Ideal And Identity
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Jonah Goldberg has been getting a lot of grief for writing the following:
For starters, I think the ideal Republican candidate just might be Hispanic — and tough on immigration. The way our politics work, you need some kind of authenticity, some kind of membership, to go after sacred cows. Not just in the Nixon to China or Sista Souljah sense, but in the sense that only members of a “special group” can challenge the orthodoxies of the self-appointed (left-wing) leadership of that group. Blacks can challenge racial quotas in ways whites can’t. Women can attack feminism in ways men can’t. Jews can criticize Israel, Catholics can challenge the Church, gays can question gay marriage, and so on. Yes, they’ll still be attacked for their heresy. But the chief weapon — charges of bigotry — is severely blunted when “one of your own” leads the assault. I don’t like it, but it is what it is.
I’ll leave James to question Goldberg’s frequent use of the word sense in this post. For a change, I don’t think Goldberg is that far off here. Perhaps the choice of Ward Connerly as an example of what he means was not the best one he could have made, given the quite limited inroads Connerly has made among other blacks specifically on affirmative action initiatives, but the basic observation about how identity politics works is a fair one. All things being equal, it is easier for a member of a particular group to make criticisms without fear of being charged with prejudice and animus. There is still the possibility of being attacked as a sell-out or a self-hater, but that is a different kind of criticism rooted in the conviction that solidarity demands conformity on certain questions. Someone who belongs to a group possesses credibility and authority with the group that outsiders don’t possess. Even political groups, which are no less subject to the pressures of their own kind of identity politics, are more likely to listen to dissent from their own members than they are to heed the critiques of opponents. One might say that this observation is so straightforward that it is not all that remarkable, but it seems to be strangely controversial all the same. There is something to be said for the idea of a “tough” immigration policy being espoused by someone who could not be automatically tagged as a nativist–not that this would stop proponents of mass immigration from flinging the charge of nativism as irresponsibly as possible–and this sort of presentation could help drive home that the biggest losers from mass immigration are lower-class workers of all races and remind the public that middle-class and lower-middle class Hispanics are not favorably disposed towards illegal immigration at all.
Goldberg himself seems to grant that this is something of an ideal fantasy, and not something that is likely to happen. He acknowledges that such a candidate doesn’t exist, but he is essentially arguing that if such a candidate did exist he would be able to neutralize a number of typical attacks on enforcement and restrictionist arguments. The biggest flaw I can see with Goldberg’s ideal candidate is that it is even more unlikely that such a candidate is going to be otherwise pro-labor, which means that he will oppose unfair competition from one direction while enabling it elsewhere in the name of free trade. There is an additional problem that, regardless of views on immigration, minority voters have few reasons to vote Republican, and identity politics and immigration policy probably aren’t going to change that. In the end, the worst that can be said of Goldberg’s argument is that it is purely idle, because he hates identity politics and would regard engaging in such identity politics as a terrible mistake.
Filed under: immigration, politics
All things being equal, it is easier for a member of a particular group to make criticisms without fear of being charged with prejudice and animus.
Fair enough; it is darned inconvenient that so many people with strong anti-immigration views are motivated by prejudice.
the worst that can be said of Goldberg’s argument is that it is purely idle, because he hates identity politics and would regard engaging in such identity politics as a terrible mistake.
I assume that this is meant facetiously, But I’ll just go ahead and state straightforwardly that Goldberg is a Republican. He’s part of the party of Palin and not-Joe the not-Plumber (during the election, at least, though Joe has since defected to the Michigan Militia or whoever). They have nothing but white identity politics, all the way down.
The strangest thing about his argument is the (unspoken) assumption that the whole point of having an hispanic (or other minority) Republican candidate is to actually ATTRACT members of that group through identity politics. And yet this is severely undermined by having a minority candidate who attacks his own minority. So what exactly is the point? Goldberg assumes that there’s some way you can have your cake and eat it too, when this kind of candidate not only cancels out his own major electoral benefits, he actually undermines, weakens, and possibly ends up weaker than otherwise. Imagine how Obama would have done had he been running as a Ward Connelly or Bill Cosby-like candidate. What would the point be? Is Goldberg so itching to find a way to criticize minorities without being called a racist that he needs to create an imaginary candidate to do it for him, and pretend that candidate will actually be successful in the process? Again, the whole idea here is that identify politics will supercede criticism of the very identity politics the candidate is supposed to be courageiously confronting. That hispanics, say, will rally to support a candidate who criticizes hispanic identity politics and hispanic-centric causes simply because the candidate is hispanic. Isn’t this the definition of a lost cause?
