Symbolic Politics

People who are upset about a politician doing something they don’t like that’s essentially symbolic in nature — like the selection of Rick Warren — often have difficulty articulating to skeptics exactly what the nature of the problem is. Simply digging up more and more quotes of the offending person’s offending activities doesn’t answer the reply “so what? it’s just symbolism?” These arguments can get especially difficult in the progressive community which is shot through with a heavy dose of nominal commitment to rationalism. If you’re ever interested in seriously exploring the issue, I would recommend Charles Taylor’s essay on “The Politics of Recognition,” ably collected along with a variety of additional commentary in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition.

A brief point to make is that it’s very easy for a person who isn’t part of the minority group that’s being symbolically dissed to dismiss someone else’s concerns as merely symbolic and not that big a deal. But it’s worth considering how much public policy acts consistently to reaffirm the symbolic commitments of majority groups. If Barack Obama were proposing to eliminate Christmas as a national holiday and end the White House Easter Egg Hunt, nobody would be surprised to see people get very upset even though the concrete stakes would be low. And it matters a lot to potentially vulnerable minorities to see their own concerns symbolically reaffirmed for members of the majority. When you see the reverse taking place, and being done by the erstwhile leader of the political coalition that’s supposed to be taking care of your interests, that’s a very disturbing development.