Shirley Chisholm 1972 (photo by Rose Greene)

“I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that … I am the candidate of the people of America.”

–Shirley Chisholm, January 25, 1972, announcing her bid for the U.S. Presidency

Desegregation may have been positive for many people to the extent that it theoretically broadened the scope of opportunities for people of color. And by rejecting the notion that separate was equal, the Brown decision, along with the Civil Rights Acts that became law a decade later, forced whites to recognize the existence of blacks, if nothing else. They attended the same schools, ate in the same restaurants and were citizens of the same nation.

Or so Shirley Chisholm wanted to believe. The first black woman elected to Congress and then to seriously run for president in 1972, this Brooklyn Democrat sought to make democracy live up to its name by making the U.S. political system more representative, humane and inclusive. But for all of the recognition – much of it negative and degrading – Chisholm received during her political career, she, as a historical subject, couldn’t overcome the virtual invisibility that women of color have been plagued with, even today, 50 years after the Brown decision.

It is for this very reason that Shola Lynch decided to make Chisholm’s 1972 run for the White House the subject of her first feature film. When I sat down with Lynch to discuss the making of Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed, she relayed that she knew of Chisolm prior to making the film. But because Chisholm is rarely mentioned – much less discussed extensively – in history books and in film, Lynch’s knowledge about her was extremely limited.

And Lynch, it goes without saying, was certainly not the only one who knew so little about a woman who has struggled to contribute so much to the American people – be they black, white, gay, women, rich, poor or any combination thereof. Perhaps now that Lynch has made this film, which will be released nationwide by Film Movement in September, this historical error can begin to be corrected.

The Interviewer: Laura Nathan, InTheFray Managing Editor
The Interviewee: Shola Lynch, Director, Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed

(The text below includes highlights from the interview. For the complete transcript, click here)

Shirley Chisholm at a press conference with Congressman Ron Dellums in 1972 (photo courtesy of Shirley Chisholm)

Tell me a little bit about what inspired you to make a documentary about Shirley Chisholm.

Well, you know, I didn’t really remember that she’d run for president. I knew that she was the first black woman elected to Congress, and I don’t even really remember 1972. I was really young. It hadn’t really been pointed out to me, and I’m very interested in history. I’m really interested in African American history and women’s history, but she’s kind of left out of that landscape. She’s mentioned in passing, though. I was familiar with her name, but nobody has really done an in-depth study of her political work. Or even a biography, for that matter … [She wrote her own, though]. She wrote Unbought and Unbossed about her run for Congress. She had a really difficult run. That actually is a really fascinating story. And she wrote The Good Fight, which is about her run for president.

But those were both written back in the ’70s, right?

Exactly. The year after the race. So in ’69, Unbought and Unbossed, and The Good Fight in ’73. It was published in 1973. And in many ways, that presidential campaign took so much out of her. Emotionally, financially.

And she was attacked several times, right?

Yeah, she was attacked several times. I mean, it was scary, and it was definitely supposed to be a warning to her that she was transgressing her place and that she was really not fit for being there. And some of it was out and out intimidation of her.

Do you think that that was the case because she was a woman of color, or was it due to either her race or gender specifically?

You know, you can’t separate the two. Would it have happened if it was just a man? Probably. But in some ways it was more offensive to think that you had both a minority race and gender classification or guidelines. [People at that time thought Chisholm] shouldn’t have been there [running for president and speaking out against social and political norms].

I don’t remember – when did her political career end?

… She was in Congress from ’68 to ’83, and she retired because of the Reagan era … She said it was very difficult to work across the aisle and have bipartisan legislation. She was always very issue-oriented and relied on that work across the aisle – and with who[m]ever. She didn’t tow the party line. Nobody really owned her, which is great and really frustrating …

Were there certain political pet projects that she had? I know she wanted to make democracy more representative, but were there certain pieces of legislation that she worked on to achieve that end?

