Looking at Sarah, Somehow Seeing Condi

by Latoya Peterson, originally published at Feministe

As the uproar over the Palin VP pick enters its third week, the media and the blogosphere show no signs of letting go of mining every aspect of the controversy. Feministing put up a Friday Feminist Fuck No as to whether or not Sarah Palin is a feminist, Octogalore says we need to focus on the double standards being aimed at Palin, Alternet is comparing Sarah to Barbie, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is trying to talk her friends out of voting for her, Camille Pagila claimed Palin is a new “feminist force,” and Katha Pollitt ripped her a new one in her piece “Lipstick on a Wingnut.”

Throughout this all, it appears that there are two dominant ideas swirling around this debate:

1. Palin cannot be a feminist because her views are in complete opposition to what is meant by feminism as a movement.

2. Palin should be supported because she is a strong woman, who represents what feminism is about and in many ways shows what the feminist movement has done for women.

Now, I’ve been following this debate with some interest, and watched many women mount impassioned defenses of Palin, and chide feminists for not providing more support to this strong woman candidate. I don’t care for Palin’s politics at all, and while I can see she was a smart pick for the GOP, there’s a big trump card for me. Palin doesn’t represent anything close to the womanhood I know. So while I listen with interest while people argue about how Palin represents “every woman,” I can’t relate. I just don’t see her in those ways.

But I can put Sarah Palin into context fairly easily, as the issues surrounding Sarah Palin, (white) women, and feminism correspond with the issues around Condoleezza Rice, black (women) interests, and racial politics.

When George W. Bush meandered his way into the White House, he managed to bring two African-Americans into the spotlight – Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

I spent a lot of time checking for Condoleezza Rice. By most accounts, she is a smart, driven, and poised woman. So how the hell did she end up on the side of the Republicans? To find a response, I read. And read. And read. I read Condi’s biography, her news interviews, the long form magazine pieces.

Contrary to popular belief, Condoleezza Rice does not seek to minimize her race. It has been recounted in almost every profile of her I have read.

I have a heavy admiration for what she has done and accomplished. And as a black woman, I must admit that I feel a small sense of pride, scrolling through her entry on Wikipedia, looking at all the things she has accomplished.

And yet, I disagree with her politics, even if I like some of her programs.

And while Condoleezza Rice is an accomplished black woman, who triumphed over adversity to become who she is today, this fact alone does not mean she will be a champion of black issues if elected to public office.

In some ways, Condoleezza Rice is like Clarence Thomas – they both were alive during some of the most pivotal moments in Civil Rights history. But their views on how blacks are to operate within the parameters of this society run counter to what most black Americans find to be true.

With Thomas – who was a former black nationalist – he was raised in poverty and segregation, yet he often ends up with an opposite interpretation of events. In various interviews and articles, he has expressed his rage at Affirmative Action programs, with his sentiments stemming from having to deal with all the assumptions that rise about black intelligence and ability while those programs are in effect. To him, the greater injustice was that people assume that blacks only advance to the levels they do because of government intervention. So, in his mind, the solution is to end these kinds of programs. Thomas now seems a bit uneasy with the pro-black activities he once participated in often clarifying his statements by stressing his age then and his age now. In the same interview in Businessweek, he notes:

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