Nicholas Kristof's article on sexists vs. racists in Sunday's New York Times illuminates the guilt many women feel for not supporting Hillary Clinton. One friend recently stated that she did not see how any woman could not be for Clinton. Does that mean if I were a British subject, I would have had to vote for Margaret Thatcher, or if Elizabeth Dole had won the nomination, I would have had to become a Republican?
The pressure to vote for gender rather than policy and personal substance reminds me once again of the Scottsboro case which turned sexual politics on its head for half the twentieth century. In Scottsboro, two white sometime prostitutes accused nine young black men of a rape that never occurred. The unsubstantiated charge of rape by white women against black youths and the subsequent and speedy death sentences meted out were not exactly unusual in Depression-era Alabama. What was news was the support the two women found in the South and the ire they aroused in the North.
The International Labor Defense, which was the legal arm of the Communist Party, immediately swung into action to defend the boys. One of their chief tactics was defaming the girls.
"Who ever heard of raping a prostitute?" the poet Langston Hughes, who knew something about prejudice first hand, asked.
"Those boys are going to burn for what they could have had for two bits," good northern liberals joked. The same men who under other circumstances would have defended the girls as victims of social and economic injustice and probably tried to unionize them in the bargain did their best to vilify them.
Meanwhile, southerners, who normally would have dismissed the girls as loose women, vagrants, or worse, championed them as examples of southern white womanhood. They may be women of easy virtue, the men said, but they're white women of easy virtue. More respectable southern women took up collections for them and bought them clothes.
North and South (then the equivalent of red states and blue states) took more predictable, but not necessarily more rational approaches to the nine young men accused. In June, 1931, the New York Times ran an article stating that while many in the North believed the South wanted to send the youths to the electric chair simply because they were black, many in the South believed those in the North wanted to save them for precisely the same reason, regardless of guilt or innocence.
It is naive, of course, to think that even the best-intentioned of us, black or white, male or female, can look at Clinton or Obama and see not a white woman or a black man but a candidate. As the psychological tests Kristof cited show, we all have our unstated, our unconscious prejudices. But what we can try to avoid is our tendency to try to turn candidates, or individuals, into emblems of political expediency.
HRC is not where she is because she married Clinton. From my observation, she's an extremely intelligent woman and has always been very ambitious. Oops! Sorry. I know she's not supposed to be ambitious. It's an evil trait in a woman.
I have concerns about both Clinton's and Obama's candidacy. They're both funded by corporate interests. Yes, don't faint! Obama too. I also have problems with Clinton's vote on the flag burning amendment. She shouldn't have supported it. I have even more of a problem with Obama's vote on CAFA (Class Action Fairness Act). The Republicans and Bush pushed for this act for years. It moves class action suits from state courts (they're more favorable to plaintiffs). Obama, one of a handful of Democrats, helped pass this amendment.
So, take a breath, all of you anti-Clinton, so-called Feminists. It's okay to hate a woman who stayed with a philandering husband, who is very intelligent and capable. Don't support her. Wait! The perfect woman might just show up one of these years. Maybe even in your life times. Just don't hold your breath too long.
Feminists for Obama!
I'm not sure how his ideas "illuminate the guilt many women feel for not supporting Hillary Clinton". I do not recall him writing anything about guilt.
Nonetheless, I understand your point of view for I did feel a few pangs of guilt myself about not supporting her.
I can certainly see that Clinton has been vilified simply because she is a strong and outspoken woman. I, also, understand your point that Clinton may garner some support simply because she is a white woman vs. being a black man.
However, it would seem that thus far, Obama is doing quite well, infact better than Clinton. Perhaps this is an example of Kristof's point that it may be "easier to override racism, than it is sexism".
Personally, I feel very blessed as a Democrat to have two such wonderfully qualified candidates to choose from. I think Obama is the better choice due to having an uncommon intellectual brilliance. However, if Clinton won the primaries I would vote for her, for I do think she would be competent in the position.
Zip.
Not one.
I've seen obvious signs that Obama is getting votes due to his skin color.
Tons.
No, they assume that the presence of a uterus trumps all until I tell them otherwise.
So, I find it difficult to believe that you've never been exposed to a "single sign" that anyone might be voting for Hillary due to her gender.
I'm voting for Obama, if HRC doesn't manage to overturn the will of the voters, and not because of his skin color.
When my first choice, Edwards dropped out, my second choice was Obama. Despite my slight differences with him on a couple of issues, I see him as an astoundingly honest politician. I'm not saying he's never lied or pandered but, if political character were measured on a bell curve, Obama would be at the extreme end, with the integrity we don't imagine we can get in a politician. And Clinton would be over on the other extreme, where careerist, unprincipled politicians will do anything, no matter what the cost to others, to secure their power.
If you haven't seen any of this, you haven't allowed yourself to look.
I think the bottom line is between the Obama and Hillary supporters is that this a family dispute and we'll support each other in the end.
Wether we care to admit it or not, the Conservative wing needs the Liberal wing to fly, and better our candidate then the other guy....
That's very wise. Unfortunately, only the part of the bird between the wings knows it's true.