Heidi Li's Potpourri

Second invited guest essay at 51 Percent; some other news and notes

Go here to read Homophobia 101; and some connections between homophobia and misogyny.

It is with great pleasure that 51 Percent announces the publication of this guest essay by Gary Rosche. 51 Percent continue to seek unsolicited essays on topics related to its mission; go here for information on how to contact 51 Percent with submissions.

The list of tasks for the website is growing: a downloadable flier is in the works; a wonderful contribution to the online museum of misogynistic memorabilia has come in and will be added to the collection as soon as possible. 51 Percent has been contacted by a new media company and there may be opportunities for partnership in producing materials for wide distribution. As founder of 51 Percent I am grateful to all those who have been reaching out to 51 Percent, particularly those who have added approximately another $400 dollars to the organization's slowly growing treasury. Every contribution is important as we get started, and every contribution that adds .51 cents to the main amount or 1 extra dollar to a fifty dollar donation gives me special pleasure. Women may be earning only 78 cents on the dollar compared to men, but for every person whose donation reflects that women are the majority of the population, 51 Percent directly benefits.

Women need an emancipation movement of their own, and no, we do not see it being headed up by Republicans or by Mr. Obama

And, now, because we have actually managed to begin to create a community so that not every one of us must reinvent the wheel in the reaction to each new episode of sexist and misogynistic politicians-with-tin-ears, I can simply refer you to this post from Uppity Woman, in which she neatly peels the layers of hypocrisy emanating from the Republican Party and the Democratic President when it comes to issues of equal pay for equal work.

I will simply chip in these two cents (they'd be about 2.5 cents in men's wages): Although I'm certainly happy to see the Lilly Ledbetter bill signed into law and although I'm all for applauding real displays of leadership when and if President Obama displays them, his signing of this bill is not an occasion of such leadership. He's said nothing about pressing forward on the larger issue of equal pay for equal work and what the government could do about it. He's ignored calls from every quarter to create anything like a Presidential Empowerment of Woman Advisory Board (PEWAB), such as I have mentioned, or a Commission on Women as has been proposed by WomenCount.

If our Secretary of State realizes the justice and economic good sense of full and equal empowerment of women abroad, how come our President cannot wake up to that goal here at home?

Feminists do not horse-trade women's rights to care for their bodies for Republican votes

A week or so into our new Presidential administration, and the strange sensation of living in a universe that only partially intersects that of many people I would formerly have have considered obvious political allies continues. Starting yesterday and on through today I began receiving messages from blogger friends and then from NOW-NY and then Planned Parenthood, that something very strange seemed to be happening with the economic stimulus bill. Apparently President Obama (who neither NOW nor Planned Parenthood can bring themselves to name as part of the problem, although Planned Parenthood does suggest calling the White House) and Congressional Democrats are willing to curry votes from Republicans on the Hill by cutting the Medicaid Family Planning State Option from the stimulus package the Congress is hoping to have ready for presidential signing by mid-Februrary. The Medicaid Family Planning State option is a provision that would provide health care coverage for 2.3 million low-income women, according to Planned Parenthood, by "allow[ing] states to expand their Medicaid family planning services, including cancer screenings and other preventive care, to more women in need, without having to go through the burdensome Medicaid waiver process." Or as the National Women's Law Center puts it, "In a disappointing move, the economic recovery package will not include a provision to make it easier for states to make family planning services more accessible and affordable to the millions of women and families who depend on them. The Medicaid Family Planning State Option would have allowed states to expand Medicaid eligibility for family planning services without having to obtain a federal waiver."  Meanwhile, when I went to look at the January 28 New York Times print edition to for details, I found no mention of this ditching of the Family Planning option until deep into one of the three stories on the stimulus package, mentioned in passing in a vague paragraph on page A16 of the Washington print edition of the Times:

As the House version of the legislation came to the floor on Tuesday, Democrats stripped from it a provision that Republicans had ridiculed as having nothing to do with economic stimulus, one expanding federal Medicaid coverage of family planning services. (The Congressional Budget Officehad estimated that the provision would actually save the government $200 million over five years by reducing pregnancy and postnatal-care expenses.)

