Two months ago I wrote about the emerging parallels between the bitterness of the current Democratic primary and the split between early white women's rights activists and abolitionists after the Civil War. With the campaign of Hillary Clinton sputtering to its final end, it is appropriate to revisit these issue and see if the disturbing parallels I pointed out have increased or decreased in relevancy since March.
Unfortunately, the historic parallels have only become stronger, and are nearly perfectly crystallized in yesterday's New York Times op-ed by Susan Faludi, the award-winning white feminist author, congratulating Clinton for running a campaign that has advanced the feminist movement in America:
In the final stretch of the primary season, [Clinton] seems to have stepped across an unstated gender divide...We are witnessing a female competitor delighting in the undomesticated fray. Her new no-holds-barred pugnacity and gleeful perseverance have revamped her image in the eyes of begrudging white male voters... It's the unforeseen precedent of an unprecedented candidacy... Not once has she demanded that the umpire stop the fight. Indeed, she's asking for more unregulated action, proposing a debate with no press-corps intermediaries. While the commentators have been tut-tutting, Senator Clinton has been converting white males, assuring them that she's come into their tavern not to smash the bottles, but to join the brawl. ... The strategy has certainly remade the political world for future female politicians, who may now cast off the assumption that when the going gets tough, the tough girl will resort to unilateral rectitude. When a woman does ascend through the glass ceiling into the White House, it will be, in part, because of the race of 2008, when Hillary Clinton broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys.
My original post comparing the present situation to that following the Civil War is included below. The short version is this: after the war, a major schism erupted among abolitionists over whether to campaign first to grant the vote to former (male) slaves, and then to press extend the vote to women (of all colors), or whether to fight for both at the same time. When it became clear that the majority of abolitionists favored pressing the black vote first, two of the most prominent white women's rights activists broke with the movement and began to campaign for white woman suffrage on explicitly racist grounds. They argued that giving white women the vote would protect the nation from the unsavory political influence of former slaves and Asian immigrants. The result was a split in the movement for woman suffrage that hobbled that movement for 50 years.
Faludi's argument fits into this historic parallel perfectly. Clinton, we are told, has done a favor for all American women by campaigning with "new no-holds-barred pugnacity" and "joining the brawl." Incredibly, Faludi neglects to mention the content of what Clinton's closest advisors referred to last week as her display of testicles: racism and war-mongering.
The day after the most recent primaries, Clinton told USA Today that she must continue because she has growing support among "working, hard working Americans. White Americans." It is worth your while to go to YouTube and hear this statement for yourself. When you hear her inflection, it comes off even worse than it does in print. She begins to say that Obama is losing support among "working" Americans, then pauses to specify what she is actually referring to is "hard working Americans," then pauses and specifies even more precisely "white" Americans. She then continues, noting that "whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
OK, Hillary, we hear you. As opposed to all those lazy blacks and do-nothing white college grads, you've got the support of the people who actually work hard in this country - uneducated white people. That is, in essence, exactly the appeal made by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton after the Civil War: the same argument, made to mobilize the same constituency.
The first time around, this agenda created a split in the movement for woman suffrage that would hobble the movement for 50 long years until American women finally won the right to vote in 1920. The whole sordid history is a painful chapter in American feminism that causes American feminists discomfort even today, nearly 150 years later. Some feminists have promoted Anthony and Stanton as historical heroines and role models, and in the 1970s Anthony became the first woman to appear on American money when the Susan B. Anthony dollar was minted. Other feminists strongly object, arguing that ignoring the racist legacy of these women only exacerbates the racial divisions that have plagued feminism in America.
But racism was not the only appeal on which Clinton based what Faludi sees as her effort to "remake the political world for future female politicians." The other was war. In order to convince those uneducated white voters that she had sufficient testosterone to be Commander-in-Chief-from-Day-One, she flatly stated that she would have no qualms about "obliterating" another country, leading her confidant James Carville to state that if Hillary gave Obama one of her balls, "they'd both have two."
This statement, coming from a leading presidential candidate in the only country in the world to ever have used nuclear weapons, was so egregious that it merited a rebuke from the Secretary General of the United Nations. I cannot remember another time when any world leader in any country, trying to drum up last minute votes in an election, made a statement so outrageous as to draw comment from the UN Secretary General.
