esta enferm@

so, i've been sick the last few days and therefore doing a lot of reading. mostly from Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People (Hartigan 2005) (review here), but today also an as-of-now unpublished paper a friend is writing on post-accord politics in guatemala.

In OT, Hartigan attempts to focus attention on the fact that classism within "whiteness" reaffirms and solidifies the hegemony of whiteness. Though I take issues with some of his approaches (which I fully intend to write about here eventually), he also makes some excellent points. One of which reminded me of a few films made by d'vine around election time.

Hartigan writes (p. 157) about Time reporter Steve Lopez's investigation of Southern whites' reasons for voting for George W. Bush in 2000. "More often than not, when I asked people "Why Bush?" it was as if they had zinc deficiency. The smile would freeze, the eyes would cloud, and all signs of intelligence would fade." Hartigan comments, "This image reproduces the most enduring images of rural poor whites: faded or absent intelligence, stemming from some sort of indelible physical deficiency."

Now, as a disclaimer (#1), i think that d'vine is a fantastic professor, advisor, humanitarian, activist, writer, and person in general. But my point is he is falling into a common trap in which it is ok to disrespect certain types of peoples' opinions because they don't quite jive with the ways in which the upwardly mobile, urban, liberal, well-traveled, lucky ones think. And I'm not condoning the racism and other -isms present in the narratives in his short films. But I also think the particular way they are framed (and perhaps edited) contributes to disrespect. And I think the second film illustrates particularly well the way in which the filmmaker (and presumably viewer) are positioned as morally and intellectually superior to Noe. We are invited to approve of and commend him for his decision. Had he decided differently, we would be invited to judge him disapprovingly.

(disclaimer #2-these videos were not intended to be "neutral" ethnographic accounts, but rather campaign tools, and i'm sure, if dr.vine were to conduct true ethnographic work on such people, the results would be stunning and beyond reproach)

now, back to the texan's article on Maya Guatemala: He explores reasons that many Maya seemingly contradictorily back right aligned political movements. In reviewing literature on similar topics he writes that many authors give important counterpoints to pervasive racist ideas that ignorant Mayas are tricked into aligning themselves with right wing politics.

So my point here is that in some ways this illustrates Hartigan's idea that phenotypically "white" but otherwise degraded individuals and groups are treated in similar ways to racialized "others" in different places. Obviously, all is not the same between rural Southern whites and the Maya of Huehuetenango, but I think the questioning of political affiliation without thick analysis is dangerous.