Then, as I sat down to compose my thoughts about this latest bit of chicanery over women's bodies, things turned a bit more surreal. Apparently, despite its reported spike in subscriptions, Ms. Magazine has enough leftover editions of its inaugural issue - you know, the one with this patently ridiculous cover, to just today be offering me more "one more chance" to own the cover in poster size.

Please note: no way in hell does a feminist look like a person who is willing to horse-trade funds for family planning benefits under Medicaid to placate Republicans, who will do anything to beat back money for family planning which they are trying as quickly as possible to turn into an epithet. Family planning is a good idea. So is birth control in most people's lives. So, in some cases, is access to safe and legal abortion. Family planning, birth control, access to safe and legal abortions: these are not dirty words. They are real world, practical options - options needed, at least as options, by all women if they are to be truly autonomous actors in our society; and therefore options that must be as available to those whose health insurance is provided by the government as to those whose insurance is provided by private insurers.

Here's a little trick used by many who teach property law across the country. Most first year law students arrive in their Property Law courses with two visions of what property is: either the stuff they just put away in their dorm rooms or a field in the country somewhere. So we law professors often start by telling them that no,that isn't property at all. What property really is, is the set of entitlements and rights any particular person or the state has to control or use the stuff they just put their dorm rooms or the field in the country. In other words, property is a bundle of say-so's over what happens to the bits and pieces in the world. Who gets to say what about what happens to what what bits and pieces makes up the law of property. Today's casebooks tend to leave out the statutes and cases that blatantly assumed that women and black men were bits and pieces that were just as much the objects of debates about particular say-so's - cases about the details of chattel marriage (e.g. since a husband controlled all of his wife's legal rights, could she ever charge him with rape?) and chattel slavery (e.g., since a slave owner controlled absolutely the working conditions of slaves, could a slave owner be charged with murder for  willfully and knowingly depriving slaves of adequate rest or water thereby leading to their deaths?). Property casebooks tend to leave out these cases because it is rightly considered unacceptable to conceive of women and black men as the equivalent of the stuff in the dorm room or the field in the countryside. So, especially when it comes to chattel slavery, current law school curricula focus on the law that removed blacks from the status of chattel and recognized them as persons, not property.

Because there has never been a legal seismic shift in the status of women in this country - nothing comparable to a Civil War leading to an Emancipation Proclamation or the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution or the myriad of statutes and regulations passed to make the guarantees of these Amendments a reality - there is no natural place in law school curricula to address the halting transition our society is making toward giving women full say-so over their own bodies and the opportunity and means to give that say-so tangible effect.  Some family law courses consider the question; some specialized courses in feminist legal studies do. But even the most aspirational of law school curricula still must work from the law as it is, not as we would have it be. And the fact remains that women have not been liberated from the shackles legally imposed on them.

If President Obama and the Democratic Congress were to horse-trade away men's rights to control their health care, I am confident that there would be hue and cry. But this is because the baseline assumption in our society is that men are entitled to control their own bodies.  No man of any color is the property of the state, nor may the state dole out its aid starting from the presumption that the state has more say so over men's bodies then men themselves do.

But since President Obama has decreed "there's not a minute to spare" before he gets the stimulus package he is willing to settle for, apparently he has not a minute to spare to fight for the women's rights and resources to control and care for their bodies.

