Another 55-Year-Old White Woman for Obama
Second chances are rare and wonderful moments. Baby Boomer white women now have one: we can cast a vote backwards in time, declaring that gender wins the 'who's-more-oppressed' game, or we can recognize that we missed an opportunity to fundamentally change institutions 30 years ago and our experience has made us wiser.
After each loss, Hillary Clinton or her supporters raise the specter of sexism in a divisive way; this stands in sharp contrast to Barack Obama's unifying discussion of race. Declaring gender as the "highest glass ceiling" has neither facts nor a hunger for uniting the country on her side.
In 1976, when I co-founded the first organization in the United States to offer comprehensive services, training, and consultation on the topic of sexual harassment, unwelcome sexual advances were disproportionately directed towards women of color; however, white women's complaints were consistently taken more seriously. Stereotypes and privilege were at work then, and they continue to play a critical role in our society today -- especially in the workplace.
In 2007, the Level Playing Field Institute conducted a rigorous study of 19,000 professionals and managers to determine who leaves corporate America and why. When the data were broken down, race, not gender, became the defining demographic. People of color are more than three times as likely to leave solely due to unfairness (9.5%) than Caucasian heterosexual men (3.0%). In comparison, Caucasian women are only one-and-a-half times more likely to leave (4.6%). The cumulative effect of stereotyping, mistaken identity, being asked to attend extra recruiting events and community functions to be the "minority face" of one's company is further indication that race plays a crucial role in one's experience.
When study participants were asked what could have kept them at their former employer, again, responses were divided along racial lines. For people of color, the single most important step employers could have taken was "a better manager who recognized my abilities." For Caucasian heterosexual men and women, the single most important step employers could have taken was related to the issue of "fair pay."
While there is a dearth of white women professionals and executives, the progress of people of color in any number of sectors--banking, law, consulting--has been pitifully slower. Solutions to the problem do not lie in irresponsibly fanning the flames of the "gender vs. race" argument, as Hillary Clinton seems to be doing. .
On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., where I spoke to a group of lawyers and social advocates, including three of the five Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) commissioners, I learned that white women voters in California and Michigan voted in favor of Propositions 209 and Proposal 2, both of which effectively ended affirmative action. Why would women, who had been assured equal opportunity under affirmative action, vote for such a measure? According to those who conducted interviews with them, because they believed that a vote for themselves and people of color was a vote against their white husbands and their white children.
We need to change this double standard where some are willing to see gender bias but unwilling to look in the mirror at one's own biases or to take action on any form of bias whether one is directly hurt by it. Instead of taking a stand, privileged white women have often opted out.
At a recent party celebrating the publication of my new book, I was asked by a privileged white woman why women don't support each other. This obvious reference to white women not lining up uniformly behind Hillary came from a woman with two Ivy League degrees who dropped out of the workforce to be home with her children. Another woman at the same gathering reflected that only one of the 100+ women from her MBA class was still working. As many studies find, the single greatest predictor of whether a woman lawyer or MBA stays in the workforce after having children is her husband's income. Why haven't these privileged women stayed to help make the workplace more welcoming for all of us?
To me, Hillary Clinton represents the status quo: privilege protecting privilege at the expense of less affluent or "connected" populations of our society -- especially with regard to creating a level playing field in American workplaces. I am supporting Barack Obama because he challenges us to build empathy, to care about others as much as ourselves, and to ask hard questions--such as who really has the unfair advantage?
Freada Kapor Klein, Ph.D. is the founder of the Level Playing Field Institute (www.l;pfi.org
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When you get right down to it, I go by instinct about a candidate. That's why I've disliked Hillary Clinton for so long, why I couldn't tolerate Howard Dean after seeing him in one interview, and why I don't like Barack Obama. Instinctively, I knew that Al Gore was a good guy, and that John Kerry was okay. If I feel forced to vote for a presidential candidate at all (I disliked Bill Clinton as well, so I never voted for him--I voted for Nader once and left it blank the next time), I'll vote for Obama. But I don't like him, and that has nothing to do with race, but more to do with his stand on the environment and him being someone I don't like or trust. As soon as the Democratic race was narrowed to Hillary and Barack, I stopped caring.
THANK YOU! That was fantastic and much-needed!
ive been blind sided by this insightful post.
Amen! You nailed it. We are ready for a change. C'mon Obama - I know you can do it. I don't care about any of the slurs: he's muslim, Reverend Wright, his wife's dissertation....blah blah blah. I am "white" and a Baby Boomer and I say - let's go for it. Clintons -- you had your time "in the sun", MOVE OVER!
