The fact is that every single white male that ran for the Democratic Party nomination this season was more qualified than Obama and Clinton put together, but identity politics was against them.

Name me one black female political commentator other than Donna Brazile.

Well, there is Amy Holmes.

Anyway, I didn’t look at Ferraro’s statements as being as much racist as they were just flat out wrong.

Over the years I have pondered experiences such as this. I’ve watched the number of black women lawyers increase in the courts, and I’ve pondered how often they are mistaken for social workers or court clerks or litigants. The thing is, I can understand that others – particularly white men – might accept that I am an intelligent woman who happens to be a lawyer, but I sense also that black women lawyers have a higher hill to climb. They can’t just be smart women who are lawyers. They have to be smart BLACK women who are lawyers, and they have to be able to make that point not only with the men (and I’m talking about men of all races and backgrounds), but with the white women, too. It must be a hell of a burden. On top of that is the unspoken assumption by many, many whites that a black woman in a position of responsibility must have gotten her education and her position as a result of affirmative action or due to some racial guilt on the part of some unnamed liberal somewhere in a position of authority. Some men make this assumption about all women, but it is a far more pervasive notion about black people, and most particularly about black women. To be frank, black folks are always having to prove that they’re smart or educated or moral or capable of making good decisions. I’ve seen and heard whites complain about the group of loud black kids on a train or at a beach, but their assumption seems to be that this is the way all black people comport themselves. When a bunch of white kids is acting obnoxious no one goes around saying that’s just the way whites in general comport themselves.

The hardest thing about all this is the sense that there’s only so much outrage over inequality to go around, that if one is outraged over the way that women have been treated then there’s not enough room to be outraged over the way that minorities have been treated, or, for that matter, how anyone of any background has been treated on the basis of that person’s background. From my point of view outrage over disparate treatment is not a zero sum thing. There’s plenty of room for outrage over all silly assumptions about anyone based on color or creed or gender or national origin.

The politicians running Michigan and Florida disenfranchised their own people by moving up their contests. Obama had nothing to do with it. The Florida Party made the best of a bad situation and the Hillary supporters in the congressional delegation are getting in the way. They could agree to a caucus but they won’t since they believe they can’t win. Don’t be bamboozled, dear.

I go back an forth, right now I support Clinton, mostly because of Obama’s brilliant idea that you can disenfranchise two entire states.

We have a black and a woman running, all of our society’s weird attitudes are going to come to the surface. It won’t be pretty.

So we have a large section of white women who thought they’d finally shattered the glass ceiling, they were ascendant, their time had come. In short, yes, brotha, they thought they were entitled (though it’s not so much because they feel whites are more deserving than blacks as much as it is that they’d thought they’d already won, and this was supposed to be their reward).

And it simply isn’t true, at least not nearly to the degree that they thought. Sexism runs a whole lot deeper than that, it’s been part of Western culture forever, and it may be here still long after we’ve had a black president. It’s actually even older than racism (don’t believe me? The ancient Greeks thought that Africans had darker skin because they were perpetually burnt on account of living so close to the Gods of Olympus. The ancient Greeks also thought a woman’s role was to make babies and service her husband. Western Civilization at its inception used to love black people but hated women).

Anyway, my overarching point is that some white women like Ferraro are finding themselves on uncomfortable ground, and it’s leading them to say things that are rightfully being roundly condemned. I don’t necessarily believe that it’s motivated by racial antipathy, however; I think it may simply be that some proto-feminists are starting to realize that they haven’t actually won, and it’s frustrating and angering them into saying some ridiculously stupid things.

I’m 100% sure it’s about white entitlement although you may not be. Thanks for your comment. It is both reasoned and thought provoking.

I’m not so sure that it’s “white entitlement” so much as “Clinton Entitlement” on Hillary’s part and the ranting of a bitter feminist on Ferraro’s part. That Ferraro is a racist seems apparent, but the “entitlement” idea seem off base. It’s probably more a case of bitterness and jealousy turning into racism.

The radical / militant feminist “manifesto” seems to include a lot of ranting about how Blacks got the vote before women did and other such comparisons.

These comments aren’t just insulting to black people, or women, or democrats, or Americans, they should be considered insulting to humanity.

Obama is one of the most talented legislators in Washington (see Ethics Reform and Nuclear Proliferation, not to mention his vast list of successes in Illiniois), one of the most informed civil rights attorneys, one of the best Constitutional scholars. On top of that, he is one of the most inspirational leaders on the national political scene today.

For a democrat to stand up and say that he is where he is today because he’s black is blatantly racist and therefore against any code of common decency.

It’s plainly shocking that Hillary didn’t “reject and denounce” and condemn these insane statements, and more shocking still that Clinton supporters continue to see Hillary’s “play the victim and attack” as somehow helpful to anyone in the world save, dubiously, Hillary herself.

As a lifelong male feminist, I’m personally disappointed that Hillary seems to believe that the only way she can get elected is by sponsoring overt racism and claiming to be oppressed.

She’s not helping herself, she’s not helping the party, she’s not helping the country, and as it turns out, she’s not really hurting Obama. So what’s she doing? Helping Republicans. I’m truly embarrassed for her and her campaign.

Beautifully put, Vivian. As for me, its the sense of white entitlement that is exemplified by Hillary and Ms. Ferraro that is the deal breaker in choosing not to support Senator Clinton. I strongly object to what Gerry said. However, given how long I have admired Ms. Ferraro, who I believe to be a gifted and talented politician that represented women well on the 84 ticket, it truly is a sad thing to discover that she said something similar twenty years ago about Jesse Jackson.

Its hard for me to gin up any anger because of her iconic status and her age. When she candidly admitted that had she been named Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine, she wouldn’t have been chosen for the ticket 24 years ago, was illuminating. The name Gerard wasn’t taken out of thin air. It was her older baby brother’s name. He died in a car accident at 3 and her mom blamed herself for the rest of her life. Her daddy left/died, I don’t remember which and her mom struggled to raise her. She saved to send her to private school and went without eating meat sometimes to do it.

Gerry never forgot that and when she graduated from college and law school and found a husband, she kept her maiden name to say thank you to her Mama. That’s the kind of person she is-human. I still don’t like what she said and certainly don’t agree with her stubborn defiance, but I understand it.

In contrast to Ms. Ferraro’s struggles, Hillary’s had it relatively easy. Her struggle, if any, was dealing with Bill’s serial infidelity and accommodating to the ideological shift from progressive to right-wing DLC democrat.

The execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a black Arkansas death row inmate who attempted to commit suicide after killing a cop and instead lobotomized himself, was both unnecessary and form of “racist grandstanding” as Christopher Hitchens put it.
At the height of the Gennifer Flowers flap and the New Hampshire primary, Bill put him to death and Hillary sat back and let him do it after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, a decision that then Justice Thurgood Marshall dissented from.

To tell us that she has always defended civil rights is emphatically not true. I could go on, but I’ll leave it there for now.

I’m neither of those and I thought it would end up being about one, the other or even both.

“Name me one black female political commentator other than Donna Brazile.”

There is another one on CNN, she’s a Republican and I can’t recall her name (Amy is her first name, I believe). Even though she’s Republican she seems to be pretty knowledgeable and is usually pretty fair and had they not told me she was Republican it would’ve taken me awhile to figure it out.

Regardless, great post Vivian and I agree with pretty much all of it.

On the general lack of sisterhood – Black women and White women had very little in common during the painful earlier years of the feminist movement. Black women were already working, running businesses and possessing near as much “power” as their menfolk did. The females of the two races were coming from different viewpoints, or at least my girlfriend (Black-Apache-Scottish) keeps telling me…LOL