Diversity: Embracing or Expoiting????

In the recent debate, Gov. Palin said if she and John McCain win, they will "put government back on the side of the people of Joe Six-pack like me."

Alaska (as of 2005) was 68% white (to about 53% for the entire US). And while the state does have native Aleut and other races not represented in the lower 48, it tends to be less diverse than other states.

So when Ms. Palin refers to “Joe Six-Pack” she probably refers to those whose life revolves around beer, Nascar, and a blue-collar job. And the Republicans THINK they know who they are, and that JSPs necessarily supports them.

But, as a recent post to the California N.O.W. website points out:

• Joe is the guy I worked with who served in Vietnam, worked construction, had four kids, thought Portland micro-brews were for hippies and weirdos -- and told me one day about having to change churches, because "our pastor spends all his time talking about how bad the gays are, and I go to church for God, and I really don't think God cares who you sleep with or who you marry." Oh, and he went back to school at 45 to get a degree in architecture, so I guess he won't be Joe Six-Pack soon. His income will put him into that Better Class of People y'all think you're part of.
• Joe is a writer or an actor or an artist who waits tables, pumps gas, shelves books, does landscaping, delivers pizza, scrubs toilets, and otherwise works his or her ass off all day or night to pay the mortgage so they can continue to write or act or make art.
• Joe is the lady down the street who is "just a secretary" and never finished college. She also reads D.H. Lawrence and lots of egghead poetry. Oh, and she can also name the newspapers she reads, but then she doesn't actually have time to read all of them.
• Joe is a POC [“Person of Color”] with parents of different races, who gets interrupted an awful lot at work to be asked "what ARE you?" by customers, and continues to bag your damn groceries with a smile. Then he goes home and watches Britcoms on PBS, plays long distance chess with a guy in Russia over the Interwebs, and feeds his kids before putting them to bed and reading them subversive stories by Neil Gaiman.
• Joe is a stripper (who doesn't have a drug habit and isn't a prostitute.) She's putting herself through school. She's going to be a lawyer and look like one of you on the surface, but you're really gonna hate it when you're up against her in front of the Supreme Court.
• Joe spends 8 hours a day on an assembly line with a wrench, turning bolts and hoping you don't send his job to a child in China. On Thursday nights he bowls with a bunch of construction workers and he does share a pitcher of beer with them. Budweiser, even. Then he goes home, puts on his ABBA records, and dances with his partner -- Andrew.

Palin said her husband's 401(k) retirement account lost probably $20,000 in the last week as the market dropped. According to the most recent state financial disclosure forms, filed March 10, 2008, the Palins had about $164,699 in a private investment account and $198,102 in a separate retirement account.

Palin makes $125,000 yearly as governor, and her husband makes about $90,000 a year combined from his commercial fishing business and his part-time job as a production operator on the North Slope. Now, I realize that living in Alaska may cost 25-30% MORE than the lower 48, but most JSPs don’t earn that kind of salary nor have that kind of investment portfolio. As has the current administration, the McCain/Palin campaign seem to wish to exploit the “common man,” while voting to benefit their overlords.

Most of the "liberal elitists" I know are not, in fact, rich. Some are highly educated and working in lucrative professions. Some are highly educated and working class. Some, sadly, are incredibly liberal but not terribly educated (formally or autodidactically) and are just as easily led by sound bite as "the great unwashed" that they don't believe they are a part of.

And how many of you...us...truly fall into the assumed stereotype? Even if you're conservative? Even if you do like to buy a sixer now and again?

Are we the Joe Six-Pack they think they know?

When I get overwhelmed by all the things I feel passionately about -- racism, sexism, homophobia; when I despair that nothing is getting better and we're all just going to go on hating each other; when I start to fall into thinking that the doomsayers are right and nothing has improved and America just sucks...I hear Dr. King in my head.

I say good night to you by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher, who said, 'We ain't what we ought to be and we ain't what we want to be and we ain't what we're going to be. But thank God, we ain't what we was.'

And I look at the world, where things have changed a bit at a time, a step at a time. There are states where gay marriage is legal. We have a black Presidential candidate, and not, bless his heart, a Jesse Jackson running independently, but a black candidate who made it through our very inherently racist and generally crappy two party system to be the probable next President of the United States. And had it not been him, it would have been a woman.

We SO AIN'T what we ought to be or what we want to be. We are not even what I would call close. But one step at a time, one person at a time, we are steadily pressing on, trying to get there.

And the rich and powerful don't get to steal the credit for that.

The credit for the ongoing battle goes to Mr., Mrs., and Ms. Goddamn Joe Six-Pack. The agitators, the commenters, the people on the phone banks, the people in the streets marching, the people organizing, the people speaking out, the people working on their families and neighbors to make the changes that have to happen for us to change our society for the better...

Joe Six-Pack.