Is Samantha Power ex-Harvard President Lawrence Summers' twin from hell? She should resign just as Summers was finally forced to.
I voted for Obama. I think he delivers an authentic message. So does Hillary. Voters have the legal right to choose through the electoral process.
But Samantha Power discredits Obama's campaign and devalues the democratic process which the world's nation-states are desperately trying to develop, by abusing her First Amendment rights of free speech with her incendiary ad hominem attack against Hillary Clinton.
Power does not work for the Jerry Springer show does she? She is employed by Harvard and she owes responsibility and can be held accountable for her public statements.
Power is a self-appointed, Harvard-anointed arbiter of the "Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy" at the Kennedy School of Government. She failed to be responsible to this prestigious and well-regarded institution and she has demonstrated she is not a global leader by any stretch of the imagination.
As a post-colonial sociologist and a civil society activist I would characterize Powers' gratuitous verbal violence against Hillary Clinton, as part of of the practice of Systemic Whiteness. In the U.S. nation-state, Whiteness is a System of Power in which Race is deployed to assert and maintain POWER.
By this Theory, Behaviors and Cognitive Constructs (Power's statement is an example of a cognitive construct) within a nation-state context can perhaps best be understood by framing and referencing those behaviors and cognitive constructs within the existing System, Structure and Ideology of that particular nation-state or region or political ecology/human geography entity.
Whites in particular exercise unearned skin privilege to damage democratic process for the Greater Collective Good (GCG) because they have an unfortunately long documented history and contemporary posture world-wide, of a profound misplaced sense of entitlement under a pervasive structure, system and ideology of Whiteness.
Because Whiteness is a 3-part structure of Power, any one of us, whether as individuals or constituted as a group, can be impacted and constrained, albeit unequally, by its overarching as well as embedded and entrenched characteristic of Power.
People cannot just abandon logically reasoned explanations (a definition of theory) when it suits them. Samantha Power fumbled badly. She exposed her lack of ethical authority in the matter of political debate as part of an election process. She abdicated her civil society responsibility.
Power should be held accountable and she should pay the price. Resign from the Obama campaign effort AND from Harvard's KSG.
But I guess being constructed as white, like her colleague on the right, Ann Coulter, with entrenched white skin privilege, she will not be held accountable. And even if she does resign she would still find another job in short order (like Don Imus?) because the SYSTEM of Whiteness favors her with unearned white skin privilege.
Jesse Jackson when he was running for President, was made to pay the price when he made his comment about
Hymietown. But Samantha Power will probably go "scot" free. (see her interview with The Scotsman)
http://www.ethicaldemocracy.blogspot.com
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaranCity University of New York
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
3 comments:
Ms.KarunaKaran~
I hope I spelled it correctLy.
I really liked your comment in the NYTimes. What you said,you said well.I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOO tired of the devisiveness coming out of this election. I am curious as to what you think of "white privilege" in terms of HRC. For some reason, I believe that just the fact she is female angers so many people, urg....As people DO seem to forget we DO live in a DEMOCRACY and we exercise our choice by voting
I cannot write (or think)well tonight at all.I will check your blog again!Hopefully,I'll have something more intelligent to say then.
K.B
Hi K.B.
Thanks very much for your words and thoughts.And yes, as you say many (especially white men?) are angry/intimidated by the possibility that Hillary, a woman might win the Presidency.
I tried to apply my Theory of Systemic Whiteness (TSW)to the election and in particular the Samantha Power episode, because a test of any robust theory is whether it can explain a variety of occurrences, natural and/or social.
Now to your point about HRC and white privilege. Well yes, perhaps you will agree that Hillary is a beneficiary of unearned white skin privilege. And in terms of her gender, Whiteness trumps but intersects with gender because patriarchy is the basis of this supremacist construct of Whiteness.I am of the theoretical belief that race trumps all other variables in the US nation-state.
Men in general and white men in particular find a female candidate, as you noted, threatening to their supremacist status within a racialized patriarchy. Patriarchy is of course the universal social construct (has been since settled agriculture and women became property as well as producers of labor and offspring that could be turned into labor) and most nation-state ideologies rest upon it -- race, caste, tribalism, feudalism.
I am interested to know what you think might happen if/when a black woman runs for president.My sense is she would face a formidable double jeopardy, for her race as well as her gender.
Obama faces one jeopardy, or more accurately half a jeopardy because he is half white even though he is constructed to be Black.
My own opinion is that my Theory of Systemic Whiteness (in India I think we have Systemic Casteness and in Africa we have Systemic Tribeness but all are patriarchal ie male supremacist)helps explain the system, structure and ideology of RACE the metaconstruct in the U.S. because it undergirds the entire social construct, and yes it intersects with ethnicity, age, gender, income, disability etc etc, while maintaining its overarching importance as a marker in ALL social relationships and transactions.
I can't help how I think -- I'm a postcolonial sociologist:(, so please excuse me.
Thanks again for your insight.
Cheers,
CKK
a more detailed response:
Hi K.B.
Thanks very much for your words and thoughts. And yes, as you say many men (especially white men?) are angry/intimidated by the possibility that Hillary, a woman (a womb-bearing man?) might win the Presidency. I think this alleged anger is explainable using my Theory of Systemic Whiteness.
I tried to apply my Theory of Systemic Whiteness (TSW) to the election process and in particular the Samantha Power episode, because a test of any robust theory is whether it can explain a variety of phenomena or occurrences, natural and/or social.
Now to your point about the candidate HRC and white privilege. Well yes, perhaps you will agree that Hillary is a beneficiary of unearned white skin privilege. And in terms of her gender, Whiteness trumps gender but additionally intersects with gender because patriarchy is the basis of this supremacist construct of Whiteness. I take theoretical position that Race trumps all other variables in the US nation-state.
Men in general, and white men in particular, find a female candidate, as you noted, threatening to their actual supremacist status within a racialized patriarchy. Patriarchy is of course the universal social construct (has been since settled agriculture when women became property, as producers of labor, and offspring that could be turned into labor) and most contemporary nation-state ideologies continue to rest upon it -- whether that ideology is race, caste, tribe, class.
I am interested K.B. to know what you think might happen if/when a Black woman runs for president.My sense is she would face a formidable double jeopardy, for her race as well as her gender.
Obama faces one jeopardy, or more accurately one-half a jeopardy because he is half white even though he is constructed to be Black. It is a necessary construction to maintain and perpetuate supremacist Whiteness.
My own opinion is that my Theory of Systemic Whiteness (in India I think we have Systemic Casteness and in Africa we have Systemic Tribeness(see the recent events in Kenya), but all are patriarchal. The universal male supremacist/patriarchal,/chauvinism construct helps explain the System, Structure and Ideology of RACE. Race is the mega-meta construct in the U.S., because it undergirds the entire social construct, and yes it necessarily intersects (because it is absorptive) with ethnicity, age, gender, income, disability etc etc, while maintaining its overarching importance as a primary marker in ALL social relationships and transactions.
In the U.S. nation-state, Race is the primary marker in a System, Structure, Ideology of Power, Whiteness.
I can't help how I think -- I construct social reality through the lens of a postcolonial sociologist, I dont see how else we can explain any micro behavior or cognitive construct without referencing the mega-meta structure(s) obtaining in any nation-state,
so please excuse me :)
Thanks again for your insight.
Cheers,
CKK
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