I think its ridiculous for anyone to throw the label of “identity politics” around; when people do, it implies that their politics comes from a place of purity, where their race/class/etc has no influence on their opinions, and they’re simply doing whats best for the country. This is nonsense. Everyone is a product of their circumstances to a certain extent, and they accept certain cultural or ethnic labels because they also accept the other positions that often comes with it.
As you yourself have stated, minority voters vote for Democrats because they perceive their interests, which are varied, are best served by it. Part of that might come from some sort of racial conformity, but that ignores the steep losses in voting blocs of minorities that were once Republican strongholds, such as the Cuban-American vote, Muslims, certain anti-communist Asian groups, and even worsening rates amongst Hispanics and African-American’s.
“Isn’t this the definition of a lost cause?”
Yes.
“I think its ridiculous for anyone to throw the label of “identity politics†around; when people do, it implies that their politics comes from a place of purity, where their race/class/etc has no influence on their opinions, and they’re simply doing whats best for the country.”
Quite right. As I have said before, especially in a mass democracy all politics is identity politics of one kind or another. Once you start labeling yourself or claiming belonging to a party, a cause, an ideology or whatever, you are practicing identity politics. However, that doesn’t exclude the possibility that voting patterns can also be driven by specific, identifiable interests.
Someone at NR once mocked Buchanan for engaging in “identity politics for white people,” which was another way of saying that he wanted to represent the interests of real constituencies–socially conservative Protestants and white ethnic Catholics for the most part– rather than merely pretending to do so, which is what the GOP prefers to do.
“However, that doesn’t exclude the possibility that voting patterns can also be driven by specific, identifiable interests.”
It’s mostly a question of how those specific interests are best served. It’s why its hard to imagine the Republican’s outreach ever getting that far; the Democrats are king, for better or for worse, of political patronage. I remember when they premiered the list of delegates for the DNC and you could literally tick off the groups on a checklist. Union members, ethnic groups, LGBT, disability rights advocates, etc.
Many people harped on the whiteness of the RNC, but the problem wasn’t that per se, but the reality that that coalition no longer holds the sway it once did. And neither of the groups you mentioned seem especially keen on getting together with any other group, and there doesn’t seem to be a larger binder in place that can make them ignore their differences. This is partially the genius of Democrats that they can somehow miraculously hold what is an exceptionally fragile group of people together with larger concepts of equality and progress etc.
The prorblem is confusing reaching out to to those groups and mere tokenism. Despite the color of his skin, I don’t think Michael Steele will be very successful at bringing minorities into the party for a variety of reaons. Nor for that matter were the appointments of Gonzalez, Powell, or Rice, succesful in that regards. I think there is also a danger that such acts of “tokenism” could further hurt the GOP’s position within such communities. (It also doesn’t help when you have figures like Limbaugh pusing out some of the few minority leaders who are well respected in their communities ala Powell)
I think the larger issue is that even were there such a token latino leader in the GOP, immigration is something of a third-rail issue for latino leaders, especially given the strong anti-latin undertones of the GOP’s anti-immigration stance (I personally also think that it is hard to fit in with the greater American narrative as a melting-pot and nation of immigrants). A more immediately troubling thing for the GOP is the way that the President and the Democratic Party are outmaneuvering the GOP in regards to its one traditional source of latino support, the Miami Cuban Community. The younger Miami Cuban community views itself much more as a Latin-American or latino community, and lacks the hardcore ant-communism/anti-castro views that have kept the community part of the Republican bloc.
I think someone like Jeb, or his son George P. could be very powerful in articulating a form of conservatism that appeals to latinos, but the GOP has used identity politics (or as you say “white identity politics”) as a way to establish its base contra the latino community, and I don’t see a way for them to create a more universal message without abandoning, at least heavily refashioning, its stance on immigration.
It’s hard to have two groups believe diametrically opposite things; its one of the miracles of the Democratic party that Muslim Americans and Jewish American’s see completely different things in Obama’s status quo position on the middle East and Israel specifically,
One of the few sensible things Steele proposed during his run up to the chairmanship was the focus on actually recruiting city-level minority politicos and staff members, building the kind of political farm team that eventually yields federal level talent. I haven’t heard anything about it since, between all his asinine political statements, and I doubt it will see any traction amongst state party leaders. Without that kind of backbench the minority Republican will always be a token, as there will not be a base to draw from.
One of the points that people pointed out during this campaign was how much Obama fought every single area to the teeth, both in the primary and the campaign, in order to run up numbers so that even if he lost a district, it was by a far smaller number than a Democrat might get traditionally. This kind of gaming of the numbers is one of the reasons why Republican outreach might yield dividends even if they never get the majority of an ethnic groups. An inroad of 30% of African American’s would make a sizable difference in states like Michigan. You’re not going to win any constituency over in one election cycle (though you evidently can lose them), but you can build the soil to get them there. But that takes patience and money Republicans don’t seem to have.