So, no, I cannot agree with Faludi that Clinton's "strategy has certainly remade the political world for future female politicians." It is simply not news that a female politician who outdoes the guys in appeals to race and war can be successful. Think Margaret Thatcher. The fact that she ran on a machine largely created by her husband, whom she regularly employed to wallow in a gutter even lower than that to which she herself had sunk, makes Faludi's argument even more ludicrous. Incredibly, in Faludi's entire article summing up the political impact of the Clinton campaign, the words "Bill," "William," and "husband" do not appear. Clinton has not even withdrawn yet and the re-writing of history has already begun.
Here is my post from March:
The recent behavior of the Clinton campaign and its allies has disturbing parallels in the earliest days of the woman suffrage movement. Then, in the face of a short-term set-back, the most prominent woman suffrage campaigners broke with the abolitionist movement and espoused explicitly racist politics. The result was a debilitating split in the movement for woman suffrage, and a half century of defeat.The women in question are Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Like other early women's rights advocates, Stanton and Anthony initially became politically active in the abolitionist movement, and through this activism began formulating an increasingly articulate feminist agenda (though the word "feminism" was not available to them at the time).
The civil war put women's rights on hold, as abolitionist women threw their energies into the union war effort. After the war, the question of voting rights for freed slaves moved to the top of the national agenda. Slavery was ended, but whether the freed slaves would be granted the full rights of citizens, and most particularly the right to vote, was anything but certain. To Stanton and Anthony, the debate on voting rights was an open door for a push to extend the vote to all adult citizens regardless of race or gender. They took it as given that the political coalition which had achieved abolition and was now poised to campaign for the Fourteenth Amendment would see things the same way. It was inconceivable to them that the nation might grant the vote to black men yet leave black women - and white women - disenfranchised.
Most abolitionist leaders, including prominent white women such as Lucy Stone, took an opposite tack, arguing that it was the "Negro's hour" and women would have to wait. In their view, while black suffrage and woman suffrage might be linked logically, the political reality was that the fight for black male suffrage would be a difficult one, and complicating the matter by raising woman suffrage would put the fruits of the tremendous sacrifices of the civil war in jeopardy. Victory for black suffrage, they argued, would open the door for women, whereas a defeat for black suffrage would close all possibility of enlarging the franchised population for years to come. Those advocating this course included movement superstars William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, both of whom had consistently been far ahead of the pack in their support of female abolitionists formulating a program for women's rights.
The issue came to a head in 1867 in Kansas, where citizens were asked to vote simultaneously on two separate constitutional amendments, one enfranchising black men, the other women. The outcome would finally decide the debate over whether the political rights of slaves would be defined as the "[male] Negro's hour" or a "more complete democracy." With so much on the line, the split between those campaigning for just one or both amendments became predictably bitter. On election day black suffrage won, while woman suffrage lost overwhelmingly.
The real political catastrophe, however, was not this set-back but the ugly politics that ensued. What had begun as a principled disagreement with reasoned arguments on both sides degenerated into a political debacle as one side in the debate refused to accept that its position would lose. Stanton and Anthony had been the most prominent woman suffrage campaigners in the Kansas election, and as they sensed victory slipping beyond their reach they tried to shore up their prospects by reaching out to racists. They developed a close relationship with a flamboyant racist named George Francis Train, who stumped for them around the state. Attacks on the intelligence of blacks were fundamental to Train's standard appeal, and he employed them as an argument for voting rights for women. The collaboration between two top woman suffragists and such a blatant racist horrified many other suffragists. Stanton and Anthony shocked their friends by refusing to budge in the face of withering criticism. "So long as opposition to slavery is the only test for your platform," Stanton angrily wrote to the abolitionists, "why should we not accept all in favor of woman suffrage to our platform and association, even though they be rabid pro-slavery?"
The following year, Stanton, Anthony and Train launched the Revolution, a newspaper which broke much new ground for women's rights in America, discussing prostitution, infanticide, sex education, cooperative housekeeping. But the paper also carried on with explicitly racist appeals to white women. "American women of wealth, education, virtue, and refinement," Stanton warned, "If you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with the low ideas of womanhood to make laws for you and your daughters, ... to dictate not only the civil, but moral codes by which you shall be governed, awake to the danger of your present position."
Thus began a split in the movement for woman suffrage that would hobble the movement for 50 long years until American women finally won the right to vote in 1920. The whole sordid history is a painful chapter that causes American feminists discomfort even today. Some feminists have promoted Anthony and Stanton as historical heroines and role models, and in the 1970s Anthony became the first woman to appear on American money when the Susan B. Anthony dollar was minted. Other feminists have strongly objected, arguing that ignoring the racist legacy of these women only exacerbates the racial divisions that have plagued feminism in America.