Well, I talked to her senior legislative aide during that period. She’s actually in the movie – Shirley Gaines. She was interested in education. And there were a couple of bills that she had passed on health care and things that had to do with issues related to the people in her community. They were largely a group of people not making a lot of money, just trying to get by in Brooklyn. And she was very aware of the need for after-school programs and for passing legislation related to that in the New York state legislature and also in the U.S. Congress.

She spoke out against the Vietnam War on the floor of Congress when nobody else did.  She worked for women’s rights and the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] …

In a way, it’s very fascinating to me because she comes out of a Christian tradition. We always think of Christian tradition as very fundamentalist and very right-wing. Her Christian tradition was humanistic, and because of that, she defended broad kinds of legislation and was for human rights, and there wasn’t really such thing as gay rights, but gay rights folks loved her. I mean, she wasn’t advocating a gay lifestyle, but she was advocating human beings’ rights, and whatever fell under that broad umbrella was really important to her …

Shirley Chisholm 2003 (photo by Sandi Sissel)

… Tell me a little bit about the effect you think Shirley Chisholm had on her constituents and her colleagues.

Everybody that we talked [to] who had worked with her in Congress or on her campaign was so incredibly impacted by her energy, her commitment, her follow-through, and were completely inspired in their own lives in that way. And to a T, every person has been involved in either local politics or their own work community and shaping rules, trying to change things. It’s almost like they have a real sense of citizenship and duty from seeing her in action as young kids, well, not kids, college-age. And they are always impressed with [her] forthrightness. We think of politicians as trying to figure out how to spin things, but she just had her mind set on something. She was the same person, who believed in the same legislation and said the same thing whether she was in front of a white Southern audience or a black Baptist audience or an urban audience anywhere in the country …

Are there any politicians or activists that you think have really embraced Chisholm’s message? Can you think of anyone who might be the next Shirley Chisholm?

That’s a hard question, by the way, because I’m not aware of everyone doing her work. But Congresswoman Barbara Lee from Oakland, California, actually, as a young college student, helped run the Chisholm presidential campaign and was so inspired by Shirley Chisholm and Ron Delam and by community activism in the Bay Area that she became a politician. She became involved in local politics and then decided to run for Congress. And she stood up; she was the lone voice on the floor against giving unilateral power to our President after 9/11. You know, wow! … And she also has put a bill on the floor a couple of years ago to recognize Shirley Chisolm [H.Res. 97, March 21, 2001, referred to the Committee on Government Reform, but never considered]. I mean, it’s not legislation. It’s a public record. I think these examples are important for women, for women of color. These women are righteous in a lot of ways. You don’t always agree with them, and that’s part of the fun, too. But they’re doing what they think is best, and there’s real appeal in that.

One of Shirley’s gripes with the political system was that it wasn’t equally accessible to everyone. Would you say this still seems to be the case now? Obviously, it still seems to be.

Yeah. It’s even worse now because it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. More people now than …  in the ‘50s, obviously, and even in ’72 feel like they cannot affect any kind of change. Whereas, back then, it was kind of the tail end of that feeling … If you think about the civil rights movement, which was started in part by adults, a lot of the change came from protesting in the streets by young people. And the civil rights laws passed, and the Voting Rights Act passed. The ERA almost passed, or it passed in Congress, but then it didn’t get ratified by the states. [Laughs]. Then Vietnam was a huge issue.

And the voting age had changed from 21 to 18, and ’72 was the first election where all of these people were allowed to vote. That’s a huge part of the story in that it’s a historical moment that allowed her to run. You’re talking about 10 million new voters that were crazy enough to be attracted – many of them – to a candidate like her …

Carol Mosley Braun ran for the Democratic presidential nomination this past winter, but she has since bowed out of the race. Do you think the same barriers exist to a woman of color getting elected to the White House for women like Carol Mosley Braun as they did for Shirley Chisholm, or do you think those barriers have changed in some respects?

