Help! It Just Keeps Coming!

Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 12:59:35 -0400
From: Katha Pollitt
Subject: Re: invisibility

I'm interested that you see 'regionalism" as comparable to racism.
Do
Dakotans have trouble getting served in restaurants? Do cabs not stop
for them? Do they get longer sentences than other Americans for the
same crimes? As a New Yorker, and thus hopelessly prejudiced, I really
have trouble seeing the upper Middle West as invisible -- I feel I am
constantly getting the message that that's the heartland, where the
real Americans live, and that my NYCculture and values are alien and
immoral. What strikes me as especially unfair is that because of
the electoral college and the fact that every state has two
senators,regardless of size, citizens of small rural states like ND
have fantastically greater political clout than big states like NY. A
voter in Wyoming has 71 times the weight of one in California. Who's
invisible there?
Taken together, small rural states control 44 senate seats, while
having 11 percent of the population. Black people have about the same
percentage of the population -- there is currently one black senator.
Women, of course, are more than half the population, and are grossly
underrepresented too.
If we're going to talk about regionalism and invisibility these are
facts that belong in the mix.

Katha Pollitt

I don't have the will, friends.