Comments

1. afroamericawriter wrote:

   I think my life experiences affect my political views. I’m an American who’s lived in different parts of the world from a young age through part of my teenage years.

   When I got frustrated last year when people kept asking if Barack Obama was black enough, I was thinking that’s a person with an experience like mine.

   But my Aunt told me one day that I had to come to terms with questions like that because even though I’m an American, I don’t just have an American’s view but the world view.

   So issues on defending the rights of the weak really gets my juice going. And when I saw the last DNC with all kinds of nationalities, I saw an America I could relate to. Is it any wonder I’m a Democrat?

   Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 10:14 am ¶

2. atlasien wrote:

   I got the basics from my parents, who are both fairly radical anti-authoritarians. My mother developed her politics from her father. My grandparents were progressive Democrats from West Virginia. My grandfather once ran for office in the 1950s (unsuccessfully) explicitly attacking McCarthy in his platform.

   On the Japanese side, my father isn’t very political nowadays, but when I was growing up, he used to tell me stories about getting into fistfights with police during student riots. He also frequently insulted the Japanese Emperor, complaining that Hirohito’s accomplishments in the field of marine biology were puffed-up and not real science.

   My ideas about race and politics I formed through research, observation and a lot of hard thinking on my own.

   I think Malkin’s stance is a combination of family inheritance, perversity and greed. By perversity, I mean thinking in a way that’s wrong, not for any good reason, but just because most other people disagree and you want to seem different from them. A lot of young college students are attracted into that kind of thinking but grow out of it. It at first seems really cool because you’re being “strong”, you’re standing up to the mainstream, you’re being edgy and counterintuitive.

   She inherited a fairly mainstream Republicanism from her parents, then during her formative years became an extremist in stubborn, perverse reaction against other people of color who were on a totally different intellectual path. The ultimate perversity was her defense of the Japanese-American internment.

   Throughout this whole trajectory, she was increasingly rewarded by white conservatives with attention and money. It was easy for her to get more and more radical. Accusations of being a sell-out just pushed her more and more into extremism and made her resent other people of color while embracing her generous white conservative patrons.

   People like her with mainstream or leftist views face a lot of competition; by staying in her special self-hating niche, she became a big fish in a small pond. The mediocre quality of her journalism didn’t matter, because she had the right identity as an Asian-hating Asian, an immigrant hating child of immigrants, a non-white white supremacist.

   Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 10:20 am ¶

3. Laya wrote:

   I started typing my answer and realized it is entirely too long for a blog quote, so I think I’m going to blog it instead.

   The short answer: part one is upbringing. My earliest political memory was watch Jesse Jackson speak at the 1984 Democratic Notional Convention in a dashiki (I was 5), and as long as I can remember the Democratic Party was presented to me as the only real option for black people.

   Part two is experience. I went to an almost entirely white boardign school for high school. Spending time around the children of the nation’s elite taught me a lot about money and priviledge, as well as where their politics came from, vs mine. I remember the death look I got from one girl when I suggested Ronald Reagan was definitely not a role model for me (at the time, I was as shocked that she liked him as she was that I didn’t, and I really didn’t have a way to respond to her).

   Even now, I would say my beliefs are still evolving. I’m much better equipped to defend them nowadays, but one of the things that irritates me so much about some people is their inability to look at things differently. So, I try nto to be that way. I’ll at least hear you out, and try not to make value judgements about what you believe. And I’m perfectly capable of agreeing to disagree.

   Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 10:28 am ¶

4. Joshua wrote:

   My Values:
   http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

   and my jumpiness:
   search google news for the startle reflex.

   imposed on me my political views.

   Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 10:38 am ¶

5. Rachel wrote:

   My parents made the conscious decision not to share their philosophies and political positions with my brother and me as we grew up, which I think was a good thing. My mother is fairly progressive, and my father is fairly conservative.

   I muddled through the first 26 years of my life a little unsure of things: I was hyper-involved with Amnesty International and several community projects in high school, but I didn’t really understand the impact of those projects. Then I spent 8 years entrenched in an uber-conservative Presbyterian church, before breaking out at the age of 26.

   I’ve spent the past four years reading everything I could get my hands on, and I think my political beliefs are now the result of feeling exhausted by the amount of effort other people will expend to impinge on someone else’s rights.

   Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 12:10 pm ¶

6. Charlotte wrote:

   What influenced my political views?

   It started with my (single parent) mother, who hated Republicans and made sure her only child was indoctrinated the same way. So for a long time, I was pro-Democrat, but had no idea what that really meant. I’d grown up in a neighborhood where I was the only “white” kid around and we were really poor, so there wasn’t any reason to think much of the Republicans, who certainly didn’t represent the people I cared about.

   Once I got into college and started reading literature that opened my eyes to how obviously racist and sexist our culture is and how incredibly institutionalized those ideas are…I started moving away from the Democrats too. In many ways, they’re not much better.

   Oh, for a third choice! Still, it’s the Democrats that always get my vote, because being able to support the social ideas of the Republicans is absolutely mind-boggling to me.

   Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 12:34 pm ¶

7. Mogs wrote:

   i developed my political views when i sat down to read a copy of the constitution all the way through, and said to myself, holy shit, so THIS is how our government is supposed to work.
   i love how just because Malkin is a woman of Asian descent, y’all deny her the right to have sincerely held conservative beliefs. if it was a white guy saying these things, y’all would still disagree, but i dont think you’d be automatically attributing his views to greed or “perversity”. i guess there’s an aspect of white privelege i wasn’t aware of before- the privelege of being able to espouse conservative values and have people actually believe that you sincerely mean what you’re saying.

   Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 12:50 pm ¶

8. Lyonside wrote:

   I grew up with a mom who was desperately trying to keep her “Republican” identity. But as I told her years later, her conservative cred was already blown sky high, considering that she was a Catholic single unwed mom of a biracial child in the 1970s and 1980s, who worked in a public school Head Start serving low-income families. Yeah, not so much.

   >My earliest political memory

   I was really glad to read this, because I’ve taken to asking people not their age, but what’s their first political memory. For some it’s something that happened when they were 4, or 14, or older, but it’s way more important than age.

   My first political memory was of watching the Iran-Contra hearings, seeing Reagan testify that “he didn’t remember” and thinking that he’s a liar. (well, as we later saw, maybe not). I remember reading various US history books, from different perspectives, and never being able to swallow any idea that the president (or any other leader, but kids’ histories are fixated on presidents) was automatically good, or smart, or honest, or safe, or fair, especially towards anyone brown.

   Of course this is coming from a kid who played Runaway Slave as often as she played House (and sometimes, they were the same game).

   So the progressive anti-establishment liberal streak started early, and got cemented by life experiences. A lot of things helped. Being biracial and bisexual helped. Going to schools run by a fairly liberal Catholic order of nuns who were all about education and social justice helped. Being a voracious reader, and a social sideliner/fringer helped. Finding acceptance with those who weren’t mainstream helped ME stay more open than I could have been, given how sheltered my mother tried to keep me. Being an environmental scientist is just gravy at this point

   I ID as independent, but Pennsylvania won’t let me vote in the primaries, so I’m a registered Democrat. Neither Dems nor Rethugs are exactly what I want, but I trust the Dems to at least stand for SOME of what I believe in and support. I honestly don’t trust the modern Republican party to want anything to do with someone like me, and the feeling, I’m sure, is mutual.

   Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 1:04 pm ¶

9. gr8ful1997 wrote:

   I think that I came to my political views through my life experience, having an open mind and being exposed to many different points of view. (I think it was my rebellion from my home life that led me to this exposure but that is another story.) I have come to believe that there are core problems in our societal structure that require fundamental changes to the structure in order for society to function in a healthy manner. I do not believe that the Dems or Repubs support this level of change that I view as necessary.