Well, I think they have changed to a degree in that because there are more women and women of color involved in all aspects of political life – not to say there are huge amounts – but it’s not as shocking. Think about Congress. Four hundred-some-odd congressmen. Think about what a group picture would have looked like for Shirley Chisholm. I mean, the people she had to work with every day. She was the first, so it was really uncomfortable. I mean, she told all kinds of stories – we couldn’t put all of them in the film – about ways in which people really felt uncomfortable around her. And in some ways, it was isolating. I mean, she built her own community through her office. It was really draining in a lot of ways.

Now there are more women in Congress, and it’s not as shocking. But there are still huge barriers because of the idea of leadership that we have – I mean, there are even barriers for some men. Everyone can’t style himself as Indiana Jones, and so if you’re a guy who doesn’t exude that kind of masculinity, you’re going to have a lot of trouble …

Oh, absolutely. One of the biggest criticisms of both the mainstream feminist movement and the racial equality movement, if you’d call it that, is the failure of these movements to recognize various other aspects of identity. Do you find that this is still a problem, particularly for women of color? And do you think there is a way for women of color to successfully work with mainstream feminist movements and racial equality movements?

Yeah, you know, the thing is, it has always been an issue, and it will probably always be an issue. And it’s a matter of how open the dialogue is in many respects, and Shirley Chisholm said this, too. The idea was that she could bring a coalition of people together, and then the reality was that coalition-building was really hard. Because women’s groups didn’t necessarily want to deal with black issues, and black folks didn’t really want to deal with women’s issues, and it was difficult … And so black women were feeling kind of left out. And Paula Giddings, who wrote When and Where I Enter, which is a history of this subject … [shows] how black women have been the fabric of American history. And she doesn’t do it with uplift and celebration, but in showing their work and showing how they’ve been able to navigate race and gender in the 18th century, in the 19th century and the 20th century. In fact, it’s the only place where I found more than passing mention of Shirley Chisholm’s campaign for president …

Granted, it’s just 2 ½ pages … She points out that in the ’70s, you see black women finding their own voice, and you see that happening in literature and in politics. For instance … Maya Angelou and then also Shirley Chisholm in politics. It’s like, okay, we have identity other than just our gender or just our race. And that’s the fascinating part. People will fixate on only one aspect of someone’s experience. It’s limiting because no one walks through the world just as their race or just as their gender. There are all kinds of ways in which you identify. I identify – I used to identify – as an athlete and as a scholar and all of the things that make up our personalities …

Shola Lynch on location in Barbados (photo by Sandi Sissel)

In the film world, women of color lack a visible presence as well. There aren’t that many films about women of color. Did you find that that made it difficult for you to produce this, your first film? I guess most of the funding for your film came from organizations with a vested interest in promoting Chisholm’s message. But did you find that you had trouble initially getting that story out and garnering support for your project?

Well, I found that I had trouble fundraising because people really wondered. I had to craft my proposals knowing that people were going to craft the relevance of it … I didn’t want it to be a biography for that reason. Not that I think a biography is a bad way to go, but she is really a woman of action. This is a story about her run for president. So it’s easier to stay away from just general celebration and uplift, which happens a lot. And I think that does a disservice because people who participate in making history don’t think of themselves as making history.

There are all of these moral dilemmas and choices that they’re responsible for. And they have to think about what those choices are and act on them. And that’s the same kind of thing we all do every day, whether we choose to ignore the choice or not, which is easier in a lot of ways … So I wanted it to be about that process. And the other thing about it is that because I am a black woman, I knew I could raise money for a film about a black woman. And that because she was not historically contested territory – in fact, the territory didn’t exist – people were like, “Oh, how nice.” And there was that assumption that this would be a nice documentary as opposed to a good political story. I mean, I knew I couldn’t make a story about the ’72 presidential election … Now I hope that this gets easier and that I don’t have to work as hard to find funding. There are so many great documentaries I’d love to make …

When I spoke with Larry [Meistrich, CEO of Film Movement, distributor of Chisolm ’72], one of the things he mentioned when we discussed your film was that they’re marketing it as a film about electability rather than a story about an African American woman. Is that how you want to see your film marketed as well?

