“What Kind of White Woman is Hillary Clinton?” – The Nation Reports on The Race to the Bottom
by Latoya Peterson
The Nation recently published a very interesting article by Betsy Reed, titled “The Race to the Bottom.” The crux of the piece can be summarized in this paragraph:
The sexist attacks on Clinton are outrageous and deplorable, but there’s reason to be concerned about her becoming the vehicle for a feminist reawakening. For one thing, feminist sympathy for her has begotten an “oppression sweepstakes” in which a number of her prominent supporters, dismayed at her upstaging by Obama, have declared a contest between racial and gender bias and named sexism the greater scourge. This maneuver is not only unhelpful for coalition-building but obstructs understanding of how sexism and racism have played out in this election in different (and interrelated) ways.
Dead on, Betsy. As I wrote in the Does Feminism Have to Address Race post one of the unique positions I happen to find myself in more and more is having to challenge the sexism that Hillary Clinton (and Chelsea Clinton) are subject to from progressive men, but feeling hesitant to do so – after all, I do not want to give the impression that I am giving Hillary Clinton a pass on the race baiting that has come from her camp. I have yet to hear her reject and denounce Bob Johnson or Geraldine Ferraro. So, it becomes difficult.
The article notes that some of Clinton’s hardass behavior may in fact come from the tightrope she has to walk in order to be perceived as strong enough for the job, but not strong enough to be unlikeable:
For Hillary Clinton, the gendered terrain of post-9/11 national security politics has been treacherous indeed. As Elizabeth Drew observed in The New York Review of Books, Clinton took steps in the Senate, like joining the Armed Services Committee, “to protect herself from the sexist notion that a woman might be soft on national security.” As a 2002 study by the White House Project, a women’s leadership group, found, “Women candidates start out with a serious disadvantage–voters tend to view women as less effective and tough. Recent events of war, terrorism, and recession have only…increased the salience of these dimensions.” Clinton has been quite successful in allaying these concerns, although she faces a Catch-22: her reputed toughness and ruthlessness have helped ratchet up her high negatives. The White House Project study found that a woman candidate faces a unique tension between the need to show herself “in a light that is personally appealing, while also showing that she has the kind of strength needed for the job she is seeking.”
Still, the attacks leveled at Obama from the Clinton camp has been tinged with all kinds of sentiments, including racism and xenophobia. When discussing how the candidates respond to race or gender based attacks, Reed notes:
Clinton has, to be sure, faced a raw misogyny that has been more out in the open than the racial attacks on Obama have been. But while sexism may be more casually accepted, racism, which is often coded, is more insidious and trickier to confront. Clinton’s response to “Iron my shirt” was immediate and straightforward: “Oh, the remnants of sexism, alive and well.” Says Kimberlé Crenshaw, law professor at Columbia and UCLA and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, “While sexism can be denounced more directly, that doesn’t mean it’s worse. Things that are racist have yet to be labeled and understood as such.”
Obama has never directly raised an allegation about racism from the media and from Clinton’s campaign. Not once. And he cannot – not as long as he wants to still be considered a viable candidate for the presidency. He has to act like everything is fine. He has to pretend these things don’t get to him. He has to do what so many African-Americans are forced to do in their daily lives – swallow the slights and keep working toward the larger goal.
Reed continues:
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