   I hear in other posts a similar disenchantment with both, major political parties, but I have come to a different conclusion, which is to support 3rd party candidates because I find my point of view reflected in them. Why would I vote for someone that does not reflect my views? If I only have two choices, neither of which I support, I will choose not to vote. It is a matter of principle and commitment to what I believe is right.

   Voting for a 3rd party candidate is a move towards having a more diverse political discussion, over time. The more people vote 3rd party, the louder the voice will get, and, eventually, there will be more than 2 points of view in the political arena.

   Finally, I would say that my experiences in my personal life have also impacted my political views. I have learned, often the hard way, that life does not fit into neat categories of organization i.e. black & white, right & left, good & bad. I believe that life is much more complex, thus I still find it insane that our government is built on a 2-party platform in a world that is so full of diversity. As someone who tends to see things in shades of gray, I hope that we can move beyond this limiting framework.

   Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 1:59 pm ¶

10. John Jihoon Chang wrote:

    Early on, my parents–a left-leaning father who was far more interested in Corean politics than American, my mother was politically agnostic. Not getting along very well with my parents, led me to the antithesis of my father’s tendencies, combined with conservative friends (who seem to mostly have developed their politics from their parents), led me to be an early conservative.

    That changed with a ton of reading of philosophy and college. Applying my Christian faith to my political views also took me drastically away from the conservatism of my younger days. Throw in some cynicism after dealing living as a human being and you have me, an anti-political (not anarchistic) that has strong opinions on the place of government as well as varying per issue from conservative to liberal. Ultimately, I despise both major American political parties and tend to support the candidates that I feel are the least of the evils.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 2:03 pm ¶

11. The Cruel Secretary wrote:

    Hmmm…I guess my political beliefs stem from a need to separate myself from my main political influence–my mom’s–conversative ideas, esp. around race and women’s roles and equality. I just thought that *my* Black female self had other things to do besides wanting and waiting for the Chocolate American Dream: chocolate husband, chocolate children, chocolate neighborhood, chocolate church. The world, to me, was far bigger than that.

    My first self-directed political belief was being pro-choice and wanting pro-choice candidates in office. I distinctly remember thinking, at 10 yrs. old, that it was simply common sense that a woman should have the right to not want to be pregnant if she didn’t want to and that right should be guaranteed. And I started articulating that belief to my mom–who, though she’s pro-contraception, is deeply anti-abortion. And we *still* argue about that to this day.

    After that, my political beliefs just layered from that core belief that the world’s a bigger place and that we have choices in living in this world.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 2:08 pm ¶

12. Winn wrote:

    Mogs,

    With all due respect, I don’t think Michelle Malkin would have book contracts, make appearances as a Fox news pundit, have a well-trafficked blog, or garner the attention that she does if she were simply an Asian American woman with “sincerely held conservative beliefs”. That, in and of itself, is not particularly interesting. What gets her attention is the very radicalism of her ideas, particularly towards immigrants, especially those who consider themselves “hyphenated Americans”, and especially given her status as an Asian American woman, albeit one who does not consider herself Asian. Her beliefs, which she has articulated clearly (or at least vigorously) in her books, on her blog, and in her public appearances, go beyond simple conservatism, particularly her defense of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, which I find abhorrent and inexplicable, and I am not Asian or Asian American.

    It would be naive to think Malkin doesn’t represent something irresistable to the right-wing media machine: a person of color who rails against other people of color, a child of immigrants who frequently expresses contempt for other immigrants, a woman who dismisses feminism and calls for gender equality, yet promotes herself as some kind of feminist warrior. An attractive woman of color who praises racial profiling, promotes Islamophobia and rants about alien takeovers and “anchor babies” destroying precious American citizenship makes a great mascot, and inculcates the right-wing to a degree from accusations of racial and gender exclusivity and bias.

    I’m with atlasien. Malkin is, if nothing else, an intelligent woman. Mainstream conservative values would hardly have yielded for her the profit margin she enjoys today, but slipping over into the fringe with some tokenism attached to her racial identity was just the right touch to drive book sales and elevate those appearance fees. I don’t doubt she’s conservative, but she’s either engaging in some serious political demagoguery and theatre for fun and profit, or the “Asian-hating Asian, immigrant-hating child of immigrants, non-white white supremacist” shoe fits.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 2:18 pm ¶

13. Ken Arromdee wrote:

    It’s my understanding that a number of legal immigrants oppose illegal immigration, on the grounds that they went through a lot of effort to follow all the rules and become a member of American society the right way, while the illegal immigrants are just cheating their way in.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 3:04 pm ¶

14. F wrote:

    When I was born, my uncle was in prison (he was eventually there for 27 years) and my dad had been in prison twice (and been tortured there) in South Africa for being anti-apartheid activists. We eventually left for Australia, but even as a child there, my parents were heavily involved in the ANC (I remember Oliver Tambo coming to our house secretly one night for dinner, and the Australian government posting security agents on the roof of our tiny suburban house and at strategic spots in the garden, and my mum sending me out to give them tea and biscuits.) The first movie I ever saw in a cinema was ‘Cry Freedom’ and I was so traumatised by the shooting schoolchildren scene I would cry for years whenever my parents tried to take me to the movies; the first song I ever knew by heart was Nkosi Sikelele i’Afrika (the teacher used to make me sing it as a distraction when she had to run out of the room for some reason); one of my first memories is being in a rally where the police used tear gas and my mother pulling my scarf over my face and running away; and at night I would lie in my bed and childishly fantasise about assassinating PW Botha. I was about 8 at this time. Every political attitude/viewpoint (and in fact most of my life) I’ve had since then has been shaped by those years – I ended up doing a PhD in human rights law. I guess the real legacy was a really highly, almost hypersensitive awareness of how stinging injustice feels (this sounds like a bad law school personal statement, but it’s true). Any political issue I care deeply about seems to be attached to that horrified, painful feeling of seeing people being treated with indignity or being denied basic compassion or justice. I never thought it was possible for me to be anything but liberal, and even when my family’s fortunes have changed, we’ve stayed fiercely on the left, I suppose. I don’t understand how conservatives think, which is a shortcoming, and I see them as lacking compassion and as being infuriatingly self-righteous and interfering, which is also perhaps narrow-minded of me. But this whole childhood experience – Apartheid, coming to a new country as strangers with nothing, all of that has basically set my political mindset in stone. I also tend to, perhaps unfairly, think that anyone belonging to a minority, especially a racial or ethnic one, must be seriously deluded and unstable to be a Republican, or Tory, or anything else. I always get the feeling that they should know better. Incidentally, my extended family in South Africa, who also lived through Apartheid (but weren’t involved in the struggle to the same degree with the exception of my uncle), are all incredibly rightwing, due to religion. This also confuses me. I guess it’s just where you place your identity – and for better and for worse so much of my identity is placed in those first few years of my life.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 3:23 pm ¶

15. atlasien wrote:

    @F: a recent study published in Psychological Science argues that conservatives are happier (or at least more content) than liberals because they are much better at ignoring injustice and inequality.

    The argument makes a lot of sense to me.

    Also, Malkin doesn’t just attack illegal immigration. She constantly blurs the boundary between legal and illegal immigration. Every time a news story reports on a crime involving someone with a Latino or Islamic-sounding surname she speculates they’re a dangerous illegal infiltrator. She associates with and promotes white eugenicist paleoconservatives who complain about how white people need to breed more because they’re getting swamped by the mud races. The only good non-white immigrants according to Malkin are the ones — like her — who reject their origins, never speak any language other than English and joyfully submit to racial profiling, the cleansing ritual that renders them fit for the company of white people.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 3:52 pm ¶

16. Christine wrote:

    I grew up in an upper middle class white family in a big college town in Illinois. My parents were ex-Navy when we moved there when I was 8. I’d say my mom is sort of middle of the road in her politics, but mostly doesn’t pay much attention and is very uncomfortable with confrontation or disagreement. She doesn’t like to talk politics with anyone outside the immediate family (really only me, because I bring it up) because it is, in her mind, impolite to “get into it.” My dad is a moderate Republican, although he refused to register for any party on principle. I think he used to be more conservative in every way when I was a kid. (I am now 27.) He is a fiscal conservative, sort of reactionary against identity politics of any kind and defensive about being a wealthy white male, and is disgusted by the corporate exploitation of government, yet doesn’t seem to support most government programs beyond the comprehensive government benefits system for members of the military and their families. Having enjoyed these benefits at one time, I can say they are fantastic and beyond the wildest dreams of most Americans, which doesn’t really seem fair to me in lots of ways. But I digress.