Yeah, you know, I think too often you can get pigeonholed by your race and gender [Laughs]. And while it’s interesting and it’s good and it’s important, it is. And nobody wants to give it that short shrift.

The reason the movie is important to me is not because of her race and gender, but it’s because of her political action and the kind of politician she was. Given that time period, it’s amazing, including the race and gender stuff. And I really appreciate that about Larry’s approach to the material in the film because it is a political story.  And that’s the more interesting story. I mean, it’s like “Yeah, great, she’s black and she’s a woman. Yeah, great.” That story’s done in 30 seconds. Cheers! [Laughs]. And I think too often people forget that any story, if it’s told well, has broad appeal because it strikes a human chord.

All of that being said, what is it that you would ideally like to see your audience take from Chisholm ’72?

Oh, gosh, that’s a really hard question! A little bit of hope, a little bit of optimism that could be translated into their own lives and their own communities. Yeah, if you think about it, you know, “Democracy, citizenship, and participation.” [Laughs]. And what it means applied to us as individuals. But it’s not an abstract idea – well, it is an abstract idea, but it also translates into everyday life.

What would you hope other filmmakers might take from your story and from your work?

Yeah, I’m not as presumptuous. [Laughs]. Well, I will say that what we tried to do was tell a really good story and were aware of that and didn’t want to just rely on the fact that we had a fascinating subject. I mean, you see it happening for a lot of the documentaries now. You have to tell a story. It’s not just information strung together.

Is there anything you hope political aspirants or people in politics would take from your story about Shirley and her career?

Well, in a lot of ways, they’re the ones who can make the fastest, most effective changes right now. You know, politicians as a breed do not have to be bad people. You don’t have to agree with them, but if politicians actually behave in a way that they believe is actually good and right rather than just trying to win a game, then I think we make our world a better place. There are a lot of people on both sides, throughout the political spectrum, that feel that way. I mean, there are a lot of people who just care about winning and making sure you have a job. It’s about money and corporate interests and lobbyists. Oh my gosh. I don’t know quite how to put this. Politics shouldn’t be just about winning. It should be about doing good, but you want to win also. So I’m not quite sure.

One last question. Has Shirley seen the film? What does she think about it?

She has not seen the film.

Oh, really?

She has a very interesting relationship to the film. She almost didn’t let me do it. I had to talk her into it. So I talked her into it, and we went down and did one interview with her so we’d have a trailer to show people. She humored us basically because when we showed up, I said, “We’re going to use this [trailer] to fundraise, so I’ll be back. It might take a year. It might take two.” She never really expected me to come back, which is why she humored us. She’s good at that actually, but she’s also a woman of her word. So when I did come back, she had to do it.

And so when we told her we got into Sundance [Film Festival], she said, “Oh, that’s nice.”  But I had to explain to her what that meant because she had no conception of what Sundance was. She was like, “Oh, have fun, dear!” And I wanted to show her the film before we went to Sundance, but she said, “This isn’t a good time.” She had just moved. She had just built a house, and she wanted to move all of her books out of storage. She wanted to be surrounded by her books. And so, finally, I’m going down to show it to her next week actually.

Why didn’t she want you to make the film? Did she just think it wouldn’t be interesting to other people?

In some ways, she didn’t feel it was very relevant. I had to remind her. She said, “That was 30 years ago; I’m not sure if I want to go back to that.” She had real resistance to doing that. But I was able ultimately to convince her because I said, “It’s not really about you. It’s about future generations and making sure that they have great examples, great stories about people who tried to do good things.” Basically, I appealed to the schoolteacher in her.”

