Sexism vs. Racism Addendum

Check out two smart responses to Gloria Steinem's very bad op-ed, one from Feministing:

I don't have a feminist obligation to vote for Hillary Clinton, or donate money to her campaign, or show up at her rallies. My obligation is to support her right to compete on an equal playing field. To decry the disgusting amount of sexism she faces every day. (We've done so again and again and again.) And then to vote for another candidate if I feel he would make a better president. That, too, is a feminist act.

And the second from Racialicious:

Ultimately, however, Steinem’s piece (intentionally or unintentionally) draws a line in the sand between people of colour and women, essentially disregarding the everyday racism faced by Black and Brown people, and claiming the Oppression Olympics gold medal for women. Further, by casting the debate as between Black men and White women (despite her imperfect creation of Achola Obama), Steinem renders the woman of colour invisible, reaffirms the binary Black-White paradigm of race, and demands we take a side in the epic battle between race and gender. Is it no wonder, then, that women of colour have long felt alienated by feminists like Steinem? Where do we fit when we’re being asked to choose between Obama and Clinton as a metaphor for race versus gender? And how are we supposed to react when an incorrect choice labels us as “less radical”?

Trying to decide whether sexism or racism is somehow worse than the other is a dangerous game to play. It's also an impossible one. There are various valid critiques of Obama and Clinton that have nothing to do with race and gender and it's inherent that one or the other is a worse candidate based on these reasons, not racist/sexist ones. Clinton has absolutely gotten a bad rap from the media and all kinds of feminists are rightly outraged by that. But this isn't an argument in favor of a Clinton presidency. It's an argument in favor of a campaign devoid of sexist and racist undertones, as Friedman notes at Feministing, whether the eventual winner is a white woman, black man, or otherwise. Steinem's Clinton endorsement has a certain bullying tone that's quite unfortunate.

Relatedly, Austen commented earlier by linking to this post by Michael Dorf about how the 13th/14th/15th Amendments "introduced and legitimated sex discrimination in the Constitution" while introducing African American civil rights, even if, as the author notes, "it would be a century before those rights would exist in any real form." It's a good legal point. On the other hand, the women's suffrage movement often cast its arguments in rather racist terms, claiming for instance that bringing white women into the electorate would help dilute the effect of African Americans and white ethnics. The Right to Vote by Alexander Keyssar is a great book for exploring these kinds of issues. Dorf is probably right that "if an African-American man gets to the White House before a woman (of any race), that will only make it easier for a woman to become President in the future." But historically, the struggles for women's rights and the rights of African Americans have often been a struggle of who "comes first." Often enough, one has been used against the other. I think what bothered me most about Steinem's argument is that it is, in a sense, a continuation of the historical trend.