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Race and Gender at Odds Again

As Steinem Wades into Clinton and Obama Fray

By Carol Amoruso, Hispanic American Village Editor

U.S. politics have taken another lamentable but predictable turn, moving the debate over the Democratic presidential nomination away from issues and into the divisions of race/gender. The latest acrimony places feminist figurehead Gloria Steinem against the black community as a whole, but more precisely, black women.  Mordantly, Ms. Steinem’s remarks in a New York Times op-ed article have reopened wounds between white middle and upper class women and women of color who have the added task of viewing our society not only through the prism of gender, but of race as well.  It is a disconnect that has never been breached, but has resurfaced as wide, it would seem, as ever.

It was a colossal lapse in judgment and reasoning for Steinem to hypothesize in “Why Women Are Never Front-Runners”, that, had Barack Obama been born a mixed race female instead of a mixed race male, he’d never have been elected, not even to the Senate, because “the sex barrier [is] not taken as seriously as the race one.”  Steinem is a venerated icon of the feminist movement propelled over forty years ago, led by women with moms who stayed at home out of privilege and culture; they stepped out of comfort and into university halls and professional careers, fighting for wage parity, against glass ceilings and, “Jeez, John! When I come home from the office, cook dinner, and put the kids to bed, can’t you at least take out the trash?”  But they left behind as well women of color, most of whom would not go on to college, for whom breaking through the glass ceiling would have meant moving up to the first floor of opportunity and no higher, and who, more often than not, had no man in the house with whom to argue parity.  Those sick-and-tired women of color clamored to put their issues of child care, education, poverty, unsupportive households, racism and sexism on the agenda, but their cause was never really incorporated into nor legitimized by the mainstream white feminists.

Steinem reveals, innocently, almost pathetically, that her experience of Woman remains cloistered and that she’s never gone into the deeper and muddied trenches to plumb the understanding of what it’s like to be a woman who’s also either poor or of color, or both.  It greatly diminishes her portfolio as a seasoned Woman sage. 

Steinem’s hypothetical Achola Obama (btw: I’ve never heard of ‘Achola’ used as a first name; the ring of authenticity might have strengthened her argument), a female born under the same circumstances as Barack, and relegated to the bottom rung on that great ladder that marks success in America, indicates that Ph.D. or no, Smith College or no, Ms. Steinem has never taken a course in logic.  There’s no reason to try to prove a premise with two negative attributes--i.e. race AND gender—by arguing against it with but one negative--in our case (Obama’s) race.  Of course a black woman will have less chance for achievement than a black male!

The other foot finds the mouth when she equates the support of Iowan women over 60 for Senator Clinton in the recent caucuses as proof “once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.”  If only that were so I’d have so much less contention with my women friends!! 

Steinem is “worried” that Barack is seen as “unifying by his race” with Clinton “divisive by her gender.”  Here, she ignores the front-page punditry and polling that put in doubt Obama’s popularity with African Americans, many of whom, because of his breeding and pussyfooting around the race issue, are refusing or hesitant to own him.

Steinem was taken to task formidably this week on Democracy Now! by guest, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Assistant Professor of Politics and African American Affairs at Princeton University.  Harris-Lacewell, self-identified as an African American feminist who strongly supports Obama’s presidential bid, was prompt to indict black males’ neglect in supporting black women, but ardent in maintaining that second wave feminists (those of Steinem’s generation) are playing a divisive role in women’s advancement as they go all-out for their “boys’ club” candidate, Senator Clinton, marginalizing poor and African American women once again while presuming to appropriate their cause.

Harris-Lacewell dismisses Steinem’s arguments that a woman president would palliate issues of inequality in American society with the obvious: “…issues of gender are more complicated than simply putting white women in positions of power.”  Has Condoleeza Rice done anything to forward women’s issues?  Janet Reno? (I may add that neither does putting a black woman in power guarantee that women would be dealt a fairer hand.)

She attacked Steinem for proffering the “race-gender dichotomy” as the “worst sort of second wave feminism.”  And, trenchantly, challenged her support of Clinton as standard-bearer of the women’s struggle, observing, “You cannot have it both ways. You cannot both claim this sort of role as independent woman making a stand on questions of feminism and claim that your experience begins as First Lady of Arkansas. You know, you simply have to stand on your own or not,” while debunking the vaunted image of first lady as merely “an attachment to white patriarchal power, not their own.” 

Steinem still tried to prove the premise of women’s greater victimization (it just seems so childish and undermining to compete over who’s victimized more) by noting that black men had been given the right to vote before all women. But Harris-Lacewell retorted, quick as a camera flash, reminding us that those same early-endowed men were lynched when they tried to exercise that right.

Scratch the surface beneath both candidates and you’ll find that, ultimately, neither’s career in government has advanced the needs of their supposed constituencies, and that what we have before us, once again, is form and feel good over substance and activism.   It doesn’t bode well for “change” in 2008.

Other Readings of Interest

• Thoughts on Women's History Month and the Candidacy of Hillary Clinton
  By Carol Amoruso, HAV Editor