Channeling Wright on women
One of the most noteworthy aspects of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Theory of Everything is that women are not and have never been discriminated against. According to him, Hillary “fits the mold” of U.S. Presidents — news to women everywhere, I’m sure, since an unbroken string of 43 white men sure doesn’t seem like an equal opportunity situation.
I suppose most people have excused Wright’s nonsense about women as just part of his personal delusion syndrome, and certainly not anything his most celebrated mentee, Barack Obama, actually agrees with.
But now here’s Obama referring to Hillary in the same terms:
“In some ways this, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than than some of the other conventional candidates.”
In the interview he repeatedly refers to Hillary as a “conventional” candidate.
Is this some sort of parallel universe thing here? Am I just hallucinating the fact that a woman has never been President of the United States and has never even had a remote shot at it? Does Spock have a goatee?
10 Responses to “Channeling Wright on women”
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Tabby Lavalamp says:
I’d like to say “unbelievable”, but it’s not. Actually, I’d like to think Obama is smart enough to know that Clinton is by no means a “conventional candidate” and is just saying that as clever marketing. Repeat it over and over, and people will begin to believe it.
March 20th, 2008 at 7:09 pm EST -
Crowlie says:
Have you seen this? http://www.citizensunitednottimid.org/
Does Obama have such hideous veiled threats made against him?
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Chiroptera says:
We overlook discrimination against women, don’t we? I love it when people talk about when African American people got the vote in the U.S. I point out that African American women didn’t get to vote until 1920. But, I guess that’s where I should have paid closer attention. They said people–not women.
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octogalore says:
I’ve been playing around with a controversial idea that I’m too wimpy to blog about, along these lines. That basically, many (not all) racists are coming from a kind of “Bell Curve” place and are willing to accept as “acceptably white” any black people who show they’re at a certain place intellectually and professionally. (Of course, just as many black as white people are at that place, or would be if life were fair, the racists just don’t get that). So someone like Obama has passed that bar with room to spare and transcends these racists’ hangups.
Whereas with women, I wonder if the bar is higher on average. Of course, some hardcore racists are going to have issues with any POC, no matter what their resume. But query as to whether most (if not all) misogynists are going to have a problem with a woman, period end of story.
This may be totally wrong. But I’m wondering whether it has anything to do with some of what Steinem and Morgan got guillotined for.
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Susan Mayhew says:
Thanks Crowley - here are Robin Morgan’s comments on the same theme.
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/020108.html
For one who has been raped, these mindless attacks are personal and very frightening.
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Susan Mayhew says:
octogalore - you make a good point and apparently the mainstream media is clued in to the fact that sexism is fine and racism is not.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITI.....index.htmlThe irony of Obama’s acting the race-healer role is that except in certain parts of the country, people just aren’t that racist.
He’s got a trick - he says to whites - “I know you’re not racist” to whites who haven’t really been thinking racially and they respond with gratitude.
It’s marketing at it’s finest make the consumer want what he never needed! Brillant!
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therealUK says:
I think it is a true phenomenon that men (of any colour, nationality, whatever - even sexual orientation) will, if certain criteria are met, accept MEN of a diferent colour (etc etc) into their tribe/boy’s club.
Women (of any colour and so on) are only acceptable in so far as they support men’s causes or provide suitable entertainment/sexual services for the men (of any colour etc).
It’s not just that the bar is higher for any female behaviour - which it is, massively so - it is also that “woman” can never fully belong by definition, and the more uppity a woman is in that context the more she will be reviled by the boy’s clubs.
Exhibit A: Hillary Rodham Clinton
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Kai says:
Just thought I’d chime in. I am a marxist, feminist, atheist, if those words mean anything to you. :) After reading this i felt compelled to say what to me is the elephant in the room.
It gets very complicated trying to sort all of this race, class, gender stuff out. I wont pretend to know what its like to be a woman, or what kind of BS, you’d have to put up with daily being a woman. But I will say, whatever BS you put up as a white woman, it gets worse if you a black woman or a poor woman, or all of the above.
I think Rev. Wright’s analysis was off vis a vis women and correct around race. When he spoke about Hillary he mentioned that she fit the bill as a rich white person, this is true. He committed the sin of omission by not mentioning how she doesn’t fit the bill as a woman.
Although i think we can get tangled up in some messy stuff here, I’d say its pretty clear that for the couple of hundred years that black people were chattel, white women were something significantly more than that, albeit not fully human in terms of parity with white men.
The implied argument in the post: that an affluent white woman is in no way a conventional candidate, seems to be trying hard to ignore Hillary’s whiteness and wealth, while overstating the advantage of Obama being a man.
Regardless of who you vote for, I dont think we have to ignore the obvious in order to advocate for one opponent over another. Frankly, its rather impossible to argue with the fact that the average black man in society has a lot more obstacles to encounter than the average white woman.
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Violet says:
Most white women aren’t rich.
Hillary Clinton is a person of middle-class background who has achieved a position of privilege.
Barack Obama is a person of middle-class background who has achieved a position of privilege.
Yet Obama represents and is identical with poor inner-city black men, while Hillary represents and is identical with wealthy white women?
Rev. Wright did more than commit a sin of omission. He explicitly said that Hillary Clinton has never had to work twice as hard as a white man — as any man — to prove herself. That’s not an omission, that’s a lie.
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orlando says:
It’s also a lie that her people have never been considered “non-persons”. Kai, you’re also wrong about women not being chattel. Go and look up when rape stopped being a crime against property.
