The legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece “Rashomon” shows how four people recount different versions of the story of a man’s murder and rape of his wife. It reveals the complexity of people and the relative nature of truth when dealing with an objective reality. I referenced Rashomon because, as a country, 300 million people just witnessed the same event but we all saw different things
Before I deal with what I think we saw, let me definitively say what we didn’t see. What was not on display was white men struggling to confirm the veracity of Dr. Christine Blasely Ford’s charges against Kavanaugh. American white men have imprisoned, lynched and mutilated thousands of black men based upon the uncorroborated assertion of a white woman. Or, if white men imagined that a random black man had assaulted a white woman, no assertion by her was needed. But I digress.
As irrational as the events that unfolded during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings appeared to be, there was a rational basis for everything we witnessed. This was not a debate about the suitability of one man to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court; this was a high-stakes battle in the war being waged by reactionary conservative forces to maintain America’s rich white male hegemony.
Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle opined that man by his nature is a social animal. The anthropological and historical record of Homo sapiens will verify Aristotle knew what he was talking about. All social animals are inherently hierarchical and undemocratic by nature. Then if we are by nature social animals, we also are by nature hierarchical and undemocratic. This creates a lot of cognitive dissonance for anyone whose enculturation and education are a function of the American social system.
There’s an old political adage that says: where you stand on an issue is a function of where you sit. Our social identity defines who we are in any social unit, large or small. In America the foundations of social identity are race, gender and class; racism, capitalism and sexism provide the intellectual rationalizations. As these elements define who you are in America, they’ll also determine where you sit and will be good predictors of where you stand.
“Hegemony” derives from a Greek term that translates simply as “dominance over.” Hegemony is the dominance of one group over others, most often by legitimating cultural norms and ideas and institutions that support the dominance. Or it can come by force. In every human social group there is hegemony
In America, rich white men are the hegemony, and because of that they have awarded themselves privileges. Privilege does not mean the best table at a five-star restaurant or front-row tickets to “Hamilton.” Privilege has it root in the Latin privilegium, meaning a law in favor of or against a specific person or a special right. It evolved to mean exemption or immunity from conditions everyone else is subject too. As Orwell put it in “Animal Farm”: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Everything witnessed during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, everything during the 2016 presidential campaign and everything during the last 18 months of the Trump presidency, even the Republican reaction during the entire eight years of the Obama presidency, all have their antecedent in the fact that white men in American are, and want to stay, more equal than others.
Which brings us to November 6, the most consequential midterm election in the lifetime of anyone alive today. What are white women going to do? Donald Trump is the POTUS because 52 percent of white woman participating in the 2016 election voted for him. Less than 30 days before the midterm election, how would they describe the last 18 months?
White women occupy an unusual space in the social milieu in that they’re both privileged and oppressed. Because they’re white they benefit from their intimate affiliation with white men, but because they’re women they suffer from the misogyny associated with patriarchy.
November 6 is a craps game, and once again white women got the dice being faded by right-wing reactionary white men who are betting they don’t make it. If you are a person of color all you can do is place a side bet, and you can’t bet with reactionary white men. Your only bet is on white women. But betting on white women is like betting a shooter is gonna make a hard four. Though the odds are not with you, make the bet anyway.