By the way, there are some great posts on gender, politics and baby boomers at
Vaboomer.comVaboomer.com
~ Nancy Mehegan
What a powerful post, Ms. Klein.
As someone in this field for over 30 years, you should know the problems African Americans face in the workplace and in society.
They basically fall in this category.
There is a pathology by Whites in the workplace and in society of the inferiority of Blacks and the superiority of Whites.
It plays out in the assumptions. Such as, a Black person is presumed to be incompetent and a White person is presumed to be competent.
The Black person has to work twice as hard as the White person to achieve have as much, once to prove his competency and the other his worth, while the White person is presumed to be competent and worthy. So, when a worker makes a mistake, as we all do because we are human and thus imperfect, the Black person's mistake is a re-enforcement of his incompetence and a White person's mistake is an exception to his otherwise presumed competence.
Thank you, Ms. Klein, for this thoughful and informed piece. I am a woman of color and it is refreshing to hear my views and experiences chronicled and understood by one who is not.
The reason Obama will Win, And Win big. Is because for the first time in a very long time we will have a President who was raised the hard way. He was not born into, or married into money or power, but grew up like most Americans, Struggling from paycheck to paycheck. Obama was raised by a single white mother who at times was on Food Stamps. As the son of a poor single mother, I know first hand how hard this can be. Having a leader in the White House who knows what it’s like to be a poor American is a dream I've been waiting for all my life.
Finally, A President for the People who is actually from the People...
Bill Clinton grew up poor too. So you had your dream already and I guess you didn't know it.
Great article! You hit the nail right on the head.
Well said! I could not agree more with your sentiment.
Thank you so much, for your work and this post.
Count me as another 50-something female Obama supporter right from the start. I had no particular problem with Clinton, but Obama impressed me from the start as being smarter than your average pol, having a fresh message, and with the complete honesty with which he introduced himself to us in his two books. At the start of this nominating race, I could have just as easily supported one or the other as the eventual nominee. But once the actual voting and caucusing began, Senator Clinton and her entire campaign lost my respect bit by bit. Most outrageous to me beyond all the racial coding that they used was their own sexism. I found her out of touch with women not in her age or economic group and, in trying mightily to out-macho the men, insulting. And the situational ethics and massive spin on the reality of the nominating metrics has placed insult on top of insult. I don't want a woman who thinks she has to act like a man, or one who blames her failures on the sexism of others, or one who feels she is entitled to my vote simply on the basis of my gender, or one who does not respect my intelligence enough to think I understand what the metrics are in the Democratic Party rules for determining the nominee to be the next president. And that's why Clinton cannot ever get my vote or support again.
Very well said! Unless Clinton who selfserving and egoistic.
"he challenges us to build empathy, to care about others as much as ourselves, and to ask hard questions--such as who really has the unfair advantage?"
Second that.
Thanks for your wonderful post.
What I have found so interesting in this election is that there are those that think that they'll never see another African-American presidential candidate with a chance to win the presidency or another woman of any race with a chance to win. Both are false. This primary season has shown us in the Democratic Party there there are a number of qualified people of all races. We have had white men, a white woman, and a Hispanic candidate. All qualified. All would make a good POTUS. This has been one of the strongest Democratic fields in years! I believe that's why it's been so close.
Ok, Sexism, Racism and the subject of this article. Has there been racism and sexism during this primary. Yes. No question about either and neither is ok. This should spark discussion on all levels about where we as a nation need to go. That being said, we have a job to do in November and that is to get Barack Obama elected POTUS. To the supporters of Sen. Clinton, my prayer is that we will all vote for the policies that we hold so dear and not the personalities of the individuals. My hope is that we will put aside the primary season back and forth and focus on the general election.
Thank you, Ms. Klein, for the work you have done to make the businessworld safer for the rest of us, AND for speaking out now. Add me, a 45-year-old white female Texan, to the list of women who consider ourselves feminists and yet do not support Hillary Clinton for president.
While it's important to get a woman into the White House, it needs to be the right woman.
As for the "who's more oppressed" game (as you put it), here's my take: we've got 16 female senators and one black senator. We've for a female Speaker of the House, 2nd in line for the presidency. We've got a long way to go--but it does all women great disservice to ignore the incredible progress we've made and try to focus on this one elective position (president) as the end-all be-all of woman's independence. I support Obama because I like his personality, his positions, his calm consistency, not because he's male or black. I appreciate knowing that other women--especially such remarkable women as you--feel similarly.
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