Race and Gender in Presidential Politics

Sen. Obama routed Hillary Clinton yesterday in the Potomac Primaries winning in Maryland, Virginia and The District of Columbia. Clintonites continue to moan that the press is using kid gloves with Obama, instead of the steel toed shoes that they supposedly are using on Hillary. Some feminists are now reviving stale diatribes about sexism being more pernicious than racism. Unlike the past, when Black women---too busy doing other things basically ignored these uninformed statements, a battle is brewing between 2nd Wave feminists and 3rd Wave Black feminists who understand the complex ways that race and gender intersect and impact Black women's lives.

Last month feminist icon Gloria Steinem wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times titled, Women are Never Front-Runners that suggests that Sen. Barack Obama is getting a pass because he's Black, while Sen. Hillary Clinton is getting slammed because she's a woman. The reason why so many Black woman shy away from the feminist label is because there is still a reluctance among many White feminists to acknowledge that gender discrimination is no more or no less oppressive than racism. Oppression is oppression. If Clinton is losing, it's not because she's a woman---it's because she's a woman who lugging about major luggage---White Water, her Tammy Wynette impression when Monica Lewinsky surfaced and her failed health care initiative. She's a woman who should tell her husband to chill and get a hobby---but she needs him to lean on. Unlike other talented women who have created their own professional identities separate from their husbands, Clinton's 35 years of experience is little more than her appropriating time that she was the "first lady" of Arkansas and the United States. So like so many White women before her, her power came from being the wife of a power White man. That not changes, it's more of the same.


On a recent edition of Democracy Now, Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell goes toe to toe with Steinem. Harris-Lacewell in a bang up performance takes Steinmen to task for promoting the same ol' "sexism is worst than racism" dichotomy and tells it like it is about Clinton's run for the Presidency.

To hear or see the exchange on the program Race and Gender in Presidential Politics

Hillary's Scarlett O'Hara Act: Why some of us aren't falling for it.
By Melissa Harris-Lacewell

TheRoot.com

Feb. 8, 2008--There's been a lot of talk about women and their choices since Super Tuesday, when African American women overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Barack Obama, while white women picked Sen. Hillary Clinton. Some pundits automatically concluded that "race trumped gender" among black women. I hate this analysis because it relegates black women to junior-partner status in political struggles. It is not that simple. A lot of people have tried to gently explain the divide, so I'm just going to put this out there: Sister voters have a beef with white women like Clinton that is both racial and gendered. It is not about choosing race; it is about rejecting Hillary's Scarlett O'Hara act.

Black women voters are rejecting Hillary Clinton because her ascendance is not a liberating symbol. Her tears are not moving. Her voice does not resonate. Throughout history, privileged white women, attached at the hip to their husband's power and influence, have been complicit in black women's oppression. Many African American women are simply refusing to play Mammy to Hillary.

Read the rest of the article at Hillary's Scarlett O' Hara Act

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is is associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University.