[Peace-discuss] Will I.P. elect McCain?

[C. G. Estabrook]

"On Sunday, McCain came out in favor of an Arizona civil rights initiative that 
would outlaw any state discrimination either for or against folks, based on 
race, gender or national origin. Obama said he was 'disappointed' with McCain 
and told UNITY he favors affirmative action 'when properly structured.'

"The Arizona referendum banning preferential treatment based on race is also on 
the ballot in the swing state of Colorado. It won in California in 1996, in 
Washington in 2000 and in Michigan in the great Democratic sweep of 2006. It has 
never lost, and may just win McCain Colorado, and with it the nation."

There would be a certain paradox in McCain's becoming president as a result of 
identity politics -- which begins with the notion that the categories of gender, 
race and class are fixed.

Self-described progressives in the last generation have replaced campaigns 
against economic inequality with campaigns against discrimination within 
economic groups -- as inequality increased.  Thus it was considered a victory to 
get women into West Point or people of color onto the board of General Electric 
(instead of abolishing those institutions).

The old Left goals were quietly abandoned with the onslaught of Neoliberalism, 
thirty years ago.  Redistribution was shelved in favor of "recognition." (It's 
true that a few, like M.L. King, went the other way, but they were marginalized 
-- with prejudice, in his case.)

Some people noticed what was going on: see, e.g., Walter Benn Michaels' "The 
Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality" 
(2006).  But a President McCain would be a rather large chicken come home to 
roost.  --CGE