The race vs. gender war

The Democratic race is starting to resemble a compulsory oppressed minorities course taught by political consultants. Let's stop squabbling and elect the best nominee.

By Gary Kamiya

Read more: Bill Clinton, Racial Issues, Hillary Rodham Clinton, African-Americans, Feminism, Gloria Steinem, Sexism, Gary Kamiya, Opinion, John Edwards, Barack Obama

Jan. 15, 2008 | Politics tends to cause even the most lofty principles to sink to their lowest level, and recently the historic contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- the first woman and black man to be serious contenders for the presidency -- is starting to resemble a compulsory oppressed minorities course taught by political consultants.

Until a week or so ago, neither Obama nor Clinton played up identity politics. But predictably, as soon as one candidate was threatened with defeat, the gender and race cards began to fly.After Obama won Iowa, the woman-victim vs. black-victim game was on.

It's a surreal and depressing spectacle. The opponents in the race find themselves hunkered down inside two clanking tanks, one marked "Black" and one marked "Woman." Since both the candidates and their supporters hold progressive views on these matters and know that a misstep would be fatal, the two tanks must fight each other according to Marquis of Queensbury rules, while still trying to blow each other up. Obama supporters accuse Clinton of racial insensitivity for saying that Martin Luther King Jr. needed LBJ to implement his policies, and blast Clinton mouthpieces for using the expression "shuck and jive." Women react to Obama and John Edwards ganging up on Clinton in a debate, or a few media loudmouths writing her off, as if an army of heavily armed male chauvinist pigs had stormed Wellesley. The fight resembles a dispute in a Subaltern Studies Department, one of those academic disputes of whom some wag once remarked that they were so vicious because the stakes were so small.

Except, of course, that here the stakes are huge. If things go on this way, the nomination could be determined by whether there are more white men drawn to Obama's racial get-out-of-jail-free card than women who will support Clinton because they share her gender. Which would be a shame. With our country disunited after seven years of Bush, facing a recession, and mired in a disastrous war, we need the Democratic Party to unite to elect the best candidate, not just the the Great Female Hope or the Great Black Hope.

The feminist icon Gloria Steinem fired an early salvo in the war, with a widely discussed Op-Ed in the New York Times. It's worth looking in some depth at Steinem's argument, because it epitomizes the mainstream feminist defense of Clinton. Asserting that what she called America's "sexual caste system" remains in place, Steinem argued that "[g]ender is probably the most restricting force in American life." To support that claim, she noted that black men were given the right to vote a half-century before women were, and asserted that black men "generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women." Moreover, she claimed that no woman with Obama's résumé could run for president.

Decrying the fact that "[Obama] is seen as unifying by his race while [Clinton] is seen as divisive by her sex," Steinem cited a number of examples of alleged sexism in the responses to Obama's and Clinton's candidacies. She said that Clinton was "accused of 'playing the gender card' when citing the old boys' club, while [Obama] is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations," and that "male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn't."

In effect, Steinem was arguing that sexism trumps racism as a national concern and backing that up by claiming that women in America have fewer options than black men. But this claim is flawed, as a simple thought experiment shows. Would you rather be born in the U.S. today as a white woman (to choose the most privileged subset of Steinem's "restricted" caste) or as a black man? Few would choose to be black. More white women are not in prison than in college, thousands of young white women are not shot down on inner-city streets every year, few if any white women have ever been arrested for driving while female, and so on. Steinem's historical arguments are unconvincing because they aren't up to date: She ignores the exponential advances made by white women and the failure of black men to keep pace. Leaving aside her omission of Jim Crow laws, and no matter how many black men may have made it into boardrooms before women (and there weren't too many), it was never better to be a black man than a white woman at any time in U.S. history.

If we compare only middle-class black men to middle-class white women, Steinem's thesis gets a little stronger -- but not much. There is no way to quantify these things, of course, but I would argue that middle-class black men still suffer from the legacy of slavery and racial bigotry far more than middle-class white women suffer from sexism. Only if we compare wealthy black men to poor white women does Steinem's argument ring true.

Some critics of Steinem's piece have argued that racism and sexism can't be compared because they're apples and oranges, and that she's inciting conflict between two victimized groups and two worthy candidates. But that's evasive. Steinem had every right to make the comparison -- she was just wrong.

This doesn't mean that Democrats should vote for Obama instead of Clinton, however. The presidential race should not be decided solely on the basis of competing victimhoods. But neither does it mean that the issues shouldn't be raised. Voters choosing between the two should look closely at the race-gender issue, examine how the candidates are dealing with it, and decide whether in their view it would be better for the country if Obama or Clinton became president. But their race or gender should only be one factor in their decision: A figurehead, albeit a powerful one, will not necessarily advance women's rights or race relations.

Next page: Obama is treated with reverence, while Clinton is fodder for gossip and schadenfreude