April 11, 2008

signaling devices

My students ask me about Obama all the time. They themselves are pretty much evenly split between supporting him intensely and having no idea what a political party is. For the first crowd, my endorsement is like a signal - about me, not him. It's like, maybe that white lady's ok. Maybe she really is on our side.

1 comment:

nori said...

I got an incredulous vote of support over my Obama button from a group of teenage black boys on the El when I was in Chicago last month. I think they were trying to parse the cognitive dissonance of me, white, clearly supporting a black dude.