Senatorial Insensitivity
Email This Post
Print This Post
For a state that prides itself upon cultural sensitivity, California’s junior senator certainly seems unburdened by it.
In less than a month Senator Barbara Boxer has managed to instigate two controversies through ignorance of cultures or crass assumptions of the same. Not content to merely castigate a soldier for his practiced politeness, this week she made a citizen’s race a point of her attack.
Strom Thurmond displayed better racial outreach than Boxer.
Later last month, a Marine general who still had Iraq dust on his boots addressed a Senate committee. During interrogatory, Brigadier General Michael Walsh answered Boxer by addressing her as ‘maam’. Barbara succumbed to a minor meltdown the likes of which Republicans prayed Justice Sotomayor would. With shoulders slumping under excess padding, Senator Boxer pantingly demanded that she be called ‘senator’ and not ‘maam’.
Oddly none of the men that the general called ‘sir’ voiced complaints.
Though not born of the southern noblesse oblige with which I am familiar, the general’s use of the common reference of deference is a cultural phenomenon and one to which temporarily sitting senators should show sensitivity. Down south, we call everyone sir or maam. Elderly people address children with the same words. Wives and husbands trade the titles. It is considered the minimal civility and one offered to strangers as a matter of principal. The cultural bias at play is that one assumes the best of all people until given a reason not to.
This includes politicians who are normally held suspect from the beginning.
The military maintains similar modes on behavior. Children raised in Dixie or soldiers sweating in boot camp are acculturated to show respect. A returning soldier I greeted at the airport called me ‘sir’ despite us having never met before that moment. Cultures that install politeness – be it southern born or military bred – are recognized and appreciated by everyone living in this largely impolite world.
Aside from self-important people, that is.
As insensitive as Boxer is to cultures that incubate kindness, her more recent affront to African-Americans would make her an honorary member of the Dixicrats. Harry C. Alford, the CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce was, like the general, staring down the business end of Boxer’s distemper. Speaking to how proposed legislation might hinder business, Boxer pointedly produced a counter argument published by the NAACP.
She saw his blackness and raised him a few chitlins.
Alford, who also was once in Uncle Sam’s military, showed the self-restraint that only cultural discipline instills. “All that’s condescending … As an African-American and a veteran of this country, I take offense to that” adding “You’re quoting some other black man. Why don’t you quote some other Asian. You are being racial here.”
California is, if nothing else, the ultimate American melting pot. We potentially have the widest selection of cultures, subcultures and counter cultures in the inhabitable world and D.C. Strolling down any San Francisco street will induce sensory overload as global languages and aromas assault from every angle. Like most of America, we get along because we learned how – sharing our space with neighbors completely unlike ourselves and attempting to show a little sensitivity. Native Californians like Alford understand this.
A nice Jewish Brooklyn girl like Barbara should too.
Comments