    I came to my political beliefs, meaning beginning to give a damn in the first place and becoming very left, after a powerful experience in high school and, eventually, entering a history program in grad school (still in it) that has helped me hone my opinions through doing an ungodly amount of reading and teaching. The experience I had in high school was my first political moment, as some others have identified. I traveled to the Mississippi Delta with about 20 classmates in my junior year to build houses with Habitat for Humanity. We worked with some members of the community by day and learned about the history of the area and its people by night, only interrupted by a few potlucks with community members and their kids who were all black and living in the type of poverty I had never, ever imagined in my 17 years. (I am not a religious person, but I identify one of my only spiritual moments as singing We Shall Overcome, volunteers alternating with community members holding hands in a circle in the old church we were staying in that week, led by elders of the church congregation we were partnered with.) That same school year I had read Anne Moody’s book Coming of Age in Mississippi — still one of my favorites — and knew about the history of violence and disenfranchisement of black people in the South in the mid 2oth century. However, bearing witness to a quality of life I did not believe anyone should have — and couldn’t believe anyone had in the late 1990s — along with working with people who were clearly very hardworking erased all of the garbage I had heard before about lazy people waiting for a handout, generations on welfare, and all that.

    I went home and asked my parents what the hell we were doing in this country, not helping each other — allowing fellow Americans to live so badly and with so few resources when we had so much and could do something about it! We understood historically why things were what they were and meanwhile all of us (here, I meant people with economic and race privilege, before I could really articulate it) let this type of inequality persist! My parents were floored. I was in tears. I essentially accused them of being racist and classist because they didn’t care and wouldn’t do anything… I had a full-on teenage tantrum. They patted me and expressed a mix of bewilderment at my bewilderment and the “there-theres” of people who don’t like to see their kid that agitated, but weren’t about to really agree with me or doing anything about what I told them. We moved on, me and my parents, but I never thought the same way about race, class, or my responsibilities again. I love my parents, but do not share their apathy or assumtions that people in trouble must have made most if not all of their own problems OR at the least if there are historical circumstances to blame, still people in trouble don’t deserve supposedly unfair advantages like affirmative action. I also don’t share their belief in mostly lassez-faire capitalism as the ends and the means of a “free” republic, nor do I see my whiteness as normal and unracialized. Most importantly, I’m completing a PhD in history and this training and experience leads me to look at most if not all political issues historically, but all of this started when I was 17 and went to take a look around outside my community.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 4:12 pm ¶

17. Joseph wrote:

    Apartheid.

    Learning–in junior high–about the existence of Apartheid radicalized me. The first activism I ever did was around this issue and even though my concerns broadened as I got older I continued to agitate for an end to Apartheid until it was dismantled. Beyond attending rallies, marches and protests my commitment to ending Apartheid shaped my life in other ways, like boycotting products from companies that were heavily invested in South Africa (I didn’t drink Coke for years for e.g) and choosing a college based on its divestment status.

    As a second generation Arab/American I was, I think, predisposed to a Dubois-ian “double consciousness.” That is: I understood from the time I was small that there was a space between my experience and mainstream, Euro-American “white” identity. Even though my family actively encouraged assimilation, I have always been aware of my differences as well, partly because of prejudice and rejection I’ve experienced from childhood. This awareness has also influenced my politics, which I’d define as my ethical engagement with the world. It is a position of “two-ness.”

    But while that position led me to the far left of the political spectrum sometimes it has the exact opposite effect. Like with Michelle Malkin. When you only apply a racial lens Malkin seems like an aberration… but she isn’t, her politics aren’t uncommon among immigrant populations across many ethnic groups. Among my friends who are first and second generations citizens we have discussed this at length: Our parents and/or grandparents, who suffered through hardship and ethnic prejudice to become citizens have, to one degree or another, adopted conservative positions–even when it seemed counter-intuitive to do so. So, even though I am repulsed by Malkin’s politics I believe she is sincere.

    Actually, I’m surprised there aren’t more Malkins in the public sphere.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 4:46 pm ¶

18. Ejunco wrote:

    Mainly my parents shaped partially my political views, my mom considers herself democrat but you can tell she has a small amount of conservativeness in her. Same with my dad a republican thank god not extremely but also is some what liberal, but I think if my dad stayed and finished school he would’ve been a liberal. But me being raised by mom and seeing my dad only once or twice a week I see my self 80 percent liberal and 20 percent conservative. I am
    appalled by Michelle Malkin especially me being Filipino and the way she thinks when her parents are immigrants also, Its funny though she got her beliefs from her parents also. The rest of my beliefs was from life experience.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 5:59 pm ¶

19. SarahMC wrote:

    My story is not nearly as fascinating as some of yours.

    I grew up in a lower-middle-class white family in Scranton, PA. My parents are both Christian; my formerly Catholic mom was “born again” when I was about seven.

    Both parents are very conservative Republicans, and as a kid I vaguely agreed with them, as much as an ignorant, impressionble child CAN agree with anything in a political context. I am ashamed of some of the ideas I had about the world, and marginalized peoples, when I was much younger.

    I was sent to vacation bible school, youth group, and was made to attend church every Sunday. They led bible devotionals each night after dinner, which embarassed me as a middle-schooler. My parents are incredibly loving and supportive but were also very strict.

    While I did not appreciate their parenting style as a kid, I did absorb some very dangerous and damaging beliefs. I was anti-abortion, a biblical literalist, and opposed sex outside of marriage until well into my college career.

    But during college, I was exposed to a brand new world of knowledge and experience, and people the likes of which I’d never encountered up until that point. I slowly became more and more liberal, abandoning my Christianity completely and identifying as a feminist.

    Just being exposed to people whos lives had not been like my own was enough to get my political awakening started. And my history, religion, and politics courses completely opened my eyes to how the world really operates (and operated in the past). I also studied abroad in Australia for a semester. Living in another country completely altered my perspective on America, as a nation and as an “ideal,” so to speak. When I graduated, I was a completely different person than I was when I began.

    That was four years ago. Since then, I’ve lived in Baltimore City, and now, Washington D.C. Whenever I return home I am almost shocked by how conservative and white it is, and how provincial many people are.
    I am a registered voter, but I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Both parties are too conservative for my taste, though I always end up voting Democrat.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 6:29 pm ¶

20. T. AKA Ricky Raw wrote:

    As a black person who is the son of immigrants yet staunchly conservative, maybe I can help the girl answer some of her questions about Malkin:

    How does a child of immigrants become a staunch supporter of anti-immigration legislation?

    False premise. Malkin, while I’m no fan of her (too shrill for my tastes), is not anti-immigration. She’s anti-ILLEGAL immigration. Big difference. People who pursue immigration illegally affect the ones who pursue it legally, either by slowing down their process when the amnesty programs for illegals come through and USCIS has to shift its focus, or by becoming a tax burden for the legal immigrants.