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton forging an intriguing partnership

If you can, watch Senator Clinton introduce Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern and listen to Mr. Stern's comments. If you cannot watch and listen, read the remarks. This is the third special envoy appointed to the State Department I count in the past four days, and in some ways the most telling one. To have an envoy on climate change in itself is remarkable, a real turn around from the Bush administration's see no science, hear no science, make no science approach.  To place this envoy within State is scientifically, diplomatically, and politically insightful. Climate and climate change does not respect national boundaries (scientific fact), but nations must work together to care for the climate and address climate change (diplomatic reality). But putting this envoy under Secretary Clinton's auspices suggests an emerging political phenomenon: a real partnership between President Obama and Secretary Clinton. Adopting a scientific and pragmatic approach to climate change was something both Obama and Clinton campaigned on. But there are various departments within the executive branch where a high level special position dedicated to the position could be created. Casting the position as a State Department Special Envoy shows real smarts, presumably attributable to both the President and the Secretary of State (and their advisers). It takes advantage of the double world-world wattage (green-powered) of these two remarkable politicians. It suggests a degree of trust between the President and Secretary of State: he is confident enough to give her control over nontraditional terrain for the State Department; she is confident enough that she's not worried about being scapegoated with unaddressable problems. Pay close attention to this passage from Stern's acceptance remarks:

"I deeply appreciate the confidence that President Obama and Secretary Clinton have shown me. And I am excited by the opportunity to work for two such inspiring leaders who recognize the enormity of this problem and are deeply committed to solving it. And I – let me also say that 12 years ago, I worked for two other great and inspiring leaders, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and it was a great privilege for me to do that. And it’s a great privilege for me now to work – be able to work for President Obama and Secretary Clinton.

People may have forgotten this, but especially during President Bill Clinton's first term, he had a unique relationship with Vice-President Gore, giving Gore control over a number of projects and issues of major importance, and in which Gore had relevant expertise. In that partnership, President Clinton took more of the initiative on external and international affairs and Vice-President Gore  led the way on some prominent internal reforms. What was unusual, though, was the the genuine cooperation that marked the pair's working relationship.

I find it notable that Stern invokes working for the Bill Clinton-Al Gore pair as he undertakes working for the Barack Obama-Hillary Rodham Clinton one. Whichever of these politicians appeals more to you ( to some, Obama appeals not at all; to others, Hillary Rodham Clinton does not), both are now serving in two of the highest offices in the land. The land is mighty troubled right now. If these early signs bode well for a productive partnership of historic proportions, this bodes well for us all.

To come: some posts on relationships between Presidents and Secretaries of State past.

Support for Secretary of State Clinton as she faces Afghanistan and all the world's troubled hotspots

Tonight I have Afghanistan on my mind: the next quagmire in the "war on terror." I'm not yet sure if we'll be nearly extricated from Iraq within two years, but I am pretty sure we will be all caught up in Afghanistan, and that it will not be pleasant. Basically, we are stuck with following around after the colonial hashes Britain and France made in the Middle East and western Asia, where old dysfunctions render current politics deadly and incomprehensible.

Rudyard Kipling knew of the dangers that awaited soldiers far from home, fighting on the plains of Afghanistan.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

-- from The Young British Soldier, a poem that should be read in its entirety and with exegesis lest it be misunderstood; go here for both the complete poem and good commentary.

When I contemplate the complexity that faces the world and this country's efforts to better it - or at least do its people no further harm, I find this photo, of Secretary of State Clinton's swearing in, on January 21, 2007 both comforting and inspiring.The photo also provides a good way to introduce people to "DipNote", the U.S. Department of State Blog, on which it was posted.

There too I found this quotation from Secretary Clinton, addressing USAID: "And I wanted to come here today with a very simple message: I believe in development, and I believe with all my heart that it truly is an equal partner, along with defense and diplomacy, in the furtherance of America’s national security." Finally, here you can read Secretary Clinton's introduction of Richard Holbrooke as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and George Mitchell's introduction as Special Envoy for Middle East Peace.

Reading these remarks and beginning to acquaint myself with Hillary Rodham Clinton in her new role reminds me again of her ability to convey strength and confidence without arrogance, in the way she discusses this country's place in the world; the role of diplomacy and development in partnership with defense; and yes, the relationship between her department and the President and Vice-President. Secretary of Clinton has recruited two amazing diplomats to tackle two of the most troubled hotspots in the world; she has already begun bridging the fiefs that make up the entire U.S. foreign policy apparatus.

