Accidental Blogger

Ellen Goodman is usually pretty good at tying up loose ends in her arguments. But in this article about Harriet Miers, she is all over the place. Her peeve is the treatment of Miers as a woman by other women.  And she has no good answers.

All of us would find it more satisfying to be plain John or Jane Does rather than hyphenated ones. But gender and group identity games are played by all sides and one side always cries foul.  On whom is the onus to jettison the labels?  The individual groups themselves or society as a whole?  In these so called race/gender blind day and age, we continue to hear people say, "women professor", "Asian doctor", "Jewish lawyer" or "black athlete" without a hint of self consciousness.  And all groups do it.  In certain rare cases the mention of one’s gender or ethnicity does add value to the story.  I would for example, very much like to hear about a " Black woman president of the US", an "Asian leading actor in a major Hollywood production" or a "Jewish sumo wrestler". But women in education, Asians and Jews in science, medicine and law or African Americans in sports are almost the rule rather than exceptions. Yet the unnecessary adjectives are routinely attached in our conversations. As long as this mind set prevails, women in contention for elected or nominated public offices will continue to be grilled about abortion, minorities about civil rights and white males about everything else.