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| Let’s mend fences before we open old wounds |
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Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton entered center stage to address her followership. She had shattered but hadn’t completely broken through the invisible glass ceiling, opening space for her sisters in achieving the unspoken; a glimmer of hope for the future. She challenged women to never give up their dreams. With the strength and determination of a national leader, she also urged women to join her in supporting Barack Obama as the next president of the United States of América.
Barack Obama emerged as a biracial Democratic candidate for the president of the United States who ostensibly hangs his hat in a ghetto barber shop and hails from rural Kansas. He graciously thanked his opponent for her relentless determination in a historical battle that changed America. In one of his eloquent speeches given during this turbulent campaign, his oratorical skills were compared to Martin Luther King’s. It was at a time when he was under severe attack by those supposedly within his own ilk. His speech was heralded as a gospel and reopened the dialogue regarding racism.
The heated contest was as much about the battle of the sexes as it was about the on going racial strife that continues to haunt América. Obama’s followers were accused of pulling the race card. Tabloid journalists kept the issues on the table. Cartoonists added fuel to the fire with provocative sketches. There wasn’t a day that newspaper columnists didn’t raise the issue of racism and sexism.
When the contest ended, mendacious rumors have it that some females stated that they would rather vote for McCain or turn to an independent candidate before they would vote for Obama. One woman was quoted as saying, “I would die and slit my wrist before I’d vote for Obama.” In the final analysis, the litmus test of the strength of the Democratic Party lies in its ability to build solidarity among its own.
What specific roles have racism and sexism played in this historical skirmish? No one will ever know. Maybe if Michelle Obama had run and won, we might be better able to dissect the insidious problems that racism and sexism continue to play in our lives. As a black woman, she would have been able to “kill two birds with one stone.” However, this is only a fairy tale. It does make a wonderful story, but it doesn’t answer the question about women reaching their glory. That uncertainty won’t be answered in this millennium as the United States of América reaches yet another milestone as a democratic nation.
Some feminists saw the fiasco as a direct attack on women arguing that sexism was the culprit. I am not sure whether feminist Latinas would take a similar stance as their Anglo counterparts. The assumption that there is commonality between Latina and White feminists is a presumed alliance; the white elephant that seldom gets press.
Dr. Irene Blea, in her book, “La Chicana: and the Intersection of race, gender and class,” argues that white feminists were never in the same camp as their brown sisters. White women have never been able to relate to the question of racism. According to Blea, “Anglo women wanted women of color to do the impossible: to choose between being female and being a person of color.” There agenda was to meld into, become a part of, and incorporate into the class structure that had been built by their archenemy, the white male.
Radical Latina feminists are opposed to the question of the patriarchal class structure built by the white power structure. They did not want to be beholden to a pyramidal structure where a few dominate the masses of the people. They believe that a deconstruction movement is the answer.
No one would dare throw classism into the stew at this point, it might boil over the melting pot whose metaphor has been also contested but not overtly defeated. Yes, the classical battle between the sexes and races may be overshadowed by the third archenemy, classism. Economic determinists are smirking; they know that neither candidate, with pots full of money donated by corporations, wealthy and powerful people, and pennies chipped in from working class supporters via the internet would dare make an assertion that classism had anything to do with the contest. It may be that Obama picked himself up by the bootstraps; but now he has someone to tie his boots when he so desires.
A lot of fence mending needs to happen in order to salvage the democratic party and its real nemesis, the Republicans who have chuckled incessantly, watching the game from the sidelines snickering every time blood was shed. The wounds within the Democratic Party need to be repaired and the relationships that have been damaged need to be healed. Failure to resolve this may result in a defeat that may be even more devastating.
So we are left with a question. What is the intersection between race, gender and class? What commonalties bind this oppressive collage, this mishmash of human construction that causes revolution, at least, revolution of the mind?
I say we need to mend fences before we open old wounds.
Dr. Ramon Del Castillo is an Independent Journalist.
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