Differences Do Not Define Us

From the Washington Post, Letters to the Editor, today, 14 February:

As I was leaving a Barack Obama rally, a young white woman caught up with me and said: "It's so nice to see someone your age [emphasis mine]. I thought it would be all young people."

I'm 72 years old and fit into several of the demographic groups (white, educated, female, retired, urban, middle-income) that are constantly polled, second-guessed and analyzed in the election campaign coverage. But these labels are not particularly relevant to my vote.

I wish people would understand that older people care about the same things as everyone else. I have an adequate income, health care, and a home, but I worry about those who don't. I worry about education. civil rights, economic disparities and the endless, unconscionable war in Iraq. I've lived most of my life, but I care about the future. I long for a country where people place the common good above their own needs.

Sophisticated polling based on ever-smaller slices of the population exaggerates our differences and mistakenly assumes that our differences define us. We have much more in common than the polls suggest. I will be glad that an old, white woman goes to a rally for the person who someone else has decided is the candidate of the young, black, and male population.

Our Differences Do Not Define Us
GEORGIA LEWIS

My mother agrees (as do many of us). But, Georgia, you are yet young!