Race and the Return of the Repressed

The photo preceding this entry was taken in Boston in 1976 during a protest against busing. Since then, it seems that we have made a great deal of progress in civil rights. As a society, we no longer tolerate outright discrimination and segregation based on race. The emergence of Barack Obama, the freshman senator from Illinois, as the first viable black presidential candidate would seem to further confirm our progress. But I propose that another psychological factor is at work here, which emerges as the shadow of racism: the return of the repressed.

Geraldine Ferraro articulated—quite rightly, I believe—what many of us may think or say in the privacy of our home (I only wish she hadn’t abused the King’s English by neglecting to use the subjunctive): “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position, and if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” Geraldine was forced to step down from her position in the Clinton campaign, and Clinton was asked to apologize because Ferraro played the “race” card. Race has been the elephant in the room, or—to use a more powerful metaphor—it has been the third rail this campaign season.

How, then, is it possible to say that Barack Obama has gone further than the average “white guy” because of his race and at the same time say that racial discrimination persists in America today? I believe that Freud’s “theory of the repressed” offers as good an answer as any. Freud’s theory of the “return of the repressed” was based on observations of childhood development. Typically, there is a mix of love, excitement, and trepidation at the arrival of a new baby. When the older sibling realizes the newcomer is going to get much of the attention that used to be all his, anger at the interloper ensues. The child then learns that open expressions of hostility are not met with approval by his parents. The anger goes underground and eventually becomes unconscious. Often, as part of that process, the child professes his overwhelming love for the baby (a defense known as "reaction formation" is involved); the unconscious anger toward the baby then reveals itself in the child's attempts to "love it to death." Eventually, the child manages to find ways to deal with his anger in acceptable ways and ideally learns that his love for his sibling outweighs his childhood resentment. In cases where the growing child is never able to resolve the conflict between his anger and attendant wishes to do away with his sibling and his guilt and shame over such terrible and unacceptable feelings, the anger remains in the unconscious mind, forever looking for ways to express itself.

The “return of the repressed” can also function on a larger social level. Based on my entire life’s experience and observations of American culture, there is not a single person in this country who is not racist to a certain degree. However, there is virtually no discussion about race at the public level. The United States is a country that has been slow to make repairs to the people that it has enslaved or simply robbed—the African Americans and Native Americans—and when it has, it has done so reluctantly. Unlike Germany, which has gone far in acknowledging the responsibility of its WWII atrocities, we have yet to truly—at the national, public level—address the ungodly exploitation of many of our minorities. Without this kind of public disclosure, without people admitting that they are indeed racist or sexist or homophobic, then the average citizen simply represses these “unpleasant” feelings or keeps secret that part of themselves that loathes the “Other.” I believe this is what has led to the rise of Barack Obama: all those repressed feelings of racism, and the guilt associated with it, has led the liberal press and liberal whites to elevate an otherwise unqualified presidential candidate based on race. To quote Ferraro again, “He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

The problem of discrimination based on race simply will not go away by forcing people to be politically correct. Political correctness is a doctrine of dialogic repression: it forces educated people to stay silent about their opinions while allowing the hate-mongers and the rednecks to be the only participants in the discourse about race. Or the discrimination simply shifts: fifty years ago, it was acceptable to withhold civil rights from black people because of their race; now it is acceptable to talk about withholding civil rights from gay people. The liberal media accuses not just politicians, but private citizens, of racism these days, much in the same way people were quickly labeled as Bolsheviks by the conservative press during the days of McCarthyism.

The current politically correct current is dangerous precisely because it is a conversation stopper; everybody is afraid to openly and honestly discuss the reality of race and discrimination. The term “racist” or “prejudiced” is hurled by privileged, white liberals, as if they had any personal experience of discrimination, and as if the “races” in question were not partially or wholly responsible for the negative image that the general population has of them. On the other hand, these very same people smile sheepishly when reminded of the outright discrimination African Americans have shown in their voting records in the Democratic primary. It seems to be unimportant that I have yet to meet an African American who isn’t a gung-ho supporter of Obama’s. Indeed, by the end of the democratic primary, ninety percent of blacks in this country supported Barack Obama.