    How does a brown person fully wrap herself in Anglo ideals, like the radicalization of non-white cultures?

    what does “radicalization of non-white cultures” mean? does that mean she is not an automatic apologist for everything nonwhites do? Sometimes people have ideals that don’t revolve around having an automatic knee-jerk support for your own race 24/7. Look at white liberals, they bash their own race all the time, yet you probably praise them for their ability to be critical of their own as some sign of being enlightened and unselfish. Yet if a person of color decides to be critical of someone nonwhite they are traitors.

    and i don’t understand how people live and thrive in a culture that allows them a wonderful standard of living, then claim to hate the “anglo culture.” when it’s time to enjoy the material rewards and entertianment options and soft culture of this supposedly horrid “anglo culture” and tune into the latest episode of American Idol or Grey’s Anatomy, suddenly this “Angle culture” is fine. Basically, when it’s time to reap a benefit from Anglo culture, it’s fine, but once this Anglo culture requires sacrifice, patriotism or just a kind word, suddenly you’re against it.

    How does a Filipino American proudly let go of her roots and ignore the complexity of her identity?

    Are you a mindreader? How on earth do you know she has let go of her roots and ignores the complexity of her identity? Does she deny being filipino? How does being liberal automatically mean you embrace your Filipino identity more. If you know anything about traditional Filipino culture, their old-school catholic values are MUCH closer to conservative American values than they are to those of a modern progressive liberal. I’d argue she probably has MORE in common with her ancestors and homeland culture as a conservative than she would as a progressive liberal.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 6:51 pm ¶

21. T. AKA Ricky Raw wrote:

    I was a lifelong liberal, and someone once issued me a challenge to step outside my “echo chamber” of constantly having my views reinforced and to expose myself to conservative thinkers with an open-mind. I tried books and articles by Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Allan Bloom, William McGowan, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele and other (mostly black) conservatives. After that I turned my back on being a progressive liberal in favor of being a conservative with a libertarian streak. The arguments, when taken with an open mind, simply make more sense, and I’ve yet to find liberals who can convince me otherwise.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 6:55 pm ¶

22. Winn wrote:

    Quite simply, books and music. I began to read very early and became a voracious reader, and thankfully, my mother never restricted my reading material or tried to protect me from ideas too mature or complex. I read Dick Gregory, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks and Audre Lord in elementary school, and stopped saying the pledge of allegiance in the third grade. My radicalism began when I still eagerly ran outside for recess.

    As for music, it may sound cheesy, but a whole world of political, philosophical and social thought came to me via the music I loved. The Specials and the 1985 Sun City album introduced me to Nelson Mandela and apartheid. The Smiths turned me on to vegetarianism and animal rights. Bronski Beat got me radicalised about gay rights, and the UK Red Wedge movement had a young black girl in Texas railing about the unfair economic policies in Thatcherite England! My friends and I started one of the first high school chapters of Amnesty International in the country, largely because of the influence of U2.

    In retrospect, it seems a little naive and silly. But I firmly believe that music and literature can be a powerful way to introduce new and complex ideas, provoke thought, and open up whole new worlds of ideology and belief. I’m surprised more people haven’t mentioned their influence.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 7:19 pm ¶

23. Christie wrote:

    I come from a white Republican (middle-of-the-roadish) Oregonian upbringing, and thought I was a conservative (with a small “c”) until I got to college, in 1985. In fact, one of the reasons I didn’t go to Berkeley (though I was accepted there) is because I thought of it as “that place where all those weird liberal people do those demonstrations and stuff”…

    Instead I went to USC, and was at first a declared business major. However, I was in the dorm for honors freshmen, with kids from all over the country and the world, and a lot of diversity of opinions. I was above all an Oregonian, and soon found out how different I was from the rich southern Calif. frat boys and sorority girls. I identified with and agreed with the more liberal film students and Asian-American kids in my dorm. I can’t say exactly why, but anyway, I learned that I was not at all like the conservative people. I’m glad I went to the college I did go to, and learned about the real world of conservatism early on. I don’t pretend to be some sort of expert or activist, but I just cannot stand those who look down on others or try to keep others down, through classism or racism, etc.

    I’ve lived in two countries (the U.K. and Japan) with socialized or semi-socialized medicine, and you do sometimes have to wait, but as someone who doesn’t have extra money lying around, it is wonderful not to have to worry about money on top of everything else, when you fall sick or your child has an accident.

    My parents were pretty mainstream, as I said, but in later years I found out that my mom, though quiet on her beliefs most of the time (thankfully) was actually more right-wing than I had known. She actually likes or liked Rush Limbaugh, and once when I was around 17 she wrote this weird poem to me and my sisters, basically saying that we should marry white people from a similar background (at the time, I was shocked to learn she was racist, as she had not made racist comments in the past). It really upsets me that my mom is like this. She has some other character flaws that I suffered from, growing up, and now we get along pretty well as long as we keep things on a superficial level. She is fine with my part-South Asian family, and probably more warm to my kids than she was to me growing up, so I can’t complain there, but I avoid like the plague any mention of politics or race, classism, etc., around her, because I know that within a minute or two she will be glowering and stonewalling and I will be shouting and/or crying…

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 8:37 pm ¶

24. ch555x wrote:

    I’m actually an independent with leanings toward the Democrats. I was raised toward “the donkey” while keeping the teachings of folks such as Garvey, X, King, DuBois, Tubman etc. in mind as neither group really has anything of substance when they appease those in the upper 1-5% crust of society. Its in obvious contrast to the area I’m from: Tennessee (eastern), mainly Republican though “peculiar” given the current times, and at the edge “god & gun clingers” of Appalachia.

    Once college entered the scene, the variety of opinions really set my beliefs in motion. Running into socialists, right-wingers, and counter-culturalists confirmed my beliefs. I gets wierd when you can “relate” to the so-called enemies of the state while others blindly follow the star-spangled banner without question…

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 10:18 pm ¶

25. NancyP wrote:

    The short answer: I got out in the world.

    I grew up in an all white suburb and went to an all white school (integrated in junior high with one person, daughter of doctors, the first year), and was oblivious to politics but was shocked by the MLKJr and RFK assassinations in 1968 when I was age 12. My parents were and are Taft Republicans (Taft of Taft-Hartley Act, not the earlier President of the same family). I started noticing inequality in a more imaginative fashion as I moved into high school and read more news. I suppose that my turning out to be a Democrat was part of being a changeling child – a girl who liked animals more than boys, who wanted to be a Ph.D. level research scientist or veterinarian or doctor at a time when very few role models were available (female participation in those occupations was still about 5% when I was a child), who wouldn’t play with dolls but would run around outdoors, a regular tomboy who stayed that way. I didn’t fit into the school pecking order (I was ignored or bullied) and developed an attitude of self-sufficiency and a skepticism about “the way things ought to be”. I read a lot, met people at college, took an introductory level seminar on “law and society” from a historian who used social and economic history as a basis for understanding the development of law, read more, got mesmerized by Watergate my sophomore year, got words to describe my proto-feminist thoughts that I had had since I was 8 or 10 (What do you mean, I can’t do X because I’m a girl….Girls DO like X, I am a girl and I like X whether or not other girls like it – and all the other crap handed out by school peers and intrusive strangers) .