The parallels with today are obvious. As the Clinton campaign began to feel the chances of Hillary Clinton becoming the first female president slip away, the campaign has resorted to increasingly racist appeals. One wonders if, decades from now, Hillary Clinton will be a hero in the feminist pantheon or, like Stanton and Anthony, a reminder of a painful episode that future feminists will prefer to forget.
For more on this history, see my recent book, People's Movements, People's Press: The Journalism of Social Justice Movements (Beacon Press, 2006).
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Does anybody recall seeing any of this info on the PBS special about these women?
I don't and I find that strange indeed.
Hillary is not a feminist in any sense of the word. Susan B. Anthony was attempting to help women.
Where was Hillary as a feminist when her husband was abusing and using women, hiding them under his desk and using his power and position to cause them to submit.
Where was Hillary then? When did she stand up for those women? What did she say? What did she say to support those women?
Hillary cried when she was told to cry. Hillary is fighting because she is being told to fight. Hillary is espousing racist diatribe because she is being told to say it.
Hillary? Hillary where are you?
Hillary was part of the legal team that interviewed Bill's mistresses before his first run for the WH.
She knew well what Bill was like long before Monica.
Hillary lost her bearings the minute she stuck with bill. She lost grips and he has embarrassed her through out this campaign and I guess he is laughing it off with his millionaire friends in on-board A plane where they take women do dehumanize them.
The good thing women will not blame anyone for all her campaign it will dawn after a will the real effects of her behavior. She didn't care that she is a real role model for women and girl. and what she has showed them go out fight as much as you can ....disrespect people who don't work for you....Women will really have to work hard to clean their Image...
Obama wanted offered her benefit of doubt and wanted to lead her to the high road, because he has daughters and knew even if he lost and a decent woman won it would be a better world for his daughters and wife...either way the democrats could have won and if she was decent she would be on the ticket and either way women and blacks and the party would have won.
now obama has to take a male running mate.to keep the party together but women have lost
..she would have been perfect.
She lost her bearings and Mccain is doing the same and he is starting to loose his bearing too...when you cant stand by your word you have lost them bearings
Hillary is a feminist the day George Bush signs a Windfall Profits law.
Thank you for this article. As a die-hard feminist from 'way back, I must admit I am humiliated by the Hillary Clinton Show, and impressed by Barack's cool in dealing with her.
Hey, y'all, the point is, which of these people is more likely to actually LISTEN TO THE VOTERS!!!!!
So far there seems to be no real contest there.
Thanks Ravoon. couldn't agree more with your last point there
I really have to agree with Ravoon. I love the way Barack has dealt with Hillary. He has been very patient and has offered her so much but she continues to refuse and wrecks nothing but havoc in everyone's life. Her supporters do not see it. Obama has constantly said wonderful things about her and I have my first time to hear her say anything good about Obama.
She does not have one original thought of her own. For the last 30 years, she puts her finger up in the air, sees which way the wind is blowing, and acts accordingly. She/they will say and do anything to win.
thank you Mr. Ostertag it was a very interesting article.
as a modern feminist i already would like to forget the pain Hillary Clinton has caused this country and I fail to see how any good can come of the way she conducted herself in this campaign.
Also thank you to so many of the people who commented here. Some great posts
Sorry, but I do think the arguments laid out by the clinton supporters were nothing more than excuses and denials for Hillary. Let us bnot forget that as far as I know she has NEVER tried to say she was sorry that the comments were misunderstood or she misspoke. No apology to the AA communities.
NO, not her apparently the lastest remarks were taken exactly as she wanted them too-racist
As much respect as I have for women across the world for what they go through in life, birthing children, raising children, and basically being the ROCK of most families, the one thing I cant stand is when people try and compare the Feminist Movement (which I respect) and the struggles of being an African American throughout American History.
Women I love you but you were not dragged into slavery, then after being "freed", we were treated like anything but a human being. Half the time it was by "White Women". So while I feel your pain, and have been nothing but an admirer of the strength of a woman, I am offended when you try to compare the two.
Black males had the right to vote before white women won it by working, campaigning, and more. Black males have always had an easier time than white women in the workplace, as males in general see women as baby factories, sex objects, and less. Both blacks and women have been enslaved to the misogyny of white males, and the idea of another male in the White House further demeans women as a group.
