner to come home... Or, taking the oldest job of women who were not married and providing the always-required services that all men must have, no matter from whom that would be... Sarcasm intended. We will be back in the 1950s or maybe even in Bible times where harems were popular... What do you think? Did God really plan for the human race to move backward rather than forward in our lives? I seriously doubt it!
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