unregistered

marite: I assume you are asking specifically with regards to the United States. No, I would not attempt to compare the oppression that women face/have faced with that of African Americans, but I don't think it is necessarily sensical to purport that Clinton carries with her a white legacy of oppression while neglecting Obama's male privilege.

interesteddad

In some ways, discrimination against women, although not as blatant as slavery, was more extended in American History. Black men could vote (and were elected to Congress) six decades before the first woman in the United States was even allowed to cast a vote.

It's easy to overlook the fact that most of our grandmothers were born before women fought for the right to vote in his country. The United States is incredibly backwards on issues of gender equality.

barrons

Cuba could have had the limitations lifted if they had renounced their policies and held real elections. It now appears they are headed in a more liberal direction and you will see the policy changing to match. We already are a major trader with Cuba supplying much of their food.

mythmom

menloparkmom: Apology accepted.

I had to walk out of meeting when Black Studies was trying to control the nascent Jewish Studies and they were arguing about who has been more oppressed. Yuck! This is not an argument that we can settld, though as interesteddad points out, in 1900 Obama would have been able to vote and attend Ivy League institutions, not Hillary.

I think there was been more gender bashing in the campaign than race bashing, though that doesn't automatically make Hillary a better candidate. Victimization should not be the litmus test for national office. I would also like to point out that women often live with their oppressors intimately (perhaps we can even say this about Hillary). However, again, not a litmus test for national office.

I have read Obama's books and watched his speeches. Just as a personal reaction, I find him facile and arrogant. In one section of one of his books he ridicules his mother for enjoying BLACK ORPHEUS and reduces the entire movie to a mockery of the African-Brazilian population of Rio. This isn't the way I see the movie or his mother's appreciation of it.

Hillary can be very disingenuous. She is saddled with a lot. She alienates people and has many mistaken votes.

Neither are unblemished candidates, IMO, but who is?

I would vote for either of them if given the change. I really think we have to stop attacking each other and think about November. I don't either should be disqualified on the basis of race or gender, nor do I think either of them should be selected solely on the basis of race or gender. I guarantee that I would NOT vote of Ann Colter or Leon Spinks. (sp?)

marite

Black men could vote before women. In theory. What was the Civil Rights Movement about again?

Unregistered: Yes, we're talking about the US. Slavery has not been practiced in most other countries since well before Abolition.
As a woman, I have experienced discrimination. But never, have I experienced what Alice Walker experienced as a black child in the 1940s and 1950s.

Does male privilege trump racism? I don't know. From my readings, I doubt it. Female slaves, after all, were doubly oppressed. Maybe some of Hillary supporters believe that she needs to combat Obama's male privilege. Is that why a union leader praised her for having "testicular fortitude?" I knew the phrase "intestinal fortitude" which can apply to both men and women alike, since, I believe, the digestive system is gender neutral. But "testicular fortitude" is a new one for me. Does Hillary's universal health plan cover check-ups for women worried if they have it or not?

mythmom

marite: When I worked with raped, battered and incested women at a Women's Crisis Center I could not have said that female oppression is less than race oppression.

And right now minority men still earn more than women and can menace and threaten women.

Does that argue against the fact that many many women enjoy white skin privilege and a luxury life style provided by themselves or their spouses? No, it doesn't.

That's why I think that jostling for the most favored victim status is beside the point. Neither should be DENIED votes because of her/his race or gender, though both will.

1of42

This is a nice example of eloquent drivel. 2 things struck me as incredibly, incredibly stupid:

1) The flippant and remarkably shallow summation of the complicated Palestine/Israel issue as one of Israeli subjugation alone.

2) The outrageous insinuation that Hillary would not be able to have discourse with others because she would bring some kind of racial baggage along with her. Walker says she's not supporting Obama based on race, yet a simple reading of what she writes begs to differ

unregistered

marite, I did not intend to turn this into a racism vs. sexism debate. I was asking a genuine question about both Clinton and Obama's dual roles, belonging into a group of oppressed people and oppressors. I agree with mythmom's post, but I really don't want to get involved with debating who is more historically oppressed. I just find it disingenuous to oppose Clinton for her privileged white status while overlooking Obama's male privilege (though I would not use either as a criterium in deciding who will get my vote).

paying3tuitions

I still haven't recovered from reading the book written by Alice Munro's daughter, Rebecca Walker. Alice Munro has ZERO credibility with me, even though I support Obama and liked some of Munro's books, including The Color Purple.

