Until the Hillary versus Barack contest, discussions about sexism and racism had been left out of politics for a number of years, but now they are back in full view. Obama gets 9 out of every 10 Black votes that are cast. Hillary rolls up huge margins from white women in particular, and white people in general. With Hillary out of the race, the discussion has become what can Barack do to bring home the Hillary women? Can he attract those women that feel she was a victim of sexism? How many white Democrats will be unable to vote for a black man?
The practical ramifications of these questions hit me the other day as I sat on the front porch of my favorite country store in the Blue Ridge listening to two friends discuss how to keep various insects, grubs, and other noxious pests from destroying newly planted tomatoes and other vegetables. Another friend walked out of the store carrying the Hillary Clinton nutcracker. It turns out that someone had left it for her as a gift of sorts, and she was wondering what we thought she should get her friend to pay him in back in kind.
While she was examining it, folks started gathering around her to get a good look at her new utensil. I had only read about this device, never seen one, but I started to explain to the group with the help of another store regular that this nut cracker was probably one of the most visible symbols of the sexism that Hillary's ardent supporters decry.
At this point the receipt for the nut cracker fell out of the box, and when I looked at it I was astounded to see that the Hillary nutcracker was retailing for $28. That's a lot of money to pay for a nutcracker that you could easily buy for a few bucks in any grocery store.
Given the notoriety of this particular nutcracker, I began to wonder about the deeper symbolism of the Hillary nutcracker. Who was buying it, why, and what did it tell us about sexism in this country?
As I thought about this subject, I remembered a friend from college who collected miniature figurines of black people in various stereotypical poses: the faithful servant tipping his hat, the old mammy in the kerchief, and the young boy eating watermelon.
Like the nutcracker's implication of the cold hearted woman who is literally a threat to manhood, these figurines blatantly connoted the second class citizenship of black people. Is one any less offensive, any more hateful, and more important, what do symbols tell us about ourselves and about this country?
The more you think about the nutcracker and the figurines as physical representations of racism and sexism, the more you realize that sexism often manifests itself in jokes and innuendo. The old joke "How's your wife?" answer, "Better than nothing," is both demeaning and revealing. Humor became accepted as a way to express sexism, and it is still very much alive.
But racism, while it had a humorous side, more often than not had consequences that were frequently far more severe. Rapes, lynchings, second class schools, dead end jobs, denial of the right to vote, and legal segregation were the products of this mindless human depravity.
Yes, sexism has meant that women were treated like second class citizens in the work place, needed a constitutional amendment to gain the right to vote, and every generation of women has endured leering, wolf-whistling men. However, as we witness young women dying for their country in Iraq, see more women than men go to medical and law school, and watch Hillary Clinton put on as tough a performance as one could imagine in the political arena, you realize that while sexism isn't dead, its days are numbers.
Racism like sexism is much more prevalent among the older and the less educated. While we may never change their minds, the clock is catching up with the elderly racists and sexists. Plus the sexists and racists that are still working may well have a black or a female boss which reminds me of a story.
About 40 years ago I was a VISTA volunteer living and working in a poor white neighborhood of Atlanta. One night I came across a young white kid lying in the streets. I got out of my car and walked over to him. "What happened?" I asked. "N_ _ _ _ _ s shot me in the leg," he said. I drove him to Grady Hospital, which in and of itself scared him to death, as he probably had never left the poor white enclave we lived in. I got him signed in and made sure he would see a doctor. As I was leaving, I told the kid there was good news and bad news. The good news was he was next up for the ER doctor, the bad news was the doctor was black. I doubt he changed his mind about black people, but I feel very certain the clock caught up with him a long time ago. He smoked.
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