As a white male, I really have to object to this comment. White women have been historically racist, and black men have been historically misogynist. You can't just lay it all on the white man. In fact, it is that attitude that holds back progress. Every group is guilty of prejudice. There are far more prejudices than racism and misogyny, as well. Don't be so myopic to only acknowledge prejudices that have powerful groups to fight against them, and don't be so prejudiced yourself to only acknowledge the prejudices of one group of people. That's not how we'll progress as a nation.
If you will be kind enough to read this link, I think you'll understand how I've gone from once admiring
the Clintons to utterly despising them. I think it has little to do with feminism, but everything to do with
a naked and ugly lust for power.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/050308.html
read your excellent post. thank you.
thanks for the link
very good article
Hillary has run a decidedly masculine race... and lost, and Obama has run a somewhat feminine race... and won.
Obama's been all about concensus building; avoiding ugly confrontations and NOT taking every opportunity to take advantage of a rival.
Hillary has been the street fighter. never realizing that America is ready for the the kind of feminine leadership that would represent a total departure from the last eight years.
As for Faludi's celebration of Hillary's street brawler emergence, imagine the scorn that would have been heaped on a male candidate who complained about getting asked the first question at debates, or who made her fictitious Bosnia claims.
Interestingly, when Hillary "cried" in New Hampshire, many thought it would end her candidacy. Instead, it breathed new life into it. The lesson to be learned was that a woman wouldn't be punished for showing vulnerability and Hillary could benefit by it.
In proving that she was as tough as any guy in the game, she also came off as somebody with something to prove. Using her tactics against an intraparty rival is NOT part of the standard game-plan. History will show that her vote on Iraq was probably the deciding factor in this race. Her tough guy act just gave credence to the thought that the vote was an attempt to establish her macho bone fides and NOT a vote for what she believed best or this country.
I hope that history does show that it was the vote on Iraq which was the deciding factor. I can assure you that I and all my friends are the demographic which was supposed to support Clinton but did not when she refused to admit that the Iraq vote was a mistake. Most of us came to supporting Obama late in the game. He was not our first choice. We did not think he would have a chance to do as well as he has done and a Democratic win was paramount to all of us. He has won us over because of his message of change and his ability to mobilize support.
To us, Clinton's campaign is a shameful embarrassment which we will try to overcome by finding a newer, better woman to be the first female POTUS. Like BethDemo8 below, we think Clinton is a terrible role model.
I love history. I did not know the extent of the history in this matter. Thank you for educating me.
Your article reminds me of the old saying: those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.
When I read Faludi's article the other day I was astonished. Since when do we have to take on the attributes of men to make advances? If we can't move forward without going negative, then what have we gained? Appealing to race divisions and threatening to "obliterate" another nation is unacceptable. We should not have to sacrifice our dignity to play with the boys. I would never want my daughter to have Hillary Clinton as a role model. I was never a big fan, but at least I used to respect her.
Hillary said we should look at the primaries like an interview. Well, it was relatively close, but we decided on someone else. There was a better applicant.
btw, i really liked your post
i have thought for some time she was running as a stereotypical man!
Funny, it was a man from the 70's. kind of out of date with no real concern for the environment of social issues. Just like the do nothing 70's people even the music was bad.
Great Article !
Possibly Clinton lost may her way, when she denied her female gifts to pander to the prejudices of her male advisors, or maybe her true nature is as base as any shortsighted, power hungry, male.
I also agree that Clinton is not hanging around to benefit the working class, but is banking on her own jaded views of blue collar mentalities, which have been in the past manipulated by use of code words that stroked the old coals into fires of fear and hatred to their own detriment.
She will fail however,¦
Thank God that the blue collar workers are waking up to the parlor tricks and can now see that their future hope is tied with all peoples who struggle to make a living.
Opening their eyes, to the fact that color is an illusion used to fence and prod us all, then milk us for our money which represents our lives.
The Clinton democrates are.........Bill clinton has the blue collar voters not hillary.... he is the one they send to the small towns and they are very royal to bill clinton. Hillary has the women.... If you have a particular block you dont brag..and she know that the block is from bill and I guess bill is using her to continue the fight he has been trying to have with Obama but never got to have.
So mix the Bill Clinton blue collar and small town..democrats and with Hillary women and you get the Clinton democrates...........Without Bill she would be standing there with fewer block
IF Bill endorses Obama the block will move to him...
