Monday, January 14th, 2008

Rebecca Walker :: The Last Word On Clinton, Obama, and Steinem

Rebecca Walker cuts to the heart of this past week’s “It’s gender, no it’s race, no it’s class” repeat of the 80s and 90s culture war debates. It’s about all of the above, but it’s really about generation.

Here’s an excerpt, and check the original for the knockout punchline:

Hillary, no matter how symbolically potent, runs the risk of being seen as a Second Wave candidate. She’s one of the first women to gain power and access, and may be one of the first with power and access to ignore the criticisms of women of color, progressive men, and many young women, all of whom have been sending clear messages to Second Wave feminist leadership for well over a decade.

Messages like:

Women are not only victims, but active participants in the shaping of their lives. It’s not Hillary’s gender that may keep her from winning this election, it’s her lack of preparation. If she had an inter-generational, multi-racial, digitally savvy, globally inclined machine behind her, crafting electrifying rhetoric like The Audacity of Hope and The Power of Now, she’d be swept into the White House by a landslide. Hillary wasn’t forced into the number two position in Iowa, she made decisions that put her there. New Hampshire is a case in point; she made different decisions and got different results.

Racism and classism are as definitive as sexism. Did Steinem insinuate that Barack’s gender, and not his talent, put him in the top spot? I thought black men were capable of performing at his level without an irrationally granted advantage. And the idea that black men always reach the Promised Land before white women? Forty per cent of black men don’t finish high school in America, and one in four are incarcerated. Hillary, and her feminist supporters, are not going to win this election by glossing over the realities of African-American men…

The rest is here.

BTW, I’m told that HuffPo’s post-NH primary coverage brought record numbers to the site. That’s a helluva lot of interest in the elections.

And all this discussion about identity issues this past week supports the idea that these elections will be about the ways that emerging post-Boomers want to redefine the national discourse.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 12:43 pm | 1 Comment

One Response to “Rebecca Walker :: The Last Word On Clinton, Obama, and Steinem”

E says:

January 15, 2008 at 8:54 pm

baby boom fizzles!

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