    I am still a changeling child at home, the only Democrat, the only one who feels an obligation to object when someone else in the family blames Katrina victims for not leaving. I tell them that Nixon was more liberal than the Democrats now, in many ways, and that their fondly remembered Republican Party is no more. Some of them are beginning to notice that my views make sense ; ) – 5 years after I insisted that the Administration’s proposed Iraq war didn’t have the ghost of a plan for what to do if the neighbors (Iran, etc) object or for what to do with Iraq once Saddam had been ousted, one of my family said Yes, Bush screwed up spectacularly and made the mistake of the century.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 10:28 pm ¶

26. Gothic Guera wrote:

    I came from radical parents. my mother rebelled from by going to college and so did my aunt. Through out her life, she wanted to be a chemist and told she should become a housewife. since he told her father she had no desire to be a sectary, which a lot of women in the office resented her ,since her coworker men treated her better than they treated them. She didn’t trust the church, yet spiritually. Due to her father distrust of the church,(he was was the few non Catholic in their city) My dad a WA.SP Midwestern boy grew up in the counter culture, reading banned books, with antiwar protest knowing lot of people who were activists, and seeing MLK speak, a army recruiter yelled at him calling him a hippie(I think my grandfather who tried to avoid the draft during WWII had an infulunce on him, since his bother had shell shocked) I was taken from their ideas, with help of reading about human rights, I was for some time considered my self a democrat , but later after a years of American history, watching the news, hours in my local J.S.A chapter and anti racisms and feminisms, I have some disdain for our two major American parties.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 10:28 pm ¶

27. William wrote:

    I identify as Asian American and Chinese American and do NOT profess to speak on behalf of any other Chinese/Asian American experience.

    I remember growing up in a Texas household where race and difference didn’t hit home until I realized that not everybody goes to learn Chinese writing, reading, and recitation on Sunday afternoons at Chinese School.

    In secondary and high school, I remained subdued and quiet, while developing a keen sense of wanting to remain different from the other Asian students who perceived to be high-achieving, grade-obsessed, and nerdy. Though I was enrolled in classes with these students, I never felt a part of an Asian (or Asian American) community.

    It wasn’t until I took an 8-week workshop in college when I first broke out of my isolation and finally felt like I could reclaim an Asian AMERICAN identity. It’s something that I declare with pride and am patient to explain to people who may not understand the difference between Asian and Asian American.

    I think like the uniqueness of each person’s story, political beliefs are developed in an individual and very personal way. Experience, perspective, self-identity, and a host of other factors play into it. That’s what has made this particular post special for me.

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 11:17 pm ¶

28. Tony wrote:

    A mixture of my things.
    My mother laid a lot of the foundation, but I had some issues I disagreed with her on as a child (Ironically, I have several different issues I disagree with her on as an adult)

    I was actually somewhat homophobic until that “Real World” season that featured Pedro Zamora
    Seeing him and his personality basically turned me from Homophobic into actively pro-gay rights.

    Later on during my teen years I actually met a guy who shared my ‘entertainment’ interests and became a friend, when we found out our political differences were night and day.
    We had a habit of debating each other, since we liked each other it was always respectful, which made me realize that some people on the ‘other side’ are really just as smart and insightful as me, but came to a different conclusion.

    Truth be told I acknowledge some of my belief probably came from my love of comics.

    Characters like “Captain America” most think are jingoism, but in reality he was always about the “American Dream” ideal when I was young.
    It definitely passed off onto me, I’ve stated I filter just about everything through the “Declaration of Independence” more than I do the Constitution.

    If it lines up to “Life Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness” I’m fine with it. If it doesn’t I will rip it to shreds. (Metaphorically speaking. I don’t advocate actual violence ever)

    Posted 06 Oct 2008 at 11:43 pm ¶

29. eff wrote:

    I won’t be old enough to vote for a long time.

    I’m ashamed to admit this, but about three or four years ago I was the type of person who watched Lou Dobbs religiously, read Malkin’s blog and Michael Savage once in a while, shamed girls for being “sluts,” and opposed abortion. My classmates, at the time, teased me for being a “liberal”, (i.e., for supporting John Kerry and for coming from a nonreligious family) but that was the extent of my “liberal” views; I was just as bad as the rest of them. To make things even worse I was virulently homophobic until four years ago, and it was only after Kerry lost the election that I started realizing that I had been very, very wrong (which is what finally cemented my liberal persona among my classmates; they were confused by the fact that I had gone from “gays are disgusting!” to “no, they’re just people like us, nothing else,” quite literally within the space of a few days. They were even more dumbfounded when I started voicing support for gay marriage).

    It’s rather ironic now considering my views have done a complete 360 since then. I support abortion, I think Dobbs is a curmudgeon and Malkin and Savage hacks, and I’m a bit promiscuous. I honestly can’t say what made me change because there isn’t really a defining moment that stands out to me, but I remember complaining about Bush winning the election over Kerry to a classmate, once. My teacher at the time overheard and chided me, saying Bush was a good president. And I was completely dumbfounded (I think that may have been another reason why I hated her guts. She was a terrible teacher).

    I don’t think the change was gradual at all; it happened very quickly over the space of a month or so, but I absolutely can’t figure out or remember what motivated it. Regardless if I ever do, I’m glad it happened and I wouldn’t unwish it, ever.

    Ultimately, though, I think it was probably my parents. There was never one defining moment where they made me think, “wow, I’m totally wrong about this,” but it was little comments they started making towards me that got me thinking. My dad once pointed out that no matter what, he didn’t discriminate against others, never had, and never would. And I thought about that afterwards and realized what he meant.

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 12:00 am ¶

30. Lisa wrote:

    Great thread, very interesting.

    I’m a WASP who was raised fundamentalist Christian in the Midwest, but even as a kid didn’t fit in with the fundies around me. Home problems made me socially awkward, a love of books made me academically driven, and from a very early age I was snubbed by the popular, rich, other white kids and gravitated towards the bussed in minority and immigrant kids who were also social outcasts and good students.

    I early on had a strong sense of justice. In 4th grade, we had a class on the suffragette movement, and, shocked that women once couldn’t vote, I then and there became a feminist. In junior high, I believed church propaganda about “abortion murders babies”
    and spent three years picketing abortion clinics. But the bald-faced misogyny of the anti-choicers sent me storming away, angry and insulted.

    Intellectual curiositycombined with that sense of justice made me a natural liberal, and eventually and painfully I digested and excremented my religious background, and am now a firm atheist. Meanwhile, in high school and college, I got exposed to a diversity of ideas and people. I was involved with Amnesty International and College Democrats. I learned second and third languages, and studied abroad.

    I emigrated after college, and since have had the additional lens of being an immigrant and an ethnic minority, which are definitely paradigm- and attitude-changers.

    I wonder if I could ever move back to the US: Because the religious bludgeoning is traumatic to me due to my background. Because American health care is completely incomprehensible to me. Because I love not needing a car. Because I’m used to people who value curiosity, education and broad experiences, and find a lot of Americans to be insufferable hicks.

    I’ve lived outside of the US for a decade, and when I look at Bush, McCain/Palin, and the rest of ‘em, their pointless wars, their retrograde predjudices, the economy and health care and obesity and the sense of victimhood and entitlement and…It’s like, “Wow, they broke America!” Good job!

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 4:16 am ¶

31. gatamala wrote:

    It’s my understanding that a number of legal immigrants oppose illegal immigration, on the grounds that they went through a lot of effort to follow all the rules and become a member of American society the right way, while the illegal immigrants are just cheating their way in.

    cheating…Really?

    It’s not only my understanding, but my (and your) experience that illegal immigrants are let into the country because they provide cheaper labor, pay taxes and open which has a trickle up effect on our economy and has the aggregate effect of offsetting any drain on social services. In addition, the fees on remittances provide a signficant amount of income to American companies that service those remittances and foreign entities (e.g., bancomercio) that conduct business here.

    Don’t get it twisted Ken. “They’re” here because we need them to be. Those that are “legal” (meaning those that wait for visas and are subject to caps) are specially selected, not for what they give, but what “we” can take. Up until fairly recently, it would have been exceedingly difficult for an Aromdee to make it here. I applaud you for your gumption.

    Wal-mart. Waltons: MAJOR Republican donors. Bentonville, AK mainstream wholesome values. Needs not only “illegal” labor but “illegal” customers.

    [until recently] home builders (& industry groups). Did you see who is rebuilding [I use that term loosely] NOLA? Or our infrastructure?

    Do you eat? Who the fuck picked it?