Laura Nathan-Garner

Colored Waiting Room. Rome, Georgia, September 1943. (Library of Congress, courtesy of Images of American Political History)

The interviewer: Laura Nathan / Austin, Texas

The interviewee: Rachel F. Moran, Robert D. and Leslie-Kay Raven Professor of Law and Executive Committee Member, Center for Social Justice, the University of California at Berkeley / Berkeley, California

Fifty years removed from that fateful May 1954 day when the Supreme Court ruled that separate is not equal, scholars and people outside of academia frequently refer to the present epoch in American social history as the post-civil rights era. But what exactly does the post- entail here? How do we describe the post-civil rights era? Certainly, we can agree that the notion of “separate but equal” that maintained the black/white divide for over two centuries is no longer legally permissible. But did the Court’s ruling ensure full equality for all U.S. citizens, or did the Brown decision merely raise new questions about what should succeed “separate but equal” as the primarily social descriptor for the diverse collection of people residing in the United States? When I spoke with Rachel F. Moran, Robert D. and Leslie-Kay Raven Professor of Law and Executive Committee Member at the Center for Social Justice at the University of California at Berkeley, she shared her thoughts on the end of segregation and suggested that racial, ethnic, and class differences continue to alienate millions of people residing within U.S. borders. In fact, as she suggested, events and cultural trends of the past fifty years have not ended the debate on equality in the United States.  Rather new questions and conflicts concerning race and ethnicity have predominated the post-civil rights era.

The landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision is often heralded as the most decisive legal victory in the struggle to end segregation. But how effective do you think the Brown decision has been in altering attitudes about race?

Brown alone was limited in its ability to alter social practices. It was only after the Executive Branch and Congress backed the Supreme Court’s decision with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and enlisted federal agencies to enforce this law that Brown’s broad [influence and significance could be grasped].

Some people say that Brown didn’t make a difference because schools have since re-segregated. But I don’t think this is the case. Many people have had newfound opportunities to occupy positions of authority and importance due to the end of segregated practices. That is, Brown adopted an individualist model, so now everybody has a right [to attend a given public school, regardless of their race]. There are, however, limits to the individual’s ability to alter racial and class differences, and the best prepared individuals change [and benefit] the most.

Although certain structural issues were not accounted for by Brown, the decision played a significant role in revising notions of what individual opportunity required. You still couldn’t undo structural vestiges as easily because the [U.S.] Constitution is built upon individual rights and limits the extent to which the federal government can regulate the states and tell them what to do. So there are gaps, but by rethinking individual rights and opportunities, people can influence these structures through the new opportunities [they gained from the Brown decision.] Those benefits are real and will be long-standing. We won’t see the black middle-class disappear. We won’t see a reversion back to pre-Brown segregation practices.

Do you think that race continues to play as prominent a role in the United States as it did during the mid-1950s? In what ways have white privilege and more covert manifestations of racial alienation become a means of perpetuating racism?

Well, it’s really difficult for people who didn’t grow up during the 1950s [or weren’t alive during that time] to remember how difficult things were and realize how much things have changed. It used to be that blacks would travel across state lines, uncertain as to whether there would be a hotel where they could sleep or a restaurant where they could eat on the other side. Black families would have to strategize about where they would sleep and eat.

People tend to forget that race was inscribed in ways that were deeply humiliating and very pervasive. There was a Denver hotel owner, for instance, who said [his hotel] would tolerate pets but not blacks or Hispanics.

Racial groups are not as stratified as they used to be; the civil rights model has become so engrained that people forget these things. That doesn’t mean race is unimportant, but the official participation in racial segregation is far less prevalent than it was in the ’50s. Even though the changes aren’t huge across the board, there are changes. There are black CEOs in major corporations. Blacks are now partners in Wall Street [law and stock brokerage] firms. In the [pre-civil rights] era, they couldn’t even get an interview.

This, of course, has created new dilemmas. Blacks have since found some kind of an identity built around race [through hip hop and other cultural phenomena]. Now there are questions about preserving this identity that they value while also participating in institutions that are predominately white. So these new dilemmas have … happened because change has occurred. Today race still affects the way we identify ourselves and relate to each other, and inequality is still real.  But if you did not grow up with Jim Crow segregation, you can’t imagine what that was like.

