IFILL MAKES IT PLAIN…. Gwen Ifill made a good point this morning on ABC’s “This Week” that we don’t often see on major network news shows.
“I’ve spent the last year talking to a lot of people who got elected — black elected officials — for a book, and all of them talked about ‘identity politics,’” Ifill explained. “They defined it as being part of what you are, but not all of what you are. And I think that’s what the defenders of Sonia Sotomayor are trying to say. Which is that her point was, yes, what she is, and what we all are, shapes us. But it’s not all that shapes you.
“I always try to take arguments like this and turn them on their heads. And I never hear people say that for a white male that it’s identity politics if he is shaped by his white maleness, and by the things that affected his life, and whether privilege affected his life. That’s never considered to be a negative.
“It’s only considered to be a negative when ethnicity is involved, or race is involved, or gender is involved.”
Good for Ifill. Somehow, this is a point that seems to go largely ignored, if not completely ignored, at major news outlets.
