Kevin Noble Maillard is trying to read into the significance of New York City mayor-elect Bill de Blasio being part of an interracial marriage:
Enter the domestic hipsterdom of racially mixed family, a multivalent Rorschach for political campaigns. It appeals to multiple demographic groups. It demonstrates that race doesn’t matter. It demonstrates that race does matter. Its mere existence is politically suggestive, even when the family members aren’t doing anything. It’s race baiting and race trading, with little effort on the family. Biracial cool: the newest electoral asset.
If you are waiting for articles on the “domestic hipsterdom” and “biracial cool” of Phil Gramm’s marriage to Wendy Lee Gramm and how his election to statewide office was an act of progressive racial openness by the conservative voters of Texas (in 1984 no less), then I suspect you should keep waiting. You should also ignore Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s marriage to Elaine Chao, because Maillard reminds us that “Even today, in the age of Obama, interracial marriage and partnership in public office is extraordinarily rare”. That is why Bill de Blasio’s election to municipal office is such a big deal. So forget about Columba Bush and her marriage to the former Republican governor of Florida.
Are we supposed to be celebrating that the most liberal Democratic voters of New York City have (decades later) caught up to the electorates of Texas, Kentucky and Florida? Or are we supposed to be pretending that certain “interracial marriage[s] and partnership[s] in public office” never happened?