    Do you realize that remittances (which have dropped) are the largest source of cash for most, if not all, countries in the Western Hemisphere (excluding US & Canada)? I’m not going to get into other parts of the world as I know what your comment is about. Do you realize that without that $$$ this world would be a much more dangerous place for you and I?

    *******

    my politics are formed by pragmatism and utter fatigue with this [pseudo] conservative-liberal democrat-republican with us -against bullshit

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 8:38 am ¶

32. waxghost wrote:

    I love this thread! It’s so interesting reading everyone’s experiences.

    To make a long story short, there are two experiences that I can think of that really stand out as informing my political beliefs. (This is such a good question, though. It’s really got me thinking.)

    First were my experiences getting to know people as individuals beyond their stereotype. I spent a year or two hanging out with homeless kids and being on the board of an organization that was trying to help them by trying to teach them how to fish rather than just giving them a fish. I got to hear and see for myself the awful conditions of their lives on the streets, and some told me about how much better it was than staying with their horribly abusive/neglectful families. I met a girl who had been sexually abused by her stepfathers and kicked out by her own mother when she finally got the courage to tell. I met a guy who started smoking crack with his parents when he was 8. I met a transgendered person who had been kicked out when she was barely a teenager by parents that didn’t even bother to try to understand or love her for who she was. And that was just the ones who would actually talk to me about why they were on the streets; there were plenty who didn’t trust me or want to talk about their past. But I actually ended up making friends with some of them. After all that, it was impossible to go back to seeing them as just dirty, nasty drains on the system.

    To then see that organization (it still exists but I don’t live there anymore: Peace for the Streets by Kids from the Streets) working so hard to help those kids make their lives better, and simultaneously watch Bush’s cuts in aid reduce the money they could get, pissed me off beyond belief. That was at the very beginning of Bush’s first term, in 2000 and 2001.

    Around this time, too, I didn’t have a television and spent most of my time hanging out with people, so that rather than getting that distorted version of America that we see on t.v., I had to see that version of America that was right in front of my face. When I finally watched t.v. again, after about two years without watching it at all, I was absolutely shocked and appalled at what I saw. The stereotypes, the narrow viewpoint, the racism and sexism and classism and the complete lack of recent immigrants, etc. all made me realize just how absurd the television version of America was, and ever since I haven’t trusted it at all. I think that people are a lot better than we are often portrayed on t.v. and I refuse to believe the worst of my fellow Americans if I haven’t seen it with my own eyes or heard of it from other Americans. And I think that’s what really got me to start questioning all of the stereotypes that seem to feed the right-wing mindset so much in this country; I couldn’t be a conservative now if I tried.

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 10:29 am ¶

33. Will wrote:

    My political leanings are the consequences of living my first 18 years on this Earth in lala land and then getting smacked upside the head by reality.

    I grew up middle to upper class in Kenya. I was blind to poverty and essentially held the view that people were poor because they didn’t work hard enough. The privilege of having two working parents, of living in the city and being dropped to and from school every day in Primary school or just taking the bus. All my circle of friends came from middle class families, their parents had cars, big houses etc etc. We weren’t rich, but compared to a lot of people we were. I never went hungry, I never had to worry about my school fees being paid. In fact, I grew up pretty oblivious about anything having to do with money.

    Sure I studied hard, but when I fucked up my standard 8 exams and didn’t make it to the National High School I coveted, I went to a local school for one year and then ‘mysteriously’ got admitted to the National School. My pride refused to believe that my dad bribed to get me in as I found out later.

    In the National High school, we derided the unkempt uncouth rural kids. Kenya had what they called a ‘quota system’, essentially affirmative action based on geographical location.Some of the rural provinces are brutally poor, so for the standard 8 exams they had lower pass marks based on location for entry into National High Schools. We city kids derided the undeserving ‘quota kids’ who had scored lower than us (even I, who had bribed to get in). We essentially came to accept them and the kid who scored top in the exams to get into University was one of those quota system kids. Once these kids didn’t have to deal with studying by candle-light on an empty stomach after working all day on the farm (because it was a boarding school) they did phenomenally well. Essentially, up to that point they had been dealing with stuff that we spoilt middle and upper class city kids never had to.

    I made it to University but for Fine Arts. At the time Kenya’s economy had taken a nose dive and no one could find jobs. I didn’t want to be a starving artist (though come to think of it, there were pople with advanced degrees in Engineering selling bread on the street). Middle income families like ours were slowly sliding down the scale. I came to the U.S to study Computer science and that is when reality slapped me upside the head.

    Got here (the U.S) and went to university. I skipped Algera, Calculus and Enlish 1 and 2 because I had done this stuff in High school (though I had to fight and finally ended up taking my fight to the Dean). I had a professor in my first computer science class make me drop the class because I scored the top in the very first test and he accused me of cheating. He said there was absolutely no way that someone from Africa who had never seen a computer (his words) could do so well. I fought it, won, and then he faked attendance records to show I had missed classes. At that point I was so dis-heartened that I dropped the class and took it the next semester with a different teacher.

    After some time , no money for school because our family was essentially in dire straits financially (especially when you factor in the exchange rate and the fact that International students to public universities pay twice what residents pay). I was going to school sporadically (missed a semester), hitting the tarmac job searching and having the double whammy of my first real encounters with racism and also the first time I had ever been really poor.

    I had so many jobs dissappear on me between calling (I have a somewhat British accent) and showing up that I lost count. I finally found a job at McDonalds after 7 months of job searching that was 1.5 hours from where I lived (1 bus, 2 trains). This was Boston in the early 90’s an incredibly racist place. I used to take the bus and the bus driver would not stop at the bus stop if it was only black people waiting (Everett). There were times in the dead of winter when my ill dressed ass would be passed by 2 or 3 buses because I was the only person at my bus stop or because we were a couple of black people that the bus driver would not bother to stop for.

    I used to jog, and after having a cop point a gun at me because I, a black man, had the temerity to be jogging at 5:30am I decided maybe jogging in the morning wasn’t such a good idea.

    I finally scraped together enough to buy a beat up car and got stopped so many times by the cops that I knew the routine pat. My friends joke that I drive like an old lady (over cautious), The only ticket I’ve ever had was for doing 42 in a 35 mile zone (and the cop lied, and kept me there an hour to boot while he checked my background etc). He was very sad to have to let me go. I’ve also been stopped for
    ….. waiting too long between putting on my turn signal and changing lanes (apparently, 5-7 seconds is too long).

    Worked for a security company where the black guys got the worst shifts, got paid 5:50 an hour while white workers made 7:50. The company would bring over people from Ireland during the summer months to work and they would get the choice assignments and choice pay. I’ll never forget once being in the backroom at the security office and digging through a stack of applications and seeing a ton marked “Not [insert name of company here] material”. The only thing in common was that they were all from Dorchester, a predominantly African American neighborhood. That would explain why apart from Africans, there were virtually almost no African Americans working for the company.

    About a year into working in the company, the sole African American employee who was competent and had been there almost 3 years was passed over for a promotion and they gave it to a new white employee who had absolutely no experience. I and 3 other employees (I was black they were white) along with the AA employee filed an MCAD claim, he won, he got is promotion, but since we were not protected the company retaliated and I and the 3 white employees got forced out.

    So I struggled for a few years, finally got to working in a .com company and progressed. Worked during the dot come era and actually had a great time. But through it all, I’ve faced racism, the only difference is that as you climb up the economic ladder the racism has less of a material effect (though I left my last job where I was a software engineer after a co-worker who in an unguarded moment said ‘that he didn’t normally get along with black people’, became my boss, and my work life went to hell. I fought but finally just said’fuck it’, left, finally finished my CS degree and found a better job as a senior software engineer).