It is sad to me that Americans may be electing their next president based not on qualifications, experience, or integrity, but because of insidious, unresolved, psychological and social issues.

Obama, the Mercurial Politician

The Flip-Flop Express- change- and more of the same…

…and speaking about the Flip-Flop Express. We’re not talking about zorries, sandals, shower-shoes, thongs, or double pluggers no mam. We’re talking about “Change” - not as in change in direction for America, not change in the electoral process, not change in pandering to the fears and woes of the masses, not change as in the dawn of a new day for this country. No mam – we are talking change as in executive prerogative - “I’m going to change my mind because I’m stumping for votes!!” With all due respect accorded a presidential nominee or in this case the presumptive presidential nominee, one such nominee is standing by his campaign slogan. He is living up to his word and we haven’t even reached the party’s before-the-fall semester pep rally. His cavorting with change is stacking up faster than cards on the craps table in Las Vegas. There’s plenty of them, they’re just not the right kind of changes we desperately need. Take for instance what fell between the journalistic cracks. Barack heretofore has talked a good game speaking to the longstanding need for campaign funding reform. He pledged to accept the federal public financing for a presidential general election if his Republican rival did as well. That pledge was abandoned meaning that he will forgo more than $84 million that would have been available to him. He would be the first candidate to do so since Congress passed 1970s post-Watergate campaign finance laws. His opponent has taken steps to accept the public funds in the general election as previously agreed. Might this have anything to do with the power of the Obama fund raising machine having built a $287 million war chest setting a campaign contribution all-time record, and making the federal election financing look pathetically paltry. Moreover, the media reported the news, but what was made of it? Don’t lose that question.
And just two days ago, an announcement hit the airwaves that the senator opposes a November ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage in California. In a letter to San Francisco’s Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, the nominee said that he opposed the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend California’s Constitution. Let’s rewind the nominee’s stop watch regarding the issue of gay marriage. Throughout his campaign he has made it perfectly clear that he believes marriage should be only between a man and a woman. While Obama believes that each state should be allowed to makes its own decision, his position is meandering at best and conflicting at worst. If he’s opposed to same-sex marriage, he should say so. An interesting footnote – his new statement was sandwiched half way through his letter which was read at the aforementioned club’s annual breakfast. Two other states including California have similar initiatives on the November ballot. And with young, liberal, supporters strongly opposed to the same-sex marriage ban, Obama is gingerly changing courses.
Without reviewing other changes in the senator’s position, you might be asking “so what?” I happen to agree with his and other supporter’s views opposing a constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. He’s proven his knack at fund-raising – we desperately need a democrat in the White House whatever the cost. Next issue! Is it the presumptive nominee’s prerogative to make a pledge and nine months later simply disregard his own words? Is that what he had in mind when his campaign machine settled on the buzz word that has now become synonymous with his image? This die-hard liberal for one, thinks not. What about our earlier question - has anything been made of reneging on one’s pledge? These changes in position are sliding under the journalistic wire like a banana peel on an oil-soaked roadway. No groundswell, no upsurge, no questions asked. The political temper appears that we’re desperate for change, and he’s holding the placard, now stop asking these questions and just step in line. God forbid that we do anything to risk giving this election over to the other side – Unity or bust!
Well that’s all fine and good, but these series of “changes” in the senator’s position don’t have anything to do with the change he’s selling to the hysterical masses. At the end of the day, they don’t have anything to do with the inebriated, mainstream journalism’s avoidance of raising questions. And they have little to do with campaign funding reform or the pros and cons regarding same-sex marriage. These little-noticed changes have everything to do with an old-fashioned, 4th of July, all –American, Judaic-Christian value sometimes called truthfulness, honor, integrity, veracity. When that is thrown under the bus, the void in human nature becomes instantly saturated with another very out-dated indulgence – that of pride. Martha Stortz, professor and author identifies it as the desire for power over, the desire to control, the ambition to dominate, the effort to render others subservient to one’s virtuous cause. Obama’s change isn’t change at all. He is following the well-worn way of so many other rapacious political presidential nominees. There is no change to be had.
But to save myself from turning this into a sermon on the seven deadly sins, let me bring this to a conclusion. Plainly put, we forfeit everything when we stop questioning a presidential candidate’s reversing pledges, changing positions, sending double messages, and burying changes in the middle of letters. As second grader Jimmy Connors was told by his teacher Mrs. Green, “don’t tell me you’re going to turn in your math homework today and not do so because your dog ate it.” Pledges mean something in second grade. They should be the political life and death of any presidential nominee. Shame on you Barack. And shame on the media for holding party unity sacred over uncompromising questions.

