race/gender/godwin
Imagine this:
Barack Obama sits down for an interview to discuss how the campaign has gone thus far, and he launches into a long analysis of how the "racism" and "hatred of blacks" in the media has marred coverage of him.
Not bloody likely, is it?
Hillary Clinton has been on a media tear in the last few days to convince people that America has rid itself of racism while allowing sexism to flourish in broad daylight with impunity. This isn't entirely unfounded; racism has become taboo enough that it has to be buried in subtexts, while sexism rides closer to the surface. The b-word can be uttered on cable news outlets; the n-word, hardly.
But the curious result of our unanimity about the fact that racism is a Bad Thing is that it's had the effect of making all accusations of racism (short of the evidence of the n-word or something equally obvious) seem hysterical, paranoid, and positively Godwinesque. Calling someone a racist is, in the public imagination, close enough to calling them a Nazi that you can't really get away with it unless they're wearing a swastika or a hood. Obama mentions that his grandmother (presumably like every other white woman of her age in her town, and lots of different kinds of people everywhere) is anxious when she encounters a black man on the street; he's "thrown her under the bus!" Clinton accuses "the big boys" of trying to sabotage her entire political career because she's a woman, and it's just righteous anger. Maybe it's because so many more Americans have experienced it and can recognize it, maybe it's because it doesn't bear the legacy of violence and isolation that our racial history does, but sexism seems to have a place in our national dialogue that racism doesn't.
I don't mean to take part in the "which is worse?" wars, which have only served to deafen people who see one prejudice operating to hearing accounts of the other. I think it's probably safe to say that both have been present in subtle and less subtle ways in the public's and the media's treatment of the Democratic primary, and that both have probably been detected in comments or actions that don't really justify it. But as the "historic no matter what" candidacy winds down, I do think it's worth weighing what's been said in the open against what's gone unsaid, and trying both to speak and to hear more of the latter instead of just dealing with the issues that are easiest to air in public. As an honest conversation about race or gender, this primary has been a pretty awkward first step, but it would be nice to think that a second one is coming in both cases.
Barack Obama sits down for an interview to discuss how the campaign has gone thus far, and he launches into a long analysis of how the "racism" and "hatred of blacks" in the media has marred coverage of him.
Not bloody likely, is it?
Hillary Clinton has been on a media tear in the last few days to convince people that America has rid itself of racism while allowing sexism to flourish in broad daylight with impunity. This isn't entirely unfounded; racism has become taboo enough that it has to be buried in subtexts, while sexism rides closer to the surface. The b-word can be uttered on cable news outlets; the n-word, hardly.
But the curious result of our unanimity about the fact that racism is a Bad Thing is that it's had the effect of making all accusations of racism (short of the evidence of the n-word or something equally obvious) seem hysterical, paranoid, and positively Godwinesque. Calling someone a racist is, in the public imagination, close enough to calling them a Nazi that you can't really get away with it unless they're wearing a swastika or a hood. Obama mentions that his grandmother (presumably like every other white woman of her age in her town, and lots of different kinds of people everywhere) is anxious when she encounters a black man on the street; he's "thrown her under the bus!" Clinton accuses "the big boys" of trying to sabotage her entire political career because she's a woman, and it's just righteous anger. Maybe it's because so many more Americans have experienced it and can recognize it, maybe it's because it doesn't bear the legacy of violence and isolation that our racial history does, but sexism seems to have a place in our national dialogue that racism doesn't.
I don't mean to take part in the "which is worse?" wars, which have only served to deafen people who see one prejudice operating to hearing accounts of the other. I think it's probably safe to say that both have been present in subtle and less subtle ways in the public's and the media's treatment of the Democratic primary, and that both have probably been detected in comments or actions that don't really justify it. But as the "historic no matter what" candidacy winds down, I do think it's worth weighing what's been said in the open against what's gone unsaid, and trying both to speak and to hear more of the latter instead of just dealing with the issues that are easiest to air in public. As an honest conversation about race or gender, this primary has been a pretty awkward first step, but it would be nice to think that a second one is coming in both cases.