    Anyway, enough bitching. It’s not all been bad, but being poor and black in the U.S totally changed my way of thinking. I suppose that my mindset in Kenya growing up would be very similar to a Republican/conservative mindset, where everyone is to blame for their problems and where inequality is a personal failing rather than a societal or structural problem. However,when I was in the U.S and the shoe was on the other foot, boy did I become a Liberal!

    I also lost my religion. I grew up going to church every sunday, not particularly religious but religion was the air everyone breathed. I was a Protestant, when I came here I was totally apalled at how religion was used as a wedge. So I didn’t go to church. A few years after I got here my dad came to visit so we decided to take him to church because we didn’t want to let him know that we no longer went to church. We picked a church at random, we were the only black faces and the white pastor spent half the sermon railing against welfare and ‘undeserving, lazy people on welfare’. And he kept looking at us as he made his statements (because of course, all black people are on welfare). I have never been so ready to strangle someone to death but for my dad’s sake we kept mum. That was the last time I was ever in a church for a sunday service.

    So, I’m a firm liberal not because of some high faluting intellectual outlook (as Republicans so often like to paint Liberals) but because I have lived a life that puts the lie to the Republican narrative. I have a lot of privilege, I grew up in a country where I was the majority, where almost everyone I came into contact with was the same color as me (professors, doctors, dentists etc). So I feel that I was lucky not to have internalized fully a lot of the stuff that would result from growing up in a society that denigrates, abhors and essentially paints your kind as less than. At the same time, coming here when I did has left scars that I will carry for the rest of my life. I joke with my brother that had we been born and raised in the U.S we would very likely be in jail for some crime or another.

    I got married a couple of years ago, my wife is white and very liberal and we’ve really begun thinking about moving out of the U.S if McCain wins or at least putting plans in motion. This election has given us hope (an African American who is the vastly more qualified candidate may actually be president!!) and given us heartache (the racialized attacks on Obama are just absolutely apalling). We don’t want to raise our children in an America where McCain/Palin can win with absolutely no substance other than thinly veiled racial attacks and appeals to people’s worst instincts and fear of ‘the other’.

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 11:18 am ¶

34. Will wrote:

    Whoops, re-read my brain dump of a post above and realized I left out something, the intellectual part. This post actually goes much further than the original question of my political views but it illustrates how they were formed.

    Coming to the U.S made me question a world view that saw whites at the top. It’s funny saying this coming from an African country but due to Imperialism and Colonialism and the subsequent brain washing a lot of the unconscious attitudes that people hold are pretty detrimental. When I was growing up, white was right and everyone essentially aspired for European things (European clothes, shoes etc). Also, add to that the fact that coming from a country where a large part of the GDP comes from tourism, 2 very bad things happen

    a) White becomes associated with money and therefore there is an incentive to treat whites better than you would your fellow blacks.
    b) Culture becomes distorted in that those elements of culture that can be easily commoditized thrive and those that can’t peter out.

    Two illustrations of point a above.

    In the 1980’s an African American woman tourist began arguing with a policeman over a parking ticket. In Kenya at the time, you did not argue with a police man if you knew what was good for you unless you were white. The policeman assumed the African American was Kenyan and his reply to her was to slap, punch and kick her. Tourist privileges only apply if your skin is white or if you have some visible marker that identifies you as not kenyan

    About 14 years ago my mum and sisters went to a resort in one of the coastal towns. My sisters were swimming in the pool when a staff member (black) walked over and asked her to ask her children to climb out of the pool ‘because the German tourists want to swim and they don’t want blacks in the pool”. This in a majority black country. That is some internalized hatred there.

    Anyway, when I came to the U.S I was stunned by 2 things

    The absolute ignorance that people displayed of Kenya and Africa. Till today, I still get stupid questions that make me want either to laugh or cry (Do you live in trees, do you have houses etc).

    The absolute wealth of books that actually tell African history and tell it well, especially the colonial era that gets sugar coated in Kenya (because like a lot of African countries, a lot of the people in power or their parents were collaborators with the Colonial powers). A good primer for anyone looking to learn about Kenya’s colonial era is “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya” by Caroline Elkins. A lot of Kenyan history that I learnt in school painted amorphous colonial bad guys, gave the church a free pass and did absolutely nothing to connect the forces at play during colonialism to the countries present day situation. It was “We had Colonialism, we became free, we sang Kumbayah and all was good”. Nothing about the fact that we bought back the land the British stole with a 3 Billion Pound loan from… the British government. A loan which I think we are still paying.

    Until I came to the U.S I had never seen a poor white person, and I remember being absolutely shocked the first time I saw a white person begging. In my mind, I could not reconcile whiteness with anything negative or poverty. I actually had a conversation with a very old Kenyan who told me that the Mau Mau rebellion that spelled the death knell for Britans occupation of Kenya would never have occured were it not for the 2nd world war. A lot of Kenyans fought with Britain (conscripted) in WW2 and when they saw white people dying and bleeding like them they finally understood just like them, they were mortal. When they came back from the war they had military knowledge and they no longer believed whites were unbeatable. Few whites were killed in the Mau Mau rebellion, but it made Britain’s position in Kenya untenable, a formally highly profitable and easy to rule Colony became a resource drain, both financially, militarily and public relations wise.

    I also did a lot of reading on post colonialism, globalization etc.

    I’ve found the more knowledge I gain, the more I question and the more I come to think that the whole Republican/Conservative/Neo-conservative mindset is a sham. Now, this is IMHO, and anyone who is conservative can disagree with me, but I remember reading a quotation by John Kenneth Galbraith

    “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

    To me being conservative/Republican means wanting to conserve the current system of inequality, in fact to extend it, between races, rich and poor, haves and have nots and men and women. I believe in moving forward towards a more just world, not regressing backwards into the ‘good ole past’ when men were men, darkies knew their place, women’s place was in the kitchen, might made right etc etc

    Anyway, thats it, done posting

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 1:36 pm ¶

35. ceecee wrote:

    umm can I say DITTO!! @ Will 11:18 am & 1:36 pm

    Same story here, middle class African family, came to the US got slapped upside the head by the injustice I faced. When I hear Republicans “share” with me why black people are lazy and always need a handout, (cos you know Africans are more enlightened that African Americans) I want to slap them silly.

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 2:20 pm ¶

36. shah8 wrote:

    I’ll just go with Lyonside:

    My first political memory is voting for Reagan in a school election instead of Walter Mondale, because almost everyone else were voting Reagan and I didn’t want to be left out.

    My second political memory was participating in a school debate, and I was picked to be Jesse Jackson, and then after the debate, there was a mock election, which I won. Also got my mug on local Atlanta tv yapping my mouth off…

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 2:31 pm ¶

37. NancyP wrote:

    This is a great thread. Thank you, everyone.

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 5:26 pm ¶

38. Tara K. wrote:

    Experience and counteracting my environment. Growing up in eastern Kentucky, I was called a devil-worshipper (seriously) by my friends when I told them I had a gay friend. I then saw what my black cousin endured as the ONLY black person in his county, and in my white family. He was regularly beat up at school, and his car and parents’ home was regulalry vandalized. Specifically, I remember their yard being emblazoned with a flaming cross. Worse, I remember my own family’s (extended, not immediate) inability to accept and love him.

    Having grown up in a super-red state like Kentucky has led me to really understand the mechanics of conservativism. Before I had any terms or labels for it, I knew I wanted to work against it.

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 7:12 pm ¶

39. Will wrote:

    @ceecee

    I cosign that.

    If I had a dime for every time some racist decided to share with me their hatred of African Americans “but you’re African, which is different” I would be rich.

