Zulu Nation
In Kenya, members of different tribes are hacking each other to death with machetes over the results of their presidential election.
Americans like to think we are above tribal affiliations, but, while we have largely eliminated serious election violence in our country, we can be as tribal in our politics as the Hutus and the Tutsis are in Rwanda.
Over the last year, I have had dozens of reporters and political colleagues automatically assume I would be supporting Rudy Giuliani in the Republican primaries.
These people knew very well I had a long list of ideological disagreements with Mayor Giuliani, yet they seemed genuinely surprised when I said I was not supporting Rudy Giuliani.
The reasons for their surprise are simple: I am a Catholic American of Sicilian-Italian descent who moved to Florida from New York City fifteen years ago, ipso facto, I must be supporting Mayor Giuliani.
Given my demographic profile, these reporters and colleagues were not out in left field in their assumption that I would be a Rudy supporter.
After all, why are so many women of a certain age voting for another woman of a certain age named “Hillary Clinton” in the Democratic primary? The exit polls have made quite clear that Senator Clinton’s biggest voting block consists of older, white, Democrat women.
In a similar fashion, Senator Obama is receiving overwhelming support in the Democratic primaries from his fellow black Americans.
Recently, CNN apologized for and had to pull a story from its website titled “Gender or race: Black women voters face tough choices in South Carolina," when they were immediately swamped by complaints from black women objecting to CNN’s assumption that gender and race were the driving force in the votes of black females.
Joseph Lieberman, a liberal Democrat on all but one big issue, was here stumping in South Florida among Jewish voters for John McCain. If John McCain was running in the general election, that would be an understandable strategy - but this was a closed Republican primary.
Other than Senator Lieberman being Jewish, what would be the sense of a Democrat Senator Lieberman campaigning for a Republican Senator McCain in a closed Republican primary?
Did anyone doubt former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney would win the State of Utah?
Both political parties have been scrambling to recruit more Hispanic candidates, and they will tell you flat out they are doing it so they can get more Hispanics to vote their way.
In America, we don’t like to call any of this “tribal” because all of us like to think we’ve made individual choices, and the concept of a tribe seems primitive and uncivilized. So, instead, we call it “identity politics”.
How many times have you seen a talking head on TV sniff that the war in Iraq was a war between “tribes” with the obvious implication being that Americans are far too superior to be involved in anything so primordial?
We separate ourselves politically by race, gender, religion, ethnicity, language, political party and anything else we can think of. We then deny the reality of our separations and pat ourselves on the back because we have managed to stop short of killing each other.
Wanting to vote for and associate with others just like ourselves is part of being human.
It isn’t always a healthy part of our nature, but it is who we are.
What I find interesting is the delusion we all like to perpetuate: that most Americans vote exclusively on the issues. Some do, but clearly many do not. Our collective denial of our humanity is fascinating.
We may not care to admit it but we are all a product of our primal heritage where safety and comfort exists only within the group.
I would like to think I’m different, but I know I’m not.
My Sicilian heritage makes me distrustful of any group outside of the family, but even with that inhibitor, I’ve managed to join a few tribes of my own.
Long ago, I was initiated into a fierce clan of idea-driven political warriors who value God, family and country and are willing to fight for them.
We call ourselves “Conservatives.”
My Conservative tribe is a member of a much larger federation of clans called the “Republican Party,” with whom we maintain an uneasy alliance.
While my tribe tosses a few spears now and then at other members of our federation, we generally prefer to lead the charge against another large federation of clans called, the “Democratic Party.”
Ultimately, none of us can escape our need to belong.
And that’s okay as long as we remember that we are all members of one big, rollicking, tough, hard working, brash, entrepreneurial, and freedom-loving master tribe called “Americans.”
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