We Will Not Step in Line Like Good Girls

I was going to start this article with a reasoned account of the effects of misogyny on the social and political landscape of our country: the fact that a country like Spain, which was ruled by a repressive dictator only thirty years ago, now has fifty percent of their highest elected government officials comprised of women, while America has less than half that. Most of the Scandinavian countries are the same, and Western Europe in general has or has had many more top government offices occupied by women than the United States. Even the Muslim country of Pakistan had a female prime minister.

But a very strong personal memory pulled me away from this more factual explanation of the United States’ backwardness when it comes to putting women in positions of governmental authority. Last night, I was combing my fingers through somebody else’s still moist, long dark hair. As such olfactory sensations often do, the smell of it catapulted the memory of my older sister into my mind. When I was a child, my older sister was the one who took care of me. We spent hours in our pool or in the ocean, playing in the water till our hands were shriveled up. She used to dunk her head in the water, face forward and pull her long hair out so it covered her face completely. I would swim all the way around it, and it was a wonder that you could not tell where her face was and where the back of her head was. Then she would flip the sheet of bangs covering her face back over her hair, so it framed her entire face like a bonnet made of hair. Then, inevitably, she would say about herself, “Hideous.” She would joke that she looked like her great aunt, Edwige, an ancient spinster, who owned a flatware factory and a store in downtown Port-au-Prince that sold notions. Her namesake, Edwige, was not a pretty woman, certainly. But she was independently wealthy, a hard worker, and provided for everybody in the family. She was not somebody to be reviled, but she also wasn’t the feminine prototype of the beautiful married woman, accounted for by a specific man and society in general.

I believe Rosangela also said that she looked “hideous,” because the improvised hair style reminded her of those winsome hairdos from the 1970s. My sister hated the 1970s, understandably. They reminded her of my mother’s attacks of rage, physical and emotional violence. In 1976, at 14, she went to a party with her best friend and their high school entourage. The best friend then watched on as my sister was forcefully raped by a group of boys. When my sister revealed what had happened to her father (we have different fathers) and my mother, she was, inevitably castigated. My mother was mortified that my sister would have to suffer the shame of the rape being known publicly. She pulled my sister out of school; did not confront the boys or the parents of the boys; and shipped my sister to a boarding school for kids with special “emotional” needs. Her father reeled from the embarrassment of having a “ruined” daughter, and made her promise not to tell anybody about it. But this was, of course, the kind of thing that happened in the 1970s and throughout history before the 1970s. Most women will not have to think long before recalling a similar incident. Some sort of violence is perpetrated by men, and immediately the women are shamed and silenced.

My parents divorced shortly after I was born. And my mother changed drastically in her late thirties, when I was a small child. She felt that it was her time to live, after a terrible childhood involving ritual molestation by her father and three unhappy marriages. On the landing of our townhouse on the Upper East Side, another unhappy woman, Za Za Gabor, had commissioned a dragon to be painted on the entirety of a twelve by twenty foot wall between the library and her master bedroom. We lived in that townhouse, and for a young child, it was a terrifying thing to walk past the landing of my mother’s bedroom and see the enormous, angry brown, beige, and gold dragon with its claws the size of little boy arms and its indifferent blue eyes. I was terrified by my mother, so like that dragon. I saw her beat my sister up numerous times; throw plates on the floor; hit the maid. She punished us frequently when she was around. But, normally, my mother was out enjoying her newfound freedom or traveling around the world with her friend, Laverne. And I desperately wanted her love. Indeed, there were times when she was affectionate. The small taste of this made me hungry for more.