In "Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self," Alice Munro's biracial daughter Rebecca Walker Levine (born from a white Jewish dad who came to her state as a Civil Rights Movement lawyer in the l960's) represents her mother as an emotionally oblivious and absentee mother. Even as she ramped up her inquiry into Black identity and heritage, the mother (Alice) did nothing to help educate, expose or guide her daughter to Jewish community. No Sunday school, no books, nothing is represented in that home to help her own biracial/bi-religious child understand both sides of her self.

In the quoted article, Alice Walker just threw off that unbalanced one-liner about Israel and the Palestinenas because, I suspect, based on how she BEHAVED for 30 years towards her own daughter...she harbors no respect for the Jewish culture or civilization that is also her daughter's birthright to explore.

Following her divorce, Alice Walker moved cross-country to San Francisco to find more like-minded friends, women who would nurture her as a writer. She and her husband arranged a bizarre and self-serving custody arrangement that required Rebecca to begin a new school on either coast every two years throughout middle and high school.

Rebecca's father remarried a Jewish woman who tried to be a positive stepmother to Rebecca, but by then the extremely rebellious teen wouldn't have any of her, finally throwing the stepmother against a mirror to ensure her ejection from that middle-class, bourgeois household. Finding herself pregnant at age 14, the most helpful thing Rebecca says her mom Alice did for her during those turbulent times was to set up an abortion in San Francisco.
Much of the time, according to her daughter, mom Alice travelled or absented herself from their two-bedroom apartment so the mom could write without distraction.

No, Alice Walker impresses me not at all.

I currently support Obama, and will support either Democrat who takes the nomination that Obama deserves. But as a Jew, I want to point out to fellow Obama supporters that this article by Alice Walker, which I've now read 6 times from my leftwing friends, is extremely unsettling to read. She picks out no other political example except Israel, and continues to demonstrate her cold disinterest in Jewish future, including within her own flesh-and-blood daughter.

One reason I do support Obama is he was the first candidate to call for improved relations between American Jews and African Americans, who used to know how to communicate better 40 years ago than today. Alice Walker must be missing the memo from Barack that we're going to try to bridge gaps between communities. Please let's try.

marite

Mythmom:

White women did not endure the Middle Passage during which more than half of the Africans brought to these shores died. They were not sold and made to breed for the benefit of their masters, they were not separated from their husbands and children, etc...
By the time women received the right to vote in this country, many African-Americans of both genders still could not vote.
An African-American might have been allowed to attend an Ivy League school. He might also have been the only one of his race to do so.
About ten years ago, in the mid-1990s, some African-American students at Harvard were challenged by the university police. Their crime: sitting on the steps of one of the college buildings, talking desultorily. The policeman did not believe they belonged there. The one who took it the hardest was the one who had not previously experienced discrimination (his dad was in the army, and the army has done an exemplary job of integration). No female student would have thus been challenged.

Having said all that, I agree with razorsharp that Alice Walker's argument in favor of Obama are not convincing. But her experience is important to bear in mind.

razorsharp

If a President should be elected based on hardship as Walker suggests, then McCain is the one who should be President. Why? Obama has supposedly suffered as a black person. Clinton has supposedly suffered as a woman. But only McCain has actually been a slave. He was a slave for 5 years in Vietnam. We don't call it slavery, we give it a nicer name --prisioner of war --, but it was probably as bad or worse than being a slave prior to the civil war. McCain was kepted in a cage and beaten. Walker should be supporting McCain because only McCain has any real idea what it is like to be a slave.

mythmom

Yes, I am not negating that in the least. Not in the least. Slavery and all that is/was attached to it is an abomination. There is no argument.

epiphany

I so agree with your post 21, marite, and with reference to current/recent relations as well.

LaxAttack09

Last time I checked the UN created an israeli and palestinian state in 1948. Following the arab led invasion of Israel on the day of it's creation Israel turned the West Bank over to Jordan and Gaza over to Egypt. Following the 67 war Israel said screw it and occupied both lands. In 05 Israel withdrew all forces from Gaza along with the entire Jewish population. Despite being offered a Palestinian state numerous times the PLO has shown to be a less than credible negotiating partner.

I suggest you take a course on the history of Israel before you jump to conclusions. I took one and it opened my eyes...I went from being a pretty ardent supporter of Palestine againt Zionism to much better informed in the matters and much more sympathetic to Israeli "occupation" since then.

ABCB7099

Horrible thread posting. Shameful. You guys have said it all.

I'm (very) glad to hear of your change of heart, LaxAttack09. reality is often inconvenient to those who hate Israel. Your story gives me some hope for people.