Though this may not be the best analogy, I’m going to make it. It seems the Congress party in Haryana made the demand for a separate Gurdwara committee, in order to mobilize Sikh votes in their favor (at least according to one news source).
What is also well known is that Haryana’s Sikh vote has traditionally been mobilised by the SAD(B) for Devi Lal and then his son Om Prakash Chautala’s party. After 1984, the anti-Congress vote headed in that direction even more. By all accounts, the 2005 Assembly elections — also the one in which the Congress manifesto included the demand for a separate gurdwara management body for Haryana — constituted a break in the story. According to a CSDS survey, 50 per cent of the Sikh vote in Haryana went to the Congress in 2004, and only 35 per cent to Chautala’s INLD.
And Sarah Palin- as qualified as she may be- was not selected to run as Vice President because of her outstanding qualifications, but for her token status as a woman. It was hoped that she would fulfill the dreams of Hillary supporters who wanted the glass ceiling in the White House shattered. (From what I’ve seen in the polls though, this doesn’t seem to have worked. The women who rallied behind Hillary don’t want a token representative.)
That’s because Palin was not chosen because she was the second-best person to run America but to promote diversity on the ticket, even the political playing field, and to shatter (in her words) some glass ceilings. When she was selected, the Weekly Standard’s editor, Fred Barnes, enthused: “As a 44-year-old woman Mrs. Palin brings desperately needed diversity to the Republican ticket.”
That’s where the analogy ends- both were used to mobilize votes of a particular group of voters. (lame analogy? :) well we had to have a post on the potential VP before Thursday’s debate) But there’s a little more that’s interesting about Palin on the Republican ticket. Slate recently made a much better and more useful analogy with Palin. Clarence Thomas (only the 2nd African American Justice of the US Supreme Court) is infamous for his fierce disagreement with affirmative action because of the the stigma it places on “beneficiaries” (he puts it in quotes) of a badge of inferiority. Whatever success they have in life, it will be assumed that it was a result of the advantages they received based on their race, and not their actual achievements (gender in Palin’s case).
In a sharp dissent in a 2003 case allowing race to be used as an admissions factor at the University of Michigan’s law school, Thomas described affirmative action as “a cruel farce” under which “all blacks are tarred as undeserving.” In an earlier case he wrote that such programs “stamp minorities with a badge of inferiority.”
Thomas warns against the dangers of fetishizing diversity and the treatment that Palin has received thus far seems to illustrate his warnings.
The most savage bits of Thomas’ Michigan law school dissent warn against fetishizing “diversity” as an “aesthetic” concern of “elites.” Thomas hates the notion of flinging the first minority you can lay hold of at a glass ceiling…Thomas’ experience at Yale taught him to doubt anyone who sought to help him, especially those “who offered you a helping hand so long as you were careful to agree with them but slapped you down if you started acting as if you didn’t know your place.” Palin has also become a recipient of the know-your-place treatment, as she enters—at this writing—her 29th day of an almost-total media blackout. Palin has been allowed to speak to just three television reporters.
According to Thomas, the most toxic form of affirmative action demands that beneficiaries be seen and not heard, which is what the media blackout of Palin has achieved:
Clarence Thomas would say that in its most toxic formulation, affirmative action demands that its beneficiaries be seen and not heard, and that is precisely what Palin is experiencing. Where Clarence Thomas has always excoriated liberals for promoting token blacks so that America might someday look just like a Benetton commercial, John McCain has mastered the fine art of turning women into campaign accessories, a flag pin with nice calves.
The analogy of Palin’s pick as a form of affirmative action doesn’t work completely either since she wasn’t really selected to promote diversity (one token candidate doesn’t make a party diverse), but because of the Republican Party’s desire to WIN by garnering support from a specific group. Still, I think the analogy is interesting to the extent that it points out the fetishizing of diversity, and the stigma it’s created - which may have more merit in this case than in cases of affirmative action.
[I completely disagree with Thomas' position on affirmative action generally. Though there may be a stigmatizing effect, I don't think the answer is to just end all types of affirmative action but to fashion other responses. This post is NOT about affirmative action generally though because the 2 lines mentioned don't do the topic justice. It's about Palin and the politics surrounding her selection.]