But my sister was the one who took care of me, and after she was sent off to boarding school, I was alone, living with my grandparents (the same ones that had abused my mother as a child) and then with my mother’s maids. I tell you this long story to show you how it influenced my “rational” decisions in the primary. My initial reaction to Hillary was absolute revulsion. I believed her to be mercenary for having paved a direct path to the white house by up and moving to New York (a state she had nothing to do with before 2000) and then running for senator. It was transparent even back then that she was setting herself up to be President.
If nothing else, I am very honest about my prejudices. I told my best friend that the idea of a woman in a position of high power was abhorrent to me. I said that I believed women were “spiteful,” “vindictive,” “cruel,” “rageful,” and “murderous” when they have authority over men. That had been my experience with my mother, and I was terrified of replicating those domestic conditions on a national level. When John Edwards, my first pick for nominee, dropped out. I was at a loss for whom to vote for on Super Tuesday. But I had been reading the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and several periodicals religiously. It was clear that Hillary had the better plan. As the primary continued, Hillary won me over. She was that sagacious, strong, self-sufficient, level-headed mother figure that I had desperately longed for growing up. On the other hand, I noticed that many people, women included, reacted to Hillary—to her voice, her hair, her clothes, all that stuff that denotes her gender—with contempt. They said things like, “She’s scheming; she’s vindictive; she’s a bitch.” I have come to recognize these as nothing more than visceral reactions to the fact of her gender. Their faces tensed up, almost as if they were swallowing something bitter.

My father was one of these people. The only reason he had for liking Obama is that he thought Barack seemed like “a good guy.” Note that this absurd basis for preferring a presidential candidate has nothing to do with preparation, qualification, or demonstrated integrity. And it was coming from an intelligent man with a college and a medical degree. He had also admitted that he thought that Hillary was, surprise, surprise, a “bitch.” I have not spoken to him since June 3, when he called me up and left a message late at night that went: “Hey son, you didn’t call me up to congratulate me about Obama. You know,” he continued in a sarcastic tone of voice, “It’s too bad that Hillary lost. She’s such a nice woman, such a sweet, kind woman. Poor thing, she was almost crying on television. Well, anyway, we are having a party here to celebrate. Bye.”

I was unhinged. All the outrage I felt for the way she was treated by the press and the party leaders came out in a volcanic rush. I wanted to make the Obama-bots suffer. I wrote cruel letters to the people whom I knew had supported B.O. I vituperated Obama in blogs. And I cried like I hadn’t cried since I was a child. And when I woke up, it felt as if I were in a nightmare. I found out, however, that there were many people—men and women—who felt similarly battered. I told my little sister that the way my father had treated me—in light of my commitment to Hillary—was cruel, and reminded me of the way he belittled me as a child and young adult. When my father found out what I had said, he actually called me up not to excuse himself for his behavior, but to demand that I apologize for bringing up the past.

From that immense suffering during the month of June, I came up with the Bitter Queen Shirts concept. I wanted to create a line of products in which I, and many other people, could protest the horrifying treatment of her by brainwashed, Obama-loving, liberal rags like the New York Times (Even they admitted in last Sunday’s edition that they had battered Hillary. Mind you, for this one article, there were numerous op-eds vilifying “Billary,” as the bratty reporters are in the habit of merging the woman under her husband’s name, and censoring her supporters.) It is a way of conspicuously objecting to the proliferation of illusions that the press has out there: visions of “change” and “hope” from a charlatan, a con artist, an unprincipled arriviste). You see a lot of t-shirts, bumper stickers, and poster for Obama out there; but not a great deal for Hillary. We MUST change that.

I prayed that I would get some insight into why the political situation had unraveled me so completely. I asked God to please release me from the ire, the racing of the mind, the smoldering hatred that I had now for the very newspapers, the people, the Party with which I had identified all my adult life. And it came to me. I had a dream in which I had traveled all the way to New Jersey from California to spend a few minutes with my father and explain to him exactly how his comments had wounded me. Neither he nor my stepmother would let me get a word in. And then I woke up at four in the morning and began to write furiously. The very first words were: Truth and Reconciliation. That is exactly what has been missing in my family life, and it is precisely why we Hillary supporters are so outraged now. The way Hillary has been treated is a national scandal, something that must be addressed and, frankly, punished. I defected the party that did this to her as did a great deal of her avid supporters.

