Race, Gender and the Election

Writing in the Huffington Post, Sally Kohn takes issue with Gloria Steinem about the election. Steinem is urging people to vote for Hillary because of her gender. She points out that if Obama was a woman he probably would not be where he is today. Kohn responds by pointing out that if Hillary was black then she probably wold not be a front-runner either.

What neither writer has noticed is that neither one would be there if he/she was a white man. In Hillary's case she achieved national prominence by being married to a president. She may be a competent senator but her real claim to fame and is her husband. A good bit of her campaign is based on her experience, meaning the time she spent at Bill's side while he did things. The husband of a female president could never run on such a platform (and a gay male president with a husband just will not happen in the foreseeable future).

Obama originally attracted national attention as an articulate black candidate who was comfortable talking about religion. His color gave him a pass on his religion, a subject the last several Democratic candidates for president were very uncomfortable with. While it is true that he is a good public speaker, that isn't enough to get a first-term senator taken seriously. John Edwards run in 2004 was as much as Obama could hope for - respectable enough to earn a place on the ticket but never a real threat to the front-runners.

The bottom line is that both candidates come from oppressed groups but neither can lay much claim to personal discrimination in this election.