I believe I can go to sleep tonight with some greater confidence that we will be leaving fewer dead on Afghanistan's plains because Secretary of State Clinton will be working hard for that less brutal outcome.

Sam Donaldson manages to disparage Carly Fiorina, Cokie Roberts, Kirsten Gillibrand - and David Paterson - in one fell swoop

[Cross-posted at Founder's Blog, 51 Percent; h/t to friend M.M. for drawing my attention to the clip from This Week with George Stephanopoulos] [update, 3:00 pm, improved link to video]

Watch this. Set aside the matter of whether being a woman helped or hindered Ms. Kennedy's bid for Secretary of State Clinton's Senate seat. Pay attention, careful attention, to Sam Donaldson. Notice that the minute Cokie Roberts and Carly Fiorina even mention broader issues of gender parity, and more particularly, when Roberts notes that in the November general election that only 36 percent of the electorate were white men, Donaldson cuts her off, with an assist from George Stephanopoulos, and launches into a into a combination whine ("please try to continue to do it without us") and pompous bloviation (Governor Paterson has, by defying the New York powers-that-be "shot himself in both feet").

Scared, Sam?

I agree with with the commentator at The New Agenda: "The patriarchy is especially threatened by our push for equal representation...."

So scared that blustery old men like Sam Donaldson cannot even hold back from a move familiar to any woman who has ever partaken in a profession "round table" or meeting. The minute a woman starts pressing a significant and weighty point that a man does not want to hear he starts talking over her. Rather than the male moderator - in this case Stephanopoulos - telling him to pipe down so Roberts could at least finish her sentence, the male moderator tries to gloss over the moment of sexist rudeness (no, not just rudeness, sexist rudeness) with a lame joke ("at least you asked [before seamlessly launching into your interruption]"). As with racist put-downs, this sort of joviality in the face of sexist rudeness compounds the problem. It certainly does not put in his place the original sexist interrupter, who could not even bear to hear out the comment being made about proportional representation.

With four men (including Stephanopoulos himself) and two women at the round table, there is not even 51 percent representation on This Week, at least this week. But I would love to get a careful breakdown of the speaking time of the four men and the two women: if Stephanopoulos and his producers cannot produce a panel of 4 women and two men or at least three and three, then it would useful if Stephanopoulos careful made sure that the two women get close to 51 per cent of the air time. It would be better if this were achieved by having 3 or 4 women on the panel, because that would further the more tangible goal of 51 percent women in every public sphere, and because it would not require deviation from with ingrained norms (albeit ill-fitting in this case) about speaking time being roughly alloted per person (assuming that is the norm on talk shows like This Week). But listen again to the clip and imagine if Fiorina and Roberts had had 51 percent of the air time. Whether you agree with their specific views or not, how might the overall conversation have been different? More representative of a range of views and ideas more likely to be held by women than by men?

Congratulations, Kirsten Gillibrand

Note to readers: I have been ill - nothing serious but not well enough to write and even now will have to be brief - thank you for your patience during the lull.

In early December, I stated my own preference for Kirsten Gillibrand for appointment to the New York State Senate seat opened by Secretary of State Clinton's decision to move to the Executive branch. As I wrote recently, Gillibrand was neither the only woman suitable for a gubernatorial appointment nor the only suitable person. But kudos to Governor Paterson, who is taking all sorts of heat for the appointment (not surprising in the snakes nest of New York state politics), for sticking to his word and his principles about a) filling the seat with a woman, especially so that the 2010 ticket of state-wide office runners in New York would definitely include a woman incumbent (that's the 51 Percent spirit) and b) using his own judgment and not being jockeyed by New York state dynastic politicians (whether the dynasty be Kennedy or Cuomo).

I cannot know all the reasons Governor Paterson chose Gillibrand, and surely many were "political" - e.g. related to his belief that selecting her would be good for his chances for reelection; or for New York State Democrats in general. Even if one went into 2008 with a less jaded view of politics (which I did not) nobody could come out of it with such a naive one as to think that such factors played no roll in his choice.