We don’t know now what the endpoint is; we still don’t know what racial utopia is or what it should look like. The worst transgressions of treating race as a caste system are over, so now we have to ask all of these questions. But we still haven’t arrived at a full understanding of what we’ll end up as. Will we be multiracial? Colorblind? Or something else?

Saint Louis children and their parents protest transferring to a school open to black children. March 1933. (Library of Congress, courtesy of Images of American Political History)

What impact do you think the contemporary debate concerning affirmative action in higher education and the rhetoric used by both its opponents and proponents has on the quest to achieve racial equality and privilege?

Well, I’m of the view that a lot of this debate [over affirmative action in higher education] is [actually] about access to elite institutions. Nearly everyone who is eligible to attend these institutions is privileged at some level. They have completed high school, and in the case of graduate admissions, college. And these applicants have [achieved] a level [of success] that makes it plausible for them to go on [to college or graduate school]. So it’s a fairly privileged cross-section of people who have an education and are successful and ambitious.

The rhetoric [surrounding affirmative action in higher education] focuses on leadership, so that the debate shifts from diversity as an internal pedagogical strategy to [understanding] elite institutions of public education and higher education as the training ground for leadership in various universities. This suggests that these institutions are the gateway to higher opportunities. There’s a huge [opportunity] gap between someone with a high school diploma and someone who doesn’t [have a high school or college degree]. [The disparity] is [growing], so the stakes … are higher. There’s a sense of scarcity; the costs of not making it are very high. People feel very vulnerable. There’s a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots. So the affirmative action debate is really as much about how race affects who gets ahead. With fewer manufacturing jobs today, more people feel [like they have to get a college or even graduate degree]; there’s a feeling that it’s all or nothing. This bigger gap [between the haves and have-nots] gets masked, however, by the way that the affirmative action debate gets framed with regard to higher education. Centering the debate on a group of people who are academically competitive — regardless of their race — ignores the people who are left behind without meaningful access to educational opportunity.

African Americans often hear that they have been displaced by Hispanics as the largest minority group in the United States. How has the increase of Latinos affected the national conversation on race, which has historically been primarily a black/white dialogue?

Well, up until the 1970s, it was demographically a black/white dialogue. Back then, only one out of ten [people in the United States] would identify themselves as non-white, and nearly all non-whites considered themselves black. Today, far more Americans say they’re non-white, but the portion of the non-white group who identify themselves as black is smaller. And many issues affecting race relations and racial equality still haven’t been resolved.

It’s almost a bicoastal issue. On the East Coast, they’re still looking at the [U.S.] population in primarily black and white terms. But on the West Coast, they can’t [talk about race in those terms]. Latinos are now the majority in some parts of California. [There’s] a lag on the East Coast to come to grips with this presence [of other sizable minority populations in the United States]

African Americans [have] a unique history and connection. Many worry that their [history] will somehow get lost in the numbers, and problems they have as a community won’t get addressed. There is also some concern that African Americans won’t be able to build coalitions.

Although blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans share a number of concerns related to discrimination, Latino and Asian American communities also have some distinct concerns from blacks. Both groups have grown dramatically through immigration, and so they face language and cultural barriers, internal diversity because of a range of countries of origin, and the challenges of dealing with non-citizen status and naturalization. Relatively few blacks are immigrants, and so most are native-born, speak English, and are American citizens. The challenges for black immigrants are sometimes forgotten, just as the problems facing native-born Latinos and Asian Americans are ignored at times.

Latinos disproportionately find themselves in the ranks of the working poor, and so they often emphasize class-based concerns — lack of access to health care, inadequate job protections, insufficient resources for schools and neighborhoods — more than race issues.  

Asians, because such a high proportion are recent immigrants, worry about being treated as foreigners. Also, some Asians are affluent and highly successful. Consequently, Asian groups worry about hitting a glass ceiling, being told that there are too many Asians at the top. So, a black/white model that is wholly preoccupied with race won’t last. What takes its place is the question, and I think that’s a complicated question. Unexpected events like 9/11 could change everything. Think about the way that Arabs have suddenly become a suspect class after September 11.

