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We Are A Racist, Sexist Country...

We are a racist, sexist country. The evidence, according to a prominent black journalist and the archetypical feminist: a black man (sort of) won the Iowa caucuses and a white woman won the New Hampshire primary.

The prominent journalist, Bill Maxwell, a columnist with the St. Petersburg Times, wrote several days ago that ?Obama?s win doesn?t erase the issue of race.? Whites voted for him, according to Maxwell, only ?because he does not make them feel uncomfortable.? And because he makes them feel good about themselves for doing so:

If Obama becomes the next president, he will do so primarily because of white support, especially the support of whites eager to prove that they are fair.

Maxwell, clearly a scholar as well as a journalist, has obviously been poring over demographic data. Otherwise he could not come up with the startling insight that if a black man (sort of) is elected president in a country that is about 11% black, ?he will do so primarily because of white support.?

The bottom line for Maxwell is that whites like Obama because they don?t see him as black but rather

as a black who has transcended race. He is the rare black politician who is not seen as a ?black leader,? a designation of contempt reserved for the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan.

Obama is what many blacks, along with some whites, pejoratively refer to as ?an honorary white man,? one who can soothe white people. In the parlance of race studies, he is a ?good black? rather than a ?bad black.?

It?s pretty clear that that?s also how Maxwell himself sees Obama, as a ?good black? like Colin Powell. ?And for sure,? Maxwell concludes, ?neither Powell nor Obama is ideologically black.?

I suspect that on some level Maxwell sees Obama?s defeat in New Hampshire by a white woman as a confirmation of his view that American voters would not elect a ?real? black. Maybe he looked blacker to New Hampshire voters than he did in Iowa.

Perhaps some day Maxwell will grace us with ?A Black Manifesto,? explicating the content and contours of ideological blackness. In the meantime it would be quite helpful if he, or someone of like mind, could provide a short summary or precis to university admissions officers, a checklist or something similar to prevent those architects of ?diversity? from extending any preferences to the ?good blacks? or ?honorary whites? in their applicant pool since they would obviously provide no real ?diversity? to the actual whites.

Turning from race to sex, the archetypical feminist, Gloria Steinem, committed a mind-boggling column yesterday in the New York Times. Obviously resenting the fact that a man, even a black one, had the temerity to defeat Hillary Clinton in Iowa, and hence perhaps derail the train that was destined to make her the first woman president, she repeated her refrain that gender, not race, ?is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House.?

There?s a large portion of resentful sour grapes here, as in:

... the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).

If we don?t elect Hillary president, it?s clear (to Steinem) that the reason will be the fact that we are a sexist nation.

Steinem may stumble a bit dealing with Hillary?s success in New Hampshire (thought not really, since she?ll attribute that success solely to women?s votes), but if Hillary continues to succeed perhaps Steinem can learn a thing or two from Bill Maxwell.

If American does elect Hillary, perhaps, Steinem can then argue, it will be only because voters don?t really see her as a, you know, woman but as a pants-wearing politician who has ?transcended gender.?

Full post as published by Discriminations on January 09, 2008 (boomark / email).