Indeed, this is part of why I applaud the choice of Gillibrand. A Democrat who has twice won in a majority Republican congressional district, this is no untested politician (note to those complaining about her "lack of experience" - see e.g. our just-elected President; were you raising that complaint about him, either when he ran for Senate or for President?)

Gillibrand is more conservative than I am on a number of issues: her take on the Second Amendment, in particular, commits her to a view about individual rights to own guns with which I disagree, although on the relevant vote in Congress in which she has participated she voted for improved background checks on gun purchasers with a history of mental illness. But on other issues, including reproductive rights, her voting record makes me smile at the prospect of eliminating the domestic versions of the gag rule that President Obama has eliminated in the international context. On still other issues, I am, as is so often the cases in democratic politics (small "d", please note) in partial agreement or partial disagreement, but can easily comprehend the reasonableness of Gillibrand's view. For example, in the absence of an extension of the precedent of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case that recognized the unconstitutionality of laws prohibiting interracial marriage to to same sex couples, Gillibrand is for a federal law permitting same-sex civil union and leaving the issue to states as to what to term this union. What I like about Gillibrand is that she takes her own position seriously: while I might prefer a champion of legislation for same sex-sex marriage, a liberal committed to federalism, can, in the absence of a Supreme Court decision mandating the extension of the institution of marriage, coherently maintain a preference for the a federal law permitting civil unions, while leaving to the states the question of what to call these unions.

Kirsten Gillibrand is a nuanced politician. And she's a young woman by political standards, at 42 the youngest member of the Senate. As we have seen, youth favors rising politicians, especially those who would be President. Kirsten Gillibrand may or may not develop politically in ways that would make enough of her positions strongly appealing to me to get behind her as a rising contender for the Presidency. But the idea is not far-fetched. So, for the first time in many weeks my heart is unequivocally warmed by a development on the national political scene.

Read this news article to get a wellrounded characterization of Kirsten Gillibrand.

For those in pain because today is not the day Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes President of the United States

Today, many men and women of good will toward this country and its new president are, nevertheless, heavy-hearted. These are men and women who looked heartily forward to seeing Hillary Rodham Clinton inaugurated president. In an election cycle when winning the Democratic nomination was tantamount to winning the presidency, these men and women worked and rooted hard for Mrs. Clinton during a hotly contested Democratic primary season, one where she won the popular vote and where we can never know for sure who would have won at the Democratic National Convention had announced and promulgated Party procedures been allowed to run their course.

Some of these men and women supported Mrs. Clinton despite of her gender, some because of her gender. For some, gender truly was not part of the equation of their support. Some, like me, started as a firm Clinton supporter for reasons that had nothing to do with Mrs. Clinton's gender and ended up realizing that in order for this country to ever elect a woman president, we will have to work together at the deepest of social and cultural levels - let alone in politics -to eradicate the misogyny and sexism that reared its head as soon as it became clear that there was high likelihood that a woman would become the next president of the United States. Misogyny and sexism did not just pop up out of nowhere, either. It was used deliberately or willfully ignored by alleged liberals from whom we expected so much better.

The pain felt today by many of Mrs. Clinton's supporters is the pain of frustration: frustration at realizing how deeply and pervasively sexism and misogyny infiltrate our lives and our world. It is the pain of impatience: impatience with others' obliviousness to the infiltration. It is the pain of anticipated toil: the toil ahead to put women into 51 percent of the positions in all spheres of public life so that eventually one woman with even half the qualifications of Mrs. Clinton will indeed be elected President of the United States of America.

We can take that pain and turn it totally inward, to the point where it exhausts us. Or we can take that pain and turn it outward, in the form of energy to fuel the changes we demand. As I have listened to Mrs. Clinton herself spend her time in the build up to being confirmed Secretary of State, I have witnessed a leader showing us how to do the latter. I do not know Mrs. Clinton personally, but from what I know of human nature and what I can glean from her odyssey since Denver, surely she has experienced some of the pain so many of her supporters feel today. I am also sure that, like all of us, she will always carry some measure of the pain within her. What makes Mrs. Clinton's leadership so extraordinary is that she exemplifies the power of pushing through the inner pain or going around it or using it to fuel continuing achievements.