School segregation protest. (National Archives and Records Administration, courtesy of Images of American Political History)

That raises another question. What impact do you think racial politics and white privilege are playing in post-9/11 America? In Bush’s America where partisanship reigns and you’re either “with us or against us,” do you get the sense that more people are interrogating racial stereotypes and what constitutes race? Or have people in the United States become more complacent, questioning racism and race consciousness less frequently and less critically?

Issues of racial profiling for national security have prompted questions about what race means. The debate [over racial profiling and civil liberties after September 11] shows that it is very difficult to define what constitutes a protected category. It is not just a racial issue; these questions also have to do with national origin, immigration, religious issues, and questions of what constitutes a relevant form of identity for intrusive practices. These are tricky questions.

But [these complicated issues are] not what most people are talking about. They’re asking whether [one’s racial or ethnic identity] is a legitimate consideration in predicting dangerousness. They’re asking what kinds of evidence [should be admissible], how useful [such evidence] is, and how we should balance individual rights against the national good. Now there seems to be more of an instrumental balancing approach. Many people [characterize this approach as one concerning] foreign nationals and [the] threat [they pose to the United States]. Here you can see that race is being treated as distinct from national origin, religion, and political ideology, yet many Arab Americans feel that they are being racialized by these practices. This debate demonstrates how difficult it is to characterize difference in general and racial identity in particular.

Consider how politicians and the media often talk about “the Latino vote,” “the black vote,” “the female vote,” and “the Jewish vote,” stereotyping or playing up just one aspect of the identities of the people who identify themselves as such. To what extent do you think the parameters and interests of these communities become oversimplified as a result of the media’s characterizations of particular categories of people?

Politics has always had that feel for ethnicity, [where a politician’s message changes] depending on [his or her] audience. You always [have] a way in which you want to reach people [by speaking to their interests] in hopes that they’ll vote for you. So [politicians look at the ways in] which [particular] characteristics will reach people and make them sign on.

It’s even trickier now. We live in a world with all kinds of media. Now there are also so many more TV stations. But newspapers and television news no longer predominate. They are being replaced by the Internet. So there’s no way to compartmentalize the way you behave with one group and keep other groups from finding out.

[Politicians] must think about how [the way that they] cater to one audience will be perceived by others; they often say the most innocuous things to avoid angering [other elements of the population]. Now politics is more impersonal than ever. Candidates don’t connect with you; instead they have to create the illusion of connecting with the little audience at a rally as well as the whole world that might see [or hear sound bites from the rally] later [in the media’s coverage of the event].

People used to say that [President Bill] Clinton felt everybody’s pain. Politicians take on personas like that [by speaking in] very general and generic [terms] and [creating] a brand of self [that makes] it seem like you’re someone’s friend, emptying out concepts of friendship, identity, [and] community. Everything you do is replayed on C-SPAN and the six o’clock news, so it’s hard to have a [public] personality that is real. You only have a persona, an image that’s managed … That makes it harder to do racial politics; you can’t do anything that will alienate the middle. The Democratic Party feels [like it has] been hurt by doing racial politics and then losing the white male swing vote. This has created a conservatism regarding difference. Because you have to make everyone like you, you can’t tailor your message to any group.

… Recently, there was a study that said single women don’t vote as often as married women and tend to be more progressive [than married women]. So people started asking why the Democratic Party doesn’t reach out to [single women] and mobilize them. And the Democrats said they couldn’t do that because they’d look anti-family. It’s a case of leveling out politics to the blandest common denominator. The same is probably true for race, ethnicity, class, and other categories as well.

STORY INDEX

CONTRIBUTOR >

The writer
Laura Nathan, InTheFray Managing Editor

TOPICS > BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION >

Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education May 17,1954.
URL: http://www.nationalcenter.org/brown.html

TOPICS > POST-CIVIL RIGHTS ERA >

Racism in the post-civil rights era
URL: http://www.fetchbook.info/Racism_in_the_Post_Civil_Rights_Era.html

Laura Nathan-Garner