I'm Colson Whitehead's Newest Convert

I love me some Colson Whitehead! Okay, so that's not quite true. I never read any Whitehead until today when the New York Times ran an editorial of his called "Visible Man," a shout out to Ellison's Invisible Man. The piece pretty much wraps up everything I've wanted to say about the "elite" charges leveled against Sen. Barack Obama.

I knew the accusations of elitism were factually wrong. For one, Obama attended a private high school on scholarship and was raised, in part, in a single-parent home, but Whitehead goes beyond the facts of the matter to shed light on the insidious origins of the elite claims.

In a nutshell, to say that those blacks who managed to get a college degree and pave out a career in the face of racist psychological warfare designed to convince us that we should be dead, unwed, on welfare, strung out or in jail got where we are because we're black is absof__kinglutely ridiculous!

The End of Isms

Normally, I find New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to be spot on, but, after reading her editorial today, I was left feeling flabbergasted.

In the editorial “Duel of Historical Guilts,” Dowd makes the following statements:

People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny? As it turns out, making history is actually a way of being imprisoned by history. It’s all about the past. Will America’s racial past be expunged or America’s sexist past be expunged?

Dowd makes these comments in regards to whether or not Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton will win the presidential election. My concern is that Dowd is under the impression that a win by either of the two would somehow wipe out America’s racist and sexist past. Why does Dowd believe that misogyny will evaporate with Hillary Clinton as President or that racism will evaporate with Barack Obama in the role? There is no doubt in my mind that, while women may make some advances under a Hillary Clinton administration, they will continue to earn less than men do, bear the brunt of domestic tasks, be sexually victimized and continue to struggle for reproductive rights. There is no doubt in my mind that black men will continue to make up the largest percentage of imprisoned Americans, die at younger ages than most other groups do, continue to be victimized by violence and be left behind in our schools. There is no doubt that women of color will continue to find themselves on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, earning less than black men and white women, alike, while confronting the same issues they do.

I wholeheartedly embrace Barack Obama’s message of hope, but I also strive to remain rooted in reality. A win for either a white woman or a black man will not mark the end of “isms” in this country. These constructs have been in place for hundreds of years and cannot be undone by the election of one groundbreaking candidate. Despite this, I worry that others will espouse Dowd’s view in light of a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton election. If such an election transpires, will women and those of color be told to “shut it” when they complain about the very real gender and racial constructs that they encounter in this country?

I also find Dowd’s column problematic because, for the umpteenth time, the public is being asked to choose. Which is worse: misogyny or racism? How about neither? How about we acknowledge that they are interconnected? Men are affected by misogyny and whites are affected by racism, whether or not they recognize this.

By suggesting otherwise, Dowd is engaging in what some have nicknamed the “Oppression Olympics.” Most often, I’ve witnessed the Oppression Olympics play out when slavery and the Holocaust are discussed. Those in support of the Holocaust cite the fact that 6 million Jews were exterminated. In response, those in support of slavery cite that 10 million Africans lost their lives in the Middle Passage alone. But those I admire most, such as Night author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, refuse to partake in the Oppression Olympics. He has argued that it is not conducive to healing to attempt to measure who’s suffered most. What’s important is that we have survived and that we heal.

As suffering goes, though, Hillary Clinton is a complicated symbol for women because she is so entrenched in the establishment. I do acknowledge, however, that she has been a victim of misogyny. She’s been criticized for her physical appearance, for appearing to be cold rather than nurturing, for being power-hungry. And, while I’m none too happy that she won Ohio and Texas, I find it problematic that, before these critical wins, so many newspaper columnists urged her to drop out of the Democratic race when she trailed Sen. Obama by a marginal percentage. Would a man in a close race be told to drop out? This certainly wasn’t the case for Huckabee, who had no chance of winning the Republican nomination but pressed on until yesterday.




Obama, on the other hand, is a complicated male symbol because of his blackness. Since he rose to prominence, he has been sexualized in a manner in which white men aren’t. Mitt Romney is known for being strikingly handsome. One political commentator even nicknamed him “Ken,” as in Barbie’s significant other, but Romney has never been sexualized in the same way that Obama has. I’ve seen television skits in which Obama has been portrayed as a Mandingo warrior who sexually arouses Hillary Clinton. I’ve seen pictures of Obama in his swim trunks circulate the Internet. I’ve witnessed Obama surface as the object of a “Will & Grace” character’s wet dream. Obama himself seems to be hyper aware of how he has been sexualized. Recently, he refused to divulge whether he wears boxers or briefs, dismissing the question as humiliating.

Obama illustrates more than any candidate how much race and sex are entangled. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, illustrates through the sheer amount of power she has alone, that all women aren’t victims by default. Together, they make the case that we should not vote for them as symbols. A vote for Sen. Obama isn’t necessarily a vote for blacks or a vote against women. The fact is, in contrast to Dowd’s remarks, that Obama has never campaigned on the basis that he symbolizes black progress. He’s campaigned on the basis that he symbolizes hope.

On All Fronts: Black Women and the Vote

Throughout the primaries much has been made about where black female voters stand. There have been endless debates about whether race trumps sex, cringe-worthy interviews of black women in beauty salons and old wounds reopened between white feminists and black feminists. Now that Sen. Obama has won his tenth consecutive contest, it’s safe to say that the overwhelming majority of black women have opted to vote for him rather than his white female competitor. This has led some to conclude that black women are more invested in their race than in their sex.