Whether or not my father or anybody else wants to admit it, there is a great deal of emotional violence done to us through condescension, reproach, and unwillingness to hear our story. I have lived with the wreckage of male violence: my mother, who became psychologically and emotionally crippled beyond repair by her father’s ritual rapes and her mother’s silence; and my sister’s rape and the terrible hush-up of it, which has led to an ongoing battle with drug addiction. I emerged from that dream realizing that for me, “Truth and Reconciliation” meant saying no to the party that would have us repress our own choices; negate our own best judgment; and “chin up” after being bloodied by the press’s bludgeons. The request is to “pull yourself together and serve us.” I was asked to do all this in the interest of Party unity! For what? If the party members and leaders treated us like this, why would they have our best interest in mind? If we crawl back and fall in line behind their standard-bearer, Barack, we are like that battered wife apologizing to her husband for his punches, blows, and insults. It is like my father asking me to apologize to him for his own bad behavior.

Last month, on an episode of the “Meet the Press,” the female editor of the New York Times had—I kid you not—called Hillary “creepy.” The Washington Post editor spit out (the venom was literally spewing out of her mouth) that all of Hillary supporters’ were wrong about their candidate having been mistreated. She claimed that Hillary had actually been served by being a woman. We, of course, all know this to be untrue. That these comments should come from two women is not unremarkable either. As I did, it is easy to fall prey misogyny, whether you are a man or woman, gay or straight. And it is equally a habit for most women to cover up for abusive men’s behavior. They advocate for him and justify his bad behavior in order to take on the role of “good girl,” rather than “bitch.” Not surprisingly, when my father had bruised me and then called to ask me to apologize to him, my stepmother intervened. She left me two very sweet messages telling me that he and I should not be arguing and that nobody really knew what was going to happen with the election. She tried to make things right while allowing him not to apologize. I thanked her for her kindness, but I rejected her offer of cheap reconciliation: reconciliation without confession, contrition, and amends.

They will vituperate us. Our comrades from our former Democrat lives will call us spiteful. We will be pistol-whipped and brow beaten until we submit. But don’t. We deserve better than that. We deserve our integrity, our self-respect, and our love for each other. My first shirt is “We Will Not Step in Line Like Good Girls.” On the back of the shirt (see the gallery or the store) are the major support groups and advocacy groups. But there are many more, which you can find as links on these websites.

Finally, the question will be, what candidate can you live with? And how do you make a choice that maintains your integrity? In addition to calling me spiteful, many people have reacted to my decisions by saying, “Oh, but you wouldn’t want a Republican in office!” Now that we are saying adamantly saying no to the Party’s coercion, we need to make a decision with our head and our hearts about issues that matter to us. In the following weeks, I hope I can help you to make a decision that works for you not the Party: discussing the pros and cons of each candidate, and all the philosophical, moral, and practical issues of importance during this election.

Please check out my store for items that will help you communicate your dissent.
www.cafepress.com/bitterqueen

"You've Come a Long Way, Baby": Not really; Misogyny is still in

Before the June 3, 2008 Democratic Primary debacle, the signature on all my emails was, “The USA is still Clinton country,” referring to the fact that, despite the losses of the month of February, it was obvious that Hillary was still the choice of Democratic Party members. By June 4, when the party leaders had officially rejected her bid, I changed my signature to “Write in Hillary in November: the White House.” I did this out of a strong conviction that Hillary was the only choice for President—not McCain and certainly not Obama. Although many acquaintances and business clients noted my words, and duly commiserated, I had one client vituperate me. He wrote to me that if I meant to endanger the future of the country by doing anything that would help McCain into the presidential office simply out of spite, that I should remove his name from my contact list. In other words, how dare I have the “audacity” (I guess only Obama-bots are permitted to be “audacious”) to go against the party’s nominee. Implicit was the idea that I was doing something sacrilegious by daring to believe that Hillary is the correct choice even though the party has decided otherwise. He was incensed that I not thinking along party lines, that I was exercising my newly claimed right as a registered independent, to decide for myself who was the lesser of the evils between B.O. and McCain. And indeed it is clear to me that Barack Obama is not prepared both through lack of experience and because of his moral poverty (be sure to read my later posts on this) to be mayor of a mid-sized city, let alone President of the United States.