    B.T.W This is a really great thread

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 10:08 pm ¶

40. Alexis wrote:

    I’m only 14 (15 in exactly one month), but I felt inclined to respond to this thread.
    I’m a young, black, Californian and yet, I’m a Republican. My parents are both registered non-partisans (but are actually secret Republicans). I think the main factor is my socioeconomic situation. I find talking about money to be incredibly gauche, but I will say that my family is NOT middle class, not by a long shot.
    My paternal grandparents were the children of sharecroppers in North Carolina, and they lean QUITE far to the left. My maternal grandmother on the other hand grew up wealthy, and leans to the right (she is NOT voting for Obama). My uncles on both sides (I have no aunts related by blood) are Democrats, and are solidly in the middle class.
    My entire family has similar religious beliefs, so I have decided that in my family, socioeconomic status determines political beliefs.
    That may be overly simplified, but it’s my observation.

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 10:29 pm ¶

41. Latoya Peterson wrote:

    Hey Alexis,

    Good observations! I find the socioeconomic status ideas helpful, but kind of shaky. There are a lot of low income folks who buy into the Republican mindset without having the cash to back it up.

    My own family is kind of strange, as they are generally a-political, but I would say at least half would be Republicans if it weren’t for the wink/nudge racism the GOP has been practicing for the last few decades. And no one is rich.

    I am always glad to see high school aged folks here (though it is a surprise), so thanks for commenting and happy early birthday!

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 10:43 pm ¶

42. Medusa wrote:

    Hey Will and afroamericawriter and ceeceee, I feel I can relate to parts of what all of you said. I’m from Ghana, but my family left when I was one and we moved to Japan, so I don’t have the experience of ever living as part of the majority, I’ve always been the “other”. I went to high school and college in the states, but I think my political beliefs are due to the fact that I have spent my entire life outside of my parents’ country (although I am still a citizen).

    I went to an extremely religious school when I was in Tokyo, but it was still pretty liberal. They had crazy ideas about eternal damnation, but at the same time would say things like “God has no gender, it’s just written as “He” in the Bible because of translation” and “men and women should be equal, the way women are treated in the world is horrible”. It seems almost counter-intuitive that a school so religious had political beliefs that to some would seem radical, but go figure.

    Then I moved to America. I fucking hated every second of that. I mean, in Japan I was an obvious foreigner and will never fit in there, but in America, I didn’t automatically stand out because I had an American accent (yay American school) but I didn’t know anything about pop culture. Additionally, while blacks make up a signifcant minority of the American population, we’re still the “other” and people would always make assumptions about me based on my skin color. I had someone in college tell me I was an affirmative action fluke.

    Anyway, I think always being “the other” plus having a father who worked for an NGO have led me to my current beliefs. I’ve always been extremely staunch believer in human rights, and so many conservative stances are in complete violation of those rights. The funny thing is, I’m extremely left in America, practically falling off the chart, but compared to the res tof the industrialized world, I’m a lot closer to the center.

    Posted 07 Oct 2008 at 10:56 pm ¶

43. AR1 wrote:

    I remember growing up through regan era and remember how hard things was at home and then the war with the first Bush my brothers went to fight and one came home with a uncurable disease that made me look at the democratic party more closer. I saw they shared some of the same views that I had since then I voted Democratic .

    Posted 08 Oct 2008 at 10:47 am ¶

44. bdsista wrote:

    My parents who were teachers and I remember being carried in a demonstration for fair wages. Went to elementary school in Berkeley, CA where hippies ran the before and after school program, the Black Panthers were like the crossing guard and I felt safer when they were around than the police, went to anti-war (Vietnam) demonstrations for school field trips, called our teachers by their first name and had a campus dog. I was a democrat. I remember when both Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King were assassinated. I remember writing letters and sending cards to President Johnson (and getting a response!). I was galvanized by the Black Power and Black is Beautiful movements and we wore fros in high school and college, until I permed mine-cuz afros are high maintenance. I went to school in Alabama-Tuskegee and did summer work in Mississippi and was very wary and careful about the police. I eventually graduated from Howard University and became a journalist working for CNN and left to eventually work for SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which is Dr. MLK’s civil rights organization. The issue at the time was a boycott of Winn Dixie for selling good from South Africa during the anti-aparthied movement. But working with other civil rights organizations revealed to me just how much injustice existed, particularly in the south around issues of voting rights. People who were not allowed to leave work to vote in time. People who had the FBI or some form of law enforcement come to their door asking how they voted. The list is long and ugly. When the Republican party supported David Duke a former Grand Dragon of the KKK, I was done. I cannot ever support an organization that would support a candidate who is/was affiliated with an organization still in existence that openly professes to advocate killing minorities, jews, and has a history of violence and murder. I never questioned my parents values and choices politically because, they have always been right. They were right about backing Obama when I was unsure and supported Hillary. They are 81 and 78 years old and I guess to quote Richard Pryor, “Don’t call someone an old fool, you don’t get to be old being no fool.” I hope they live to see a Black President.

    Posted 08 Oct 2008 at 9:02 pm ¶

45. Brian J. wrote:

    I’m Filipino-American, Los Angeles-bred, college-educated. I disagree with just about anything that Michelle Malkin has to say. My beliefs were actually changed primarily within the school setting.

    Long story short, I grew up mimicking my parents beliefs. I wanted Bush I, and Dole to win. “Republican”, the word, and what it stood for sounded so much better. Less government, less taxes, why wouldn’t you vote Republican. It was the party of Abraham Lincoln.

    I thought this way till I went to high school. An all-boys Catholic high school with lots of rich white kids from places in LA that I’d never even heard of.

    It all changed when I took AP US History with a teacher who held unapologetic, openly progressive views. He had bumper stickers like “It will be a great day when schools get all the money they need while militaries hold bake sales to stay afloat, etc.” He poked fun at the white kids. And he didn’t lecture…it was all question and answer. He just seemed to know what he was talking about, using actual examples from history to support his viewpoint. As I looked online on message boards and chat rooms, I started seeing people espouse what I used to think. My forward thinking left brain was born.

    Summing up, I guess my shift in political beliefs have usually been based on acquiring “more knowledge.” Or at least I’d like to think so.

    I’ve thought a bit about Michelle Malkin’s apparently contradicting beliefs. It’s one thing to be a conservative who genuinely doesn’t notice race and ethnicity’s role in everyday politics and discourse, but quite another to be a conservative who kinda goes out of her way to deny its institutional reality, except when it actually hits her.

    Her background and her talk actually reminds me a bit of Michael Savage, who graduated with degrees in anthropology from Hawaii and Berkeley, and lives in San Francisco. The discipline of anthropology is about transcending all kinds of boundaries. Then I hear him rant ad nauseum about borders and immigrants.

    Michelle went to Oberlin, a pretty liberal college. She’s worked in LA, Seattle, and now DC.

    Both from so-called “liberal” institutions and big cities with some of the loudest and most extremist mouths.

    Perhaps their beliefs are rooted in rebelling against what they thought the tide of thought surrounding them was.

    Posted 09 Oct 2008 at 2:23 am ¶

46. b wrote:

    one doesn’t have to be in america to “espouse” “Anglo hierarchy beliefs”…see: Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (far-right and corrupt President of the Philippines).

    and i share a similar experience w/ brian j. i grew up in a household and w/ extended family who were consertives…

    also, let’s not forget that the asian american experience varies vastly when you get away from the coasts/apia cultural centers.

    my growing up fil-am and then being raised in the midwest = not being (too) shocked by the Michelle Malkins of the world.

    …as for me. there wasn’t a major turning point for my opinions on politics. i’ve always been a fan of fairness and not a big fan of meaness or inexplicable/illogical decisions of adults imposed on children. …yeah, i got into a lot of trouble as a kid. :p

    Posted 11 Oct 2008 at 10:41 am ¶

47. Rose wrote:

    My dad’s a civil rights lawyer. My mom’s a social worker. Of course someone raised in that environment will turn out left-leaning.

    I don’t mean that I just blindly followed my parents, by the way. I mean that whenever they talked about work at home, it was one more tally in the civil-rights-are-cool slot.

    Posted 12 Oct 2008 at 9:19 am ¶