Letters to the Editor
Rocky57
Published Letters: 213 Editor's Choice: 4
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Black men seen as more electable/leader-like than White Women?
[Read the article: Thank you, Rush Limbaugh!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Joan, I agree with you re the sliming of Hillary with slurs of sexist import but this whole "blacks are seen more readily as [political] leaders than white women" is nonsense.
Taking away Reconstruction, an anomaly that soon blew up in the faces of African-americans, women, since the granting of suffrage, have been more apt to be elected, than blacks--at all levels but the Presidency [and, there, presently, it's a tie]. And, from Georgia's infamous Rebeccah Felton on down to Maine's Margaret Chase Smith women were participating, in greater numbers, in electoral office, on a national level than African-americans.
Chase-smith was firmly ensconced in the Senate when Massachusett's Ed Brooke became the first sitting Black senator since Reconstruction and you didn't get another until Carol Moseley Braun, a black woman, made it in Illinois nearly a generation later. Since and prior to Braun, the nation is rife with white woman governors and senators; against that, what do you presently have in black electoral poitics? One black senator (not counting the deposed, one term Braun) and two black governors, one appointed under the most extraordinary of circumstances (Duval Patrick and NY's David Patterson preceded, historically, by Doug Wilder).
There's a reason for that: despite black men having gotten the right to vote during Reconstruction they couldn't sustain or build upon it because (1) of the history of oppressive countermeasures by southern whites and, prior to the beginning of Civil hostilities, many slaveowners everywhere [but mainly in the South] to discourage, often harshly, black education while white women, marginalised though they might have been, received the benefits of education. (2) The defacto and dejure enforced marginalisation black men endured precisely during the time women were working toward and finally receiving the vote and (3) The level of intimidating official and non-official violence that it took to enforce those post-bellum measures.
When you're sleeping with the enemy on a regular basis, and overwhelmingly by choice, you're going to receive some benefit from that relationship (and none of the drawbacks) that your less fortunate sisters and brothers of colour cannot avail themselves of. That eventually pays off--and at a faster rate--regardless of a history of patriarchically enforced marginalisation or not.
And, once more, yes there has been sexist coverage of Hillary but that is not why she is losing. She's losing not just because she's been out-campaigned by Obama but that she's run a lousy campaign. And, whether its because she's placed herself in the hands of men not worthy of carrying her campaign banner or for some other reason, she certainly hasn't projected her candidacy in the best possible light. Marry those two factors with that of having voted to give Bush authorisation to invade Iraq and you have the Perfect Storm as an explanation for Hillary's current electoral predicament.
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The Real Issue, If There IS one
[Read the article: My last word (for now) on sexism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Joan, most fair-minded, sane people get it: sexism exists and, like any pernicious ism, it's bad but, within the context of this primary election, the raising of it as a significant issue is a red herring.
The question I put to you is this: show me an instance where Obama's campaign has traded in that sexism, other than, arguably, the Samantha Power dust-up where the latter called Hillary "a monster?" Note: Obama and Axelrod moved pretty fast to quash that matter.
Now take a look at Bill Shaheen's, Bob Johnson's and Charley Rangel's remarks about dealin' good in the neighborhood, Mark Penn's Hardball cameo moment and Bill Clinton's all but out-of-the-blue Jesse Jackson comparison. Marry that up with the almost sub rosa "he can't win" whispery mots to delegates and top it all off with Geraldine Ferraro's well-timed comment on Obama's blackness being heretofore unappreciated manna from heaven, politically, and then look your Salon readers straight in the eye and tell them aspects of Hillary's campaign have not perniciously traded on a particular ism having nothing to do with gender.
That's the real heart of the matter in this primary season, not the malodorous swamp gas emanating from the media. If an "ism" is a factor in this race, it certainly isn't sexism and that certainly isn't the reason why Hillary is still in the race and leading in Pennsylvania after having been smoked in, at one point, 11 straight and 28 of 42 electoral contests, overall, leading up to April 22nd, while suffering innumerable self-imposed gaffes that would have had Obama's campaign floating bellyup like a gold fish in the Allegheny had Obama--or any other candidate, for that matter--committed them.