If today you are among the hurt and the angry, remember that tomorrow (or the next day or the day on which you are ready), you will have a chance to take that hurt and anger and put it to use for full social justice for all people, including the 51 percent that are women.

Some pleasing surprises found today:

• a post over at Stray Dogs that Amble in: 51 Percent - "The New Women's Suffrage"
• donations from those who have recognized today with a contribution to 51 Percent
• newly discovered site to see: Madam Secretary

Appointing a successor to Senator Clinton: Governor Paterson's opportunity to distinguish between the end of 51 Percent and the means of affirmative action

(Cross-posted from Founder's Blog, 51 Percent)

Governor Paterson has an instructive opportunity when he appoints a successor to Senator Clinton. If he chooses, he can illustrate beautifully why moving the baseline of representation of women toward 51 percent has nothing to do with affirmative action - at least not affirmative action based on gender. Since affirmative action remains a contentious instrument of social engineering, and because shifting the baseline to 51 percent women in every sphere of public life is a contentious project, it would be useful were Governor Paterson to take the opportunity to make the distinction clear in practice, especially in such a high profile appointment. One contentious matter at a time, please.

In a world where the baseline was proportional representation of women in every sphere of civil, social, and political life, women would occupy just over half the places in public spheres. For the Senate, which has 100 members, the goal would be to have slightly more women than men overall, or consider per state, one woman and one man from each, leading to a 50/50 split. Pause here. Really picture that: a Senate with 50 women and 50 men working alongside one another. Think about how much misogyny and sexism would fall by the wayside simply because of the change in the men's club feel of one our country's most visible political institutions. Think about how strange it is that we are not already at the point where this is not the gender proportion in that institution. Think what it would mean for the women of each state if they could reliably assume that one of their Senators would naturally enough be a woman - even a woman with very different political views than some of her women constituents, a woman whose life experience would almost certainly be more representative of the women citizens in her home state in at least a few significant ways.

Even if this vision appeals to you, there might be a shadow cast over it. There is a tendency to conflate the idea of shifting the baseline of representation in public life to reflect the representation of women in the population with an endorsement of affirmative action, a term with multiple meanings. Many people have strong doubts about affirmative action under any interpretation. Some have qualms about its justness; others worry that it stigmatizes all members of a group who are perceived to have been its object.

In its strongest version, affirmative action accomplishes a particular state of representativeness in some area - a college entering class, a profession, a club, a team - by awarding positions to less qualified or competent candidates when more qualified or competent ones are available because the lesser candidates possess some feature irrelevant to qualifications or competency but because one has reasons unrelated to these considerations for seeking the desired representativeness. Strong affirmative action elicits the most discomfort and criticism even from those who urge the virtues of diversity in settings where it is a necessary means to achieve the desired outcome.

Purely on statistical grounds, strong affirmative action will be most instrumentally necessary when there are very few qualified or competent persons with the extra or additional characteristic desired or when there are simply very few persons with that characteristic. Because 51 percent of the population consists of women there is no sheer shortage of women to fill positions. Indeed because of this fact, a shortage of women will rarely be the obstacle to the baseline shift to 51 percent representation. In New York state at present, with regard to Senator Clinton's soon to be vacant Senate seat, neither is there a lack of qualified, competent women candidates. At least two women on the radar screen seem to have qualifications and competencies that would serve an appointed Senator and her or his constituents well: Carolyn Maloney and Kirsten Gillibrand, for example. For purposes of brevity, I am not going to delve deeply into the questions of which competencies and qualifications matter uniquely when a public servant - in this case the Governor - is appointing somebody to fill a position usually filled by election. Suffice it to say that while an individual voter may, arguably, reasonably cast her or his vote for any candidate on any basis, a public servant who is filling the seat in trust for the electorate must have reasons, and to be satisfactory those reasons should answer to the requirements of getting the job of the office done. Just as Andrew Cuomo or Jerrold Nadler would seem to meet this threshold so too do Maloney and Gillibrand.

