Press 1



 Chronicles of the New World Growing Up
by Robert Anthony Watts

On Race
What we’re missing in the race-gender debate about Barack and Hillary

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was …
                                                                                  Gloria Steinem

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
                                                                                  Geraldine Ferraro.

Hillary never had a cab whiz by her and not pick her up because her skin was the wrong color. Hillary never had to worry about being pulled over in her car as a black man driving in the wrong neck … Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger.
                                                                                  Rev. Jeremiah Wright



I was discussing the presidential race with a friend who had worked for nearly a decade as a top aide for a well known liberal Congressman. We spoke about Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton; inevitably we came to the subject of race and gender.

“The feminists have made no contribution to this debate,” my friend said. He was reacting to the now famous or infamous op-ed piece in the New York Times by Gloria Steinem. And he was reacting to the furor surrounding comments made by Geraldine Ferraro and by Obama’s long-time pastor Jeremiah Wright.

My friend was expressing a frustration we both shared: in all the discussion about the Obama-Clinton contest, there has been remarkably little analysis that has helped tease out the currents of race and gender. To say that this Democratic campaign is historic is to say the obvious. And to note that Hillary Clinton has strong support among women and that Barack Obama has strong support among black voters is also to say the obvious.

Perhaps what is so vexing about discussing Obama and Clinton in a useful way is the sheer number of variables one has to take into account: race, gender, age, class, personal style, connections.

Ironically the supporters of both candidates have made excellent arguments about how racial prejudice (in the case of Obama) and anti-women prejudice (in the case of Clinton) have played a role in this campaign. The problem is that arguments presented by both sides are incomplete. They don’t tell the whole story.


In her New York Times piece, Steinem argued that Barack Obama would be nowhere near a presidential nomination had he been a woman. This is surely correct as it is difficult to imagine a woman occupying the role filled by Obama, whose image and youth and idealism have elicited comparisons to John F. Kennedy. The idea that a black woman could occupy such a place in our culture is unfortunately unthinkable at this moment. A woman, black woman, running for president after four years in the U.S. Senate—that simply is unimaginable.

But Steinem missed the logical corollary of her argument: Hillary Clinton would not be anywhere near a presidential nomination had she been black. There is simply no way a black woman of Hillary generation’s could have the education and connections and social acceptability to marry a man who would be governor of a state and then president.

Hillary Clinton graduated from Wellesley College in 1969. This was only two years after the Supreme Court had overturned laws across the land banning interracial marriage. In 1969, the country was still in the early stages of a wrenching effort to emerge from centuries of racism and racially enforced subjugation. Interracial marriage presumes a level of social intimacy and equality that would not have been likely when Hillary Clinton graduated from Wellesley and later in 1973 from Yale Law School. And no southern state in the 1970’s would have elected governor a white man with an African-American wife. (Bill Clinton became Arkansas Attorney General in 1976 and governor in 1978.)

Inescapably Hillary Clinton advanced as far as she did partly because of her white skin. No white skin, no Wellesley stardom. No Wellesley stardom no marriage to Bill Clinton. No marriage to Bill Clinton, no First Lady position. No First Lady position, no Senate position in New York and finally, no Hillary beginning the Democratic nomination process as the front runner with the backing of a formidable political machine.

To pause to state the obvious: to say that Hillary benefited from white skin does not mean her talents were unimportant. It is simply to say that white skin was a sine qua non of her rise to power, just as being a male has been for anyone up to now who has wanted to become president.

But if Hillary benefited from the color of her skin, it is also true that she has had to take a circuitous, indirect path to power because she was a woman. A male Hillary could have run for election directly and not had to partner with a Bill Clinton. A male Hillary would have been able to find a partner (much like the kind of partner she was to Bill), who saw her talents and invested in her ascent.

Obama supporters are wrong when they denigrate Hillary’s time as First Lady. First Lady was the closest a woman of could get to the Oval Office until very recently. It was the only path open to her. And no one thinks Hillary was an ordinary First Lady. She was an integral part of her husband’s success.

So my friend was wrong when he denounced the feminists for failing to contribute anything to the debate. Hillary Clinton’s career has been limited and defined by her gender. The stunning success of a Barack Obama who is trying his best to cut a short and direct path to the White House was simply out of the question for a woman of Hillary’s generation.

But Obama’s racial background complicates the desire of Hillary supporters to make him the male villain who gets everything the easy way. As much as Geraldine Ferraro wants to fantasize, being African-American has never been an asset for anyone running for any high office in the United States of America. There is simply no evidence based on 250 years of American history to suggest dark skin is an advantage in the quest for national office.

Ferraro’s confused comments are perhaps understandable as she struggles to accept that a black man has actually won huge amounts of support and raised record amounts of money from mostly whites. Obama has broken all fund-raising records and attracted a youthful following that many politicians did not know existed. No white politician, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton, has stirred the hearts of Democrats as has Obama. This is impossible, Ferraro seems to have been thinking. It must be because he is black.

But Obama is not winning support because he is black; he’s winning support because he’s captured the imagination of a swath of the electorate while also being black. That Obama, despite his youth and limited experience at the federal level, has won as much support has he has, is testament to his political skills. And if he has made his blackness into part of his attraction (and I think he has), that too is a deft political move that will have political scientists and sociologists scratching their heads for the next generation or so.

Ferraro simply has no awareness of how carefully and gracefully Obama has to step to not invoke racial anxieties—anxieties that white liberals routinely evoke.

One day soon we will see a woman emerge who can take the direct path to the White House, the path of Barack Obama. That woman will have a skill at defusing men’s anxieties and she may well use her femininity as part of her charm. That day hopefully is not too far off. I have assumed all along that this would have to be a white woman. But perhaps a black woman could stun us all.

We will recognize her skillfulness as a politician when she scores high in the polls while still eliciting complaints that “if she weren’t a woman, there is no way she would be this popular.”