"Are You Supposed to Wear That?," or, Out of the Mouths of Baristas

Yesterday, TheNinja and I rode to Princeton for what has become a pretty regular weekend ride: ride - coffee - ride. Typically, we stop at Small World Coffee, so I can increase my bougy academic cred by drinking way too expensive organic fair trade coffee and listening to world music (and the baristas are way cute).

As we were putting our bikes by the door and removing our helmets to go in, I spied a woman talking on her cell phone with a button that read, "African Americans for Hillary Clinton."

She was the typical bougy Princetonian: white.

I puzzled about this for a bit. Was this some sort of Princeton grad student irony? Does this woman feel the issues that affect the African-American community in a really deep way? Is it a little messed up that in a Democratic race that has come down to racial politics this woman is wearing an "African Americans for Hillary Clinton" button?

I stopped puzzling and went in to order coffee.

Whilst I was mulling over identity politics, racial politics, and their relationship to affinity, the woman had already gone in and was ordering.

TheNinja and I sat behind her in line and got treated to the most amazing exchange.

The very earnest barista took the woman's order and then, having seen the button, said, "Are you supposed to wear that?"

I both gasped in horror and had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

The woman was clearly upset.

The barista, realizing that this probably wasn't the best thing to have said, tried to qualify, "I mean, don't people typically wear 'Women for Hillary Clinton' or whatever group they are a part of?"

The woman clearly understood herself as too smart for such a pedestrian claim and tersely responded, "No, I support African Americans and I support Hillary Clinton."

Her boyfriend had at this point appeared on the scene and tried to make light of the kind of tense situation in hopes of diffusing it.

They got their $5 coffee drinks and left quickly.

I ordered my coffee next and said to the now flustered barista, "I was kind of thinking the same thing."

She remarked with surprise about the woman's angry reaction.

I sat down with theNinja and talked biomechanics.

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I sort of wonder about that exchange. On the one hand, I think it's pretty damn righteous to call out the bourgeois liberal on identifying/occupying a position that she may not be able to claim but does so anyway because, like listening to NPR and eating organic flax seeds, that's what you do when you're a bourgeois liberal.

At the same time, I'm uncomfortable with specifying who can identify with what group based on my assumptions about his or her identity. It's a little dangerous to start making claims about who can and cannot identify with what certain groups. Identity politics have their utility, but they tend toward the divisive and exclusionary by drawing lines and insisting on "authenticity" and "the real." In doing so, identity politics can obscure the powerful ways in which identity is not some essence of our being but rather discursively constituted.

How "real" do you have to be to wear that Hillary Clinton button? Honestly, I don't know.