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Many of the pundits I've been listening to in recent months (and years) don't seem to realize that much of what they find to be acceptable and even appealing in certain candidates is shaped by their own experiences as white men in America - and by their lack of exposure to or interaction with blacks and other minorities who see things from an entirely different perspective.
For example, their enamored fascination with Rick Perry's strapping, swaggering, back-slapping "good-old-boy" manner is, in my view, an emotion that is largely limited to white men - I can't imagine that this feeling about him is shared by many black or brown people or many women. Most black folks that I know find such affectations to be less-than-impressive and, in fact, often offensive - calling to mind behaviors, demeanors and attitudes of white Southern men who took great pleasure in throwing their weight around and lording over blacks. I personally tend to recoil from men like Rick Perry in an almost visceral reaction.
I tend to think that many women of all races may also have a similarly negative reaction to Perry's kind of macho strutting.
I'm not suggesting that all Southern men with Perry's mannerisms are bigots or white supremacists, but many bigots and white supremacists look and talk like Rick Perry. That seems to be lost on most of the pundits in their rapture over Perry.
When I listen to commentators go on and on about how Perry's "plain spoken" "shoot from the hip" manner is appealing to voters, I wonder if it's ever occurred to them that plenty of Americans find this kind of behavior to be deeply offensive, even frightening. And I wonder if they've ever bothered to consider that their perspective may not be shared by people who don't look like them - or if they even care.
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