BILL CLINTON= BLUE COLOUR
HILLARY = WOMEN VOTES TOGETHER CLINTONS DEMOCRATES:
You see what Hillary said and what Bill said in WV today and you will see how similar they are, its like they are reading out the same playbook.
I hear that Hillary misspoke well her husband did'nt when he was in WV preaching the same thing, apparently the Clinton's have developed a stradegy being they are in the white state to discredit the black man.
Part 3
I always say "guess, and I'll let you know if you're wrong". It's always been a hell of a lot easier than saying "Jamaican and Scotch/Irish/Norwegian/Swedish. What I'd really like to say is simply, "I'm a man". I find it mildly amusing (and mildly annoying at the same time) that the answer seems to actually matter to people. Maybe thanks to being mixed, I hadn't always realized the significance, but to the questioner my answer will determine which set of stereotypes they will apply to me.
But that was before. Now when people "inquire" about by racial background, I simply say "I'm like Barack". The significance is not lost on me this time.
Am I the only one who thinks that it is about time that the U.S. stops defining people by race.
In most European countries these distinctions do not exist. You are British or German or Dutch. There is no paper which asks you if you are Caucasian ( which is ridiculous in itsself, very few white people have anything to do with the region of the Caucasus), Hispanic or Asian. It would be against the law to make this distinction.
Since Obama emerged as a candidate I keep asking the question why everybody says that he is black. For me he is certainly more white. His mother was white, he grew up mostly in surroundings which were not black at all and had very little contact with his black father.
I personally think that some of the most beautiful and interesting people I have met in my life were of mixed blood and often I was flabbergasted to learn that some of them considered themselves black. It never entered my mind.
That is a very distinguished lineage, except for the Swedish part. I happen to be Norwegian
and am just kidding, the truth of the matter is we tell the same jokes, but alternately change
the spelling of the last name between sen and son.
Part 2
It's the people who define themselves as one race (in my case, black or white people) that try to force people like me to basically "pick a side". These people never grasp how impossible or offensive this is, or how unnecessary, because of their lack of understanding of those different from themselves. Growing up in a society like this is tough, take my word for it.
I look more Hispanic than either Black or White, but obviously many white people have never accepted me as anything but black, and many black people view me with curiosity or apprehension, like they aren't sure if I'm on "their side". Some have said I'm "too light" (especially in the winter). One black female co-worker, after what seemed to be months of irritation at not being able to classify me, one day bluntly asked "What ARE you anyway?" Another black female co-worker pulled me to the side one day with a concerned look on her face and asked me if she could ask a personal question... I thought she had a crush on me! But then she said, half whispering, "Are you black?"
Part 1
This is an amazingly relevant piece, I admit I don't know much about the history of the Feminist movement but I know I'll never look at a Susan B Anthony dollar the same again.
As a person of mixed race (B/W like Barack), I have had the opportunity to see different angles of racial issues that a lot of times people of a single race cannot or will not see. Most mixed race people I have met are less likely to look to racial lines as a weapon or tool because of the built in insight into multiple points of view, usually gleaned from experiences with family members from different racial backgrounds, religions, etc, as well as parents with a more liberal and open minded mentality, because hey, interracial marriage, especially in the 60's and 70's (my parents) wasn't exactly smiled upon.
vvv part 2 vvv
hey WasteNJ, I really appreciate your comments. I hope you can find a way to get your perspective heard more widely.
I put up a teasing reference in your part 3, but would like to thank you for your serious and
thoughtful post, I too was very impressed with Ostertag's article.
This is an outrageous smear dressed up as an academic exercise. It depends upon a premise that you assume to be true: Clinton is a racist. Beyond that, you assume that anyone who supports Clinton is sympathetic to racists.
This sort of facile, slanderous piece is typical of the crap produced by the "creative class." As I learned years ago as an English major, not everyone who can write is rational, fair, or logical.
How can you not be embarrassed to publish such stuff? Don't you really know better?
Hillary Clinton misspoke. It was a painfully clumsy utterance, but her point was true: she does have more support among working class whites, and Obama has a problem with them. Those working class whites were key to the Democrats' taking back the Congress in 06. The country has not changed drastically in two short years, so I can't imagine how the party is going to take the White House without that cohort.
Obama misspeaks, too. Shall Hillary-supporters start pushing the notion that he's an idiot like Bush because he forgets what state he's in, what month it is, and how many states there are? Would that be fair?
God, what drivel this is.
Posted May 10, 2008 | 05:16 PM (EST)