So, why does the impending appointment present any question of affirmative action at all? The short answer, it does not.  In these circumstances, there is no question of whether there are available qualified woman for appointment to the seat. If one accepts our starting premise - the good of shifting the baseline toward proportional representation according to gender - that, it would seem, to be that.

But life is rarely so tidy. There is another woman would-be candidate on the horizon, who IS seeking affirmative action to gain the appointment.  Caroline Kennedy. Ms. Kennedy is not seeking affirmative action on grounds of her gender, though. She is seeking a form of affirmative action more usually seen in admission to elite institutions of higher education, where some applicants are favored over others because their forebears went there. In academia, these students are known as "legacies".  I cannot know for sure, but I am comfortable hypothesizing that President George W. Bush was the beneficiary of some form of affirmative action, possibly strong, when he was admitted to Yale University for his undergraduate degree. George W. Bush's great great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all attended Yale, so his chances of admittance regardless of his qualifications and competencies were fairly high. Indeed at the time George W. Bush was admitted to Yale, I doubt if much consideration was given to the question of whether favoring him over a more qualified candidate even counted as any kind of affirmative action. Even now, paying attention to whether other family members have attended a particular college or university is rarely put in terms of affirmative action, even though such attention clearly counts as affirmative action if it advantages a candidate over others more qualified for the spot.

The most common minimally credible justification given for the legacy system in college or university admissions is that gaining a family's loyalty to the institution may pay off in terms of monetary contributions to the college or university. I do not take up the ultimate soundness of this justification here.

When it comes to gubernatorial selection to the U.S. Senate, one rarely hears the precisely equivalent justification offered so bluntly.
Although, this argument might credibly be made if one believes that other Senators or the Obama administration would be more likely to make appropriations to New York at Ms. Kennedy's behest than they would for those Senators whose parent and uncles have not served in high federal office, let alone been victims of horrifying assassinations while in office or seeking election to it. Pundits and commentators have bandied similar justification for Ms. Kennedy's appointment, however, when they discuss "electability." If whoever is appointed to fill Senator Clinton's seat now chooses to run for it in 2010 and wins, that person will have year of seniority over non-incumbents from other states, and seniority secures benefits for a Senator and hence for her or his state. Some think that based on her family history and related ability to raise funds for election in 2010 and then again in 2012, this makes it a good idea to appoint Caroline Kennedy to the Senate now.

These arguments from potential influence or eventual seniority might seem like arguments based on qualification rather than arguments from affirmative action.  The problem is that in this case the advantage of influence and possible future seniority turn on a first step based on affirmative action. If a candidate who is not a legacy is appointed now, and she or he gains influence and wins seniority on the merits of (relatively) non-accidental attributes (the family into which one is born is an accidental attribute), affirmative action plays no role in the benefits that accrue to New York state. But if the Governor appoints a legacy because he believes she or he can bring these benefits but has no other particular qualifications or competencies, especially compared to available alternatives, the Governor is rewarding an accidental attribute of birth - family - and, he is not doing so to secure the baseline of proportional representation for women, but for some of the more traditional rationales used for political exceptionalism.

I cannot take the time here to fully explore the questions surrounding affirmative action for legacy appointments to government in a democracy. Perhaps the simplest way to point out the chief problem is that a populist democracy aspires to assign political office on the basis of election not heredity. In practice, it is not so simple, but that's the ideal and outright relying on a candidate's heredity to gain a leg up for one's state runs straight up against it.

What must be made clear here is the consistency in wanting Governor Paterson to contribute to proportional representation for women while objecting to him appointing Caroline Kennedy. Governor Paterson is in the lucky position of having various qualified, competent women to consider for the appointment. He need not cloud the issue with considerations of affirmative action based either on gender or family background. Thus, he can illustrate the way in which the end of proportional representation for the 51 percent of the population that are women has nothing to do with the means of affirmative action of any kind.