The “conradg” post above contains a lot of errors that, while not made exclusively by conservatives, I often note while reading modern conservative literature.
The largest and worst error (and the only one I’ll address here) is what I’ve come to call the “monolithic other” error. During the cold war, I noted that many conservatives believed the the peoples of the USSR, PRC and the Warsaw Pact countries experienced absolute solidarity; that everyone, from the General Secretary to the machinist to the farmer were of a single mind. Of course, this hindered US cold war policy substantially, in that it blinded many policy-makers and executives to the very real differences in ideology and wants of the people living in Communism, differences that were best exemplified in the ironically-name Solidarity movement in Poland and Tito of the former Yugoslavia. These differences were seldom taken fully advantage of, in favor of an obstinantly standoffish military policy.
This “monolithic other” error extends to many other things, and in “conradg’s” case to hispanics. Dr. Larison is very correct when he states that there are very many votes to be gained by reforming (and I use “reformation” here to mean actual reformation, not unmitigated immigration) and enforcing immigration policy. “Hispanics” are not a monolithic entity; there are very real interests that hispanics have that are neglected or antithetical to liberal ideals, and ignoring this fact hurts not only conservatives but the country as a whole.
For example, McCain’s stance on immigration reform was certainly not perfect, but it was an excellent start and a shining beacon of substantive policy in yet another election overly concerned with cheese, “clinging,” personality and other crap. Of course, this strength was professed to be a liability by the movement conservatives, and damaged McCain greatly, and more importantly shut down debate on something that the conservatives very much have something to gain from.
As “Sean S.” states above, even modest gains by conservatives amongst “monolithic others” would have a sharp electoral effect. However, before these gains can be had we must convince ourselves and others that these entities are not monolithic, and that addressing their (very real) concerns is not tilting at windmills.
There’s other problems with the “conradg” post, but I think this is enough on the subject for now.
Even political groups, which are no less subject to the pressures of their own kind of identity politics, are more likely to listen to dissent from their own members than they are to heed the critiques of opponents.
Given the way that Republicans currently observe this likelihood, which is to say not at all, it’s hard to believe Goldberg can advance his tale with a straight face. Oh, wait; it’s Goldberg.
JJM,
I think you missed the boat entirely on my post. In the first place, I’m a liberal, not a conservative, and I was not promoting the view that the hispanic vote is monolithic, but criticizing that very notion. My point was that one can’t expect the hispanic electorate to monolithically support a Republican candidate just because they are hispanic, particularly when the whole point of this imaginary candidacy is to criticize and undermine hispanic identity politics. It’s a self-defeating proposal, in other words. What any of that has to do with the cold war or McCain’s immigration policyis beyond me.
I was not promoting the view that the hispanic vote is monolithic
Your original post is full your assertions that one policy position of a candidate will “cancel out” the electoral effects of another position of the same candidate, with respect to the Hispanic vote. This is a great example of thinking about a group of people as a “monolithic other,” because the whole assertion hinges on the notion that everyone that you identify as being part of the monolithic other has the same disposition toward a specific set of policies, and furthermore assigns importance to those policies in the same way.
JJM,
You confuse my critical analysis with some endorsement of the argument I am criticizing. Identity politics do exist to some degree, that much is for certain, but not monolithically. Goldberg is arguing that an hispanic candidate can, at the same time, take advantage of that identity politics by getting hispanics to vote for him because he’s hispanic, and yet also get a whole host of other people to vote for him because he’s critical of identity politics and won’t support things that the hispanic community wants. I think this logic is absurd, and point out that he will NOT get the hispanic vote if he is against the kinds of things hispanics favor, and the votes he gets from outside the hispanic community for going against identity politics will not make up for what he’s lost. In fact, he will probably end up a net loser of votes in the process. None of my analysis relies on the notion that hispanic identity politics is “monolithic”. Wuite the opposite. It relies on the notion that hispanics are intelligent voters capable of figuring out when a candidate is opposed to their interests, and will vote accordingly, regardless of the ethnic identity of the candidate. This is why, for example, hispanics voted overwhelmingly for Obama, despite media prognosticators imaging he would have problems because “hispanics have problems with blacks”. To the contrary, a large majority of hispanics were able to figure out that Obama would be better for their interests, regardless of his ethnic identity.
You confuse my critical analysis with some endorsement of the argument I am criticizing.
Ah, my fault then. It seems I get confused whenever Goldberg is brought up, and this is part of the reason that I’ve given up reading him. BTW did you know that Hitler’s policies find an audience today in Whole Foods customers? It’s enough to make the brain explode.