But, most importantly, I was struck by the term, “spite.” Like so many of the words associated with Hillary supporters, (“bitch,” “bitter,” “cunt,” “vindictive,”), “spite” is a gendered word. While “vengefulness and vindictiveness” are the provenance of aristocratic ladies—those tragic mistresses of evil, Medea, Phedre, Lady MacBeth, and even the wicked stepmother of Snow White—spite” is what the rest of us common “bitches” do to make our families miserable. Spite is the emotion, par excellence, of a woman who, because she is always subservient, can never level a direct attack. She must engage in guerrilla warfare at home, passive-aggressively making life wretched for those around her until her sense of injury is quelled. “Spite” suggests the pettiness of moral dwarfs, Cinderella’s ugly step-sisters. I was not surprised that even as a man, I now had been christened a “bitch,” because I had aligned myself with women who chose to believe they were right. I was “audacious” enough to believe that I was correct in my beliefs. Instead of seeing my continued support of Hillary as a sign of conviction, tenacity and integrity, it was labeled “spite.” And why is that? Because it is allowable for a man to “stay the course,” but if a woman does that, if she is contrarious, then she is being “spiteful.”

Anybody who witnessed the grotesque finale of the Democratic Primary will recall the whipping post on which Hillary and her supporters were continually lashed. I believe this was done because as women, they were “audacious to hope” one of them could exercise the highest office in the country. From George Stephanolopolus’ obsession with Hillary’s pantsuits to the despicable editor of the New York Times calling Hillary “creepy,” the press behaved in a way that is unseemly, to say the least. I canceled my subscription to the New York Times because one article after another not only announced the end of the Clinton campaign while she was still sweeping states, but tried to make her look small and pathetic. I recall one writer described her crisscrossing the desolation of North Dakota and pontificating policy in front of a small group of “bewildered” Native Americans. It didn’t matter that she won there by a landslide: her hard work and spiritedness were made to look silly. Daily, the reporters shamelessly declared the end had come even while she continued to win big in the remaining states and close the gap in states where she did finally lose. But the straw that broke this camel’s back was an article in May that attempted to paint a picture of Clinton’s as a blossoming alcoholic based on a handful of instances of her socially drinking. The crux of the article was based on her strolling to the back of the plane to deal with the media bullies there with a tumbler of whisky. She poked fun at a young journalist, and the Times reporter ended the article with the, pardon me, “bitchy” comment, that the “imagination tumbles.” That was it for this camel! This Sunday, while on a business trip to the District, I took a peek at the Washington Post, to see if maybe I would be safe reading it without suffering a similar outrage, and I realized that the thuggish reporters are still roaming at large: one editor referred to as “Big Bertha,” still trying to steal the spotlight from His Royal Highness, Senator Obama (that term “Senator” always seems like such a joke when attached to Obama’s name, since he has barely set foot in the Capitol for 1 and a half out of the scant four years he has been there).

I am a Hillary supporter, even after she has suspended her campaign and is now campaigning for B.O. If I am called spiteful for remembering the way in which her bid for the nomination was contemptuously dismissed, then so be it: I happily accept my title as a “spiteful bitch,” ascending the lofty heights of cuntiness, bitterness, and bitchdom. In the end, the Obama-bots can call it what they may, but I am maintaining my integrity as a voter and honoring my commitment to fair play. And I am reminding the Democratic Party, the candidates are not interchangeable: I believe that if Barack Obama had been the better candidate, I would have voted for him, regardless of skin color. My first choice was John Edwards, but when he dropped out, I realized that of the two candidates, Hillary was clearly the only one who was qualified to be President. So, you see, I did not vote for Hillary because she is a woman or any other gratuitous reason. As the primary wore on, it was clear that she had the tenacity, the fortitude, the hard working spirit, and the authenticity that should characterize a President. And I also realized that, in spite of her qualifications, many so-called open-minded, liberal voters were committed to the fact that she was a “bitch” because she was fierce in her determination, combative, sharp, and targeted. These are all things that are laudable in a man, but in a woman, people (men and women alike) call it “bitchy.”

I did not vote for the phony and incompetent B.O. for president; I voted for the brightest and the best. I voted for Hillary.

If you want to sport your continuing support of Hillary's candidacy, check out the products in my store at www.cafepress.com/bitterqueen