Sometimes you give back to the community in ways you never thought you would

I am not often deliberately autobiographical here at Heidi Li's Potpourri. But sometimes an ally asks you to join in a project and ...

Petunia Politik tagged me.

Apparently, some in the Pumasphere are playing the following game: if tagged we are asked to write six things about ourselves AND tag six other bloggers to do the same, as part of a way of supplying some diversion for those who will be sauntering the web with care over this weekend.  So, in name of community building and camaraderie:

1. Yes, I am 5 feet, 9 inches tall. If you have seen me in person, and you are insightful you know this and will not get bogged down in discussions of whether height is relative and what my height means for you. Recently, I attended an event where a very insightful person questioned my height, and when I asked whether he really did indeed want to get into a conversation about the nature of reality, he quickly replied that given his full head of dark brown hair, completely ungreyed, he saw no point in going there.

2. According to my mother, I never asked for a brother or a sister (after me, my mom went through some pregnancies that the babies didn't survive) but when I was about three or four I requested a cat, so I would have "somebody to talk to" when she and my father were talking to each other. I named the cat that arrived Mischief Funnyface Feldman, and no better black and white alley cat has ever been a better companion. Mischief was also an excellent conversationalist which was fortunate since my parents were plenty able to spend time in good conversation with each other.

3. I love to nap.

4. I love to laugh, and probably the reason I am still with my husband and always will be is that he is uniquely able to crack me up.

5. I was raised in a fiercely anti-racist home, really one that was unusually like that for its time and place. My mother, in particular, instilled in me the attitude that skin color simply is not relevant to evaluating a person. She and my father established the authenticity of their own view by not batting an eye when the first person I ever lived with - and the person who became the aforementioned husband - turned out to be brown with a name that most Americans find to be quite the tongue-twister. They met the young man and the first thing they said to me when we spoke in private was that THIS was a person who showed the sort of kindness and intelligence that they thought would make me happy.

Now I knew that this color-blindness was quite uncommon. Still is, I imagine. I was not, and am not, naive about the lack of color-blindness in this world. And until this election year I felt my life was nothing but the better for having had instilled into it both anti-racism and color-blindness - for never thinking that color of a person's skin was relevant to his or her value. But here is a paradox: while I understand intellectually that the election of a non-white to the Presidency of the United States of America is historically remarkable, I cannot become interested in President-elect Obama's imminent inauguration simply because of the color of his skin. And that's because I have never really paid attention to the color of his skin. So, in a slightly perverse way I am alienated from the obviously authentic joy other people take in the fact that we are about to have our first non-white President. Again, I stress that I get it on an intellectual level. I do not even think that it is per se racist to be moved simply by color of the our incoming President's skin. The paradox arises for me because skin color has simply mattered so little to me throughout my life, I cannot suddenly make it matter to me now.

6. In a way, I wish I could make it matter, because I admit I feel a loss at not being swept up in pure joy that many people of good will are genuinely feeling as they see the upcoming inauguration like Rev. Jesse Jackson does: “It is a huge civil rights moment,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “Barack Obama has run the last lap of a 54-year race for civil rights."

The last lap: from where I sit, with no ERA, with 51 Percent's goals far from realized, with misogynist, homophobic Rick Warren about to bless the new president's term we have laps and laps and laps still to run. But I do hope the inauguration of Barack Obama is at least part of the tortuous path in the quest for a truly liberal society, one where accidental features of individuals - their skin color, their gender, their sexual orientation, their nation of origin - have nothing to do with how we measure one another's worth. Only time will tell.

I will be extending invitations to the following blogs' authors to join in the game of tag. (Note, given the evolving nature of how people use the term "Puma" I am taking the liberty of identifying blogs I find interesting and in keeping with the self-governing independence of thought that to me characterizes the emerging core of Puma political thinking).

Katalusis ~~ DoublejointedFingers ~~ Bud White's World ~~ Donna Darko ~~ Stray Yellar Dawg ~~ American Indy in Italy