For weeks now I’ve been questioning myself about where my loyalties lie. Am I rooting for Obama primarily because he could be the first U.S. president of African descent? I believe that Obama’s blackness is only part of the equation for me. I am drawn to him because, like me and countless other post-Baby Boomer African Americans, his blackness has been called into question simply because of his upbringing. The Illinois senator has blacks and whites, alike, in his family. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia rather than on the mean streets of the inner city or in the rural, poverty-stricken South as the black leaders before him did. His father wasn’t American but Kenyan and raised in the Muslim tradition rather than in the Christian faith. When, in 2006, I first heard the charges that Sen. Obama was not authentically black because of the circumstances of his birth, a maternal feeling rose inside of me. I wanted to protect him. How many similar charges had I heard leveled against myself and others simply because our narratives diverged from the ones America has come to most commonly link with blacks? Why was it that those blacks who told tales infused with poverty, violence and virulent racism were the only among us considered to be authentically black, especially when large numbers of African Americans don’t have such tales to tell? It seemed a strange kind of racism to suggest that those of us fortunate enough to enjoy the fruits of Martin Luther King’s dream were somehow non-black.


So, all in all, it wasn’t Obama himself that drew me to him but his detractors. In support of the senator, I began to read excerpts from his speeches and track his appearances, ultimately attending a rally of his in South Central Los Angeles. The location was a strategic move to boost his black cred. Also strategic was the senator’s decision to grant his sole interview during this visit to Los Angeles’ most prominent black newspaper, the L.A. Sentinel. At the rally, during which Obama spoke with a distinctly black cadence, he made sure to draw attention to those in the audience from Occidental College, the school that he attended for two years before transferring to Columbia and my alma mater. Occidental isn’t the only place my path has crossed Obama’s. When I was a child and Obama was a young community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, we both attended Trinity United Church of Christ. Two years ago, I was most impressed when the senator stressed to liberals how important it was that they include matters of faith in their political discourse.


Of course, none of what I have in common with Sen. Obama—a college, a church, a city, African Muslim heritage—indicates that he would make a good commander-in-chief. However, when his rival’s platform varies little from his—the exceptions being their positions on the Iraq war and the discrepancies in their health care plans—the personal easily becomes political.


While I personally connect with Obama in several ways, it is more difficult for me to connect with Sen. Clinton on such a level. We are women from Illinois. That essentially sums up what I have in common with her. In recent days, Clinton has tried to align herself with regular working folk by suggesting that she, too, works the night shift. The suggestion rang false to me, the black daughter, niece and cousin of such folk. While I can connect with the Erin Brockovichs of this country, I am hard pressed to pinpoint what I have in common with white women of Sen. Clinton’s ilk, those who have led privileged lives because of their husbands’ accomplishments. None of the editorials I read about the predicament of black women in this election have mentioned how white female privilege figures into the votes that black women cast. Then, I happened upon an essay by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, which addressed this issue with flair.

“Black women voters are rejecting Hillary Clinton because her ascendance is not a liberating symbol,” Harris-Lacewell writes. “Throughout history, privileged white women, attached at the hip to their husband’s power and influence, have been complicit in black women’s oppression.”

Harris-Lacewell goes on to remark that black women who choose not to vote for Clinton aren’t ignoring gender issues. Black feminist identity politics is complex, she asserts. “It is not about letting brothers handle the race stuff or about letting white women dominate the gender stuff. The black women’s fight is on all fronts,” she said.

Thus, black women resist male leaders who attempt to silence them or white women who desire the allegiance of black women without acknowledging racism. In short, Harris-Lacewell concludes, “They will not be drawn into any simple allegiance that refuses to account [for] their full humanity and citizenship.”


While I’m not arguing that Hillary Clinton has oppressed black women, in recent weeks, she and her husband have alienated blacks with comments that belied an undeniable racial callousness. I gave Sen. Clinton a pass when she said that it took President Lyndon Johnson to realize Martin Luther King’s dream. However, when she was criticized for the remark and blamed the controversy on Obama playing “the race card,” she began to lose me. Sen. Clinton may be privileged enough to invoke “the gender card”—announcing in debate after debate how having a female president constitutes change—but Obama does not have the privilege of playing “the race card,” for fear of turning off non-black voters. Obama, in fact, has been criticized for not discussing race enough. Accordingly, he did not initiate the commentary on Hillary Clinton’s Martin Luther King gaffe. Newspaper columnists, on the other hand, did.


Weeks after that remark Sen. Clinton and her husband would continue to come under fire for trying to paint Obama as “the black candidate” rather than a president for the people. Hillary Clinton also was dismissive of the fact that the black electorate of Louisiana and the Potomac Primary voted overwhelmingly for Sen. Obama. She implied that it was a given that black females and males, alike, would vote for Obama, that race indeed trumps gender.


In this instance Sen. Clinton not only perpetuated a kind of stereotype but downplayed Sen. Obama’s personal appeal. She suggested that there was nothing unique about the Illinois senator that made African Americans rally around him, that we have only done so because of a shared ancestry. If that were the case, wouldn’t we have rallied around past black presidential candidates with the same amount of zeal? Dismissing the black electorate on those grounds certainly doesn’t earn Sen. Clinton any points with blacks. In fact, she has so alienated the African American community that many have vowed not to vote at all if she is the Democratic nominee.


And why should they? Until white women navigate race in a way that is as just as meaningful as the way they navigate gender, they shouldn’t count on the support of women, or men, of color.