[DEBATE] : Gender and Race in Presidential politics: US feminists debate

[MFleshman at aol.com]

Hil plays the bourgeosis feminst card. Steinem makes a crude  appeal for 
white liberal women's solidarity with Hillary, and is eviscerated by  African 
American feminist Harris-Lacewell.  Steinem's original NY Times  piece follows at 
the end. Sorry for length.
 
Democracy Now January 14, 2008 
 
Race and Gender in Presidential Politics: A Debate Between Gloria Steinem  
and Melissa Harris-Lacewell

 
 
 
 
In the race for the Democratic nomination, a victory for either Senator  
Hillary Clinton or Senator Barack Obama—as the first woman or African American  
Democratic nominee—would be unprecedented in U.S. history. We host a discussion  
on race and gender politics with feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem and 
Princeton  University Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell. [includes rush  transcript]
 
Guests:

Gloria Steinem, feminist pioneer and  bestselling author of several books, 
including Outrageous Acts and Everyday  Rebellions. In the early ‘70s she 
founded Ms. Magazine and New  York magazine and also helped organize the National 
Women’s Political  Caucus. More recently she co-founded the Women’s Media 
Center in 2004. 
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor of  Politics and African 
American Studies at Princeton University. She is author of  Barbershops, Bibles, and 
BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought.  She is at work on a new book 
called For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered  Politics When Being Strong Wasn’t 
Enough. 
 
AMY GOODMAN: The results from Iowa and New Hampshire have placed  Senators 
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as the current frontrunners for the  Democratic 
nomination. A victory for either of them as the first woman or  African 
American Democratic nominee, not to mention president, would be  unprecedented in 
American history. 


In recent days, their differences over foreign and domestic policy have taken 
 a backseat. Instead, questions of race and gender have dominated the 
political  contest between them. The debate came to a head over a comment made by 
Senator  Clinton in an interview on Fox News. 
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when  President 
Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able  to get 
through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do;  presidents 
before had not even tried. But it took a president to get it done.  That 
dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people’s  lives, 
because we had a president who said, “We’re going to do it,” and  actually got 
it accomplished.
AMY GOODMAN: After Clinton made those remarks, Senator Obama and  several 
others criticized her for minimizing Dr. King’s role in securing the  Civil 
Rights Act. NBC host Tim Russert questioned Senator Clinton about this on  Sunday’s 
edition of Meet the Press. Clinton emphasized race or gender  should have 
nothing to do with the campaign. 
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: This is the most exciting election we’ve had  in such a 
long time, because you have an African American, an extraordinary  man, a 
person of tremendous talents and abilities, running to become our  president; you 
have a woman running to break the highest and hardest glass  ceiling. I don’t 
think either of us want to inject race or gender in this  campaign.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, we host a discussion on race and gender politics  in the 
race for the Democratic nomination. 
Gloria Steinem is a feminist pioneer, a bestselling writer. She founded  Ms. 
Magazine, helped organize the National Women’s Political Caucus in  the early ’
70s, and in 2004 co-founded the Women’s Media Center. Gloria Steinem  
recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Times supporting Hillary Clinton.  It’s titled “
Women Are Never Front-Runners.” She argues Senator Obama could  never have 
been a viable candidate if he were a woman and asks, “Why is the sex  barrier 
not taken as seriously as the racial one?” Gloria Steinem joins me here  in the 
firehouse studio. 
Melissa Harris-Lacewell is Associate Professor of Politics and African  
American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of Barbershops,  
Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought. She is at work  on a new 
book called For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Politics When Being  Strong 
Wasn’t Enough. Melissa Harris-Lacewell is a Barack Obama supporter.  She joins 
us now from Princeton, New Jersey. 
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Gloria Steinem, let’s begin with  you. 
You laid out a hypothetical in your op-ed piece, in your column. Why don’t  
you lay it out for us here? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, I was just—I think one learns a lot from  parallels, 
and so it would be interesting to try to project what would have  happened to 
Barack Obama in his life if he had been a female human being. I  mean, I really 
think that we have seen historically that women of color, African  American 
women, have understood—have been just in a better position, you know,  to 
understand the roles of both sex and race, and it made me nostalgic for the  days of 
Shirley Chisholm and campaigning for Shirley Chisholm. 
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, you know, it was so clear that, you know,  because one 
didn’t have to choose between race and gender. And indeed, I am  still trying 
not to choose between race and gender, because the basis of my  choice was not 
that, but that, in fact, Hillary Clinton will arrive in  Washington knowing 
how Washington works, because she’s had it written on her  skin like Kafka in 
The Prisoner—wasn’t it?—when—and I think we can’t afford  really—we’re in 
such dire circumstances that to have the first couple of years  of Carter or 
even the first couple of years of Clinton again, who arrived in  Washington not 
understanding how Washington worked. But if Barack Obama is the  candidate, I 
will work for him with a whole heart. And I wish we had  preferential voting, 
you know, so we can go one, two and three, at least, rather  than having to 
choose only one. 
AMY GOODMAN: You hadn’t originally come out for Hillary Clinton. 
GLORIA STEINEM: No, my first column on this subject was essentially  taking 
to task the media, who were asking us, trying to force us to choose  
prematurely and asking me, “Are you supporting Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?”  And I 
would always just say yes, because it seemed to me wrong that they were,  you 
know, so forced on—so focused on this long before the primaries. 
AMY GOODMAN: Melissa Harris-Lacewell, your thoughts on this discussion  about 
race and gender? 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, I mean, honestly, I’m appalled by the  
parallel that Ms. Steinem draws in the beginning part of the New York  Times article. 
What she’s trying to do there is to make a claim towards sort  of bringing in 
black women into a coalition around questions of gender and  asking us to 
ignore the ways in which race and gender intersect. This is  actually a standard 
problem of second-wave feminism, which, although there have  been twenty-five 
years now—oh, going on forty years, actually, of African  American women 
pushing back against this, have really failed to think about the  ways in which 
trying to appropriate black women’s lives’ experience in that way  is really 
offensive, actually. 
And so, when Steinem suggests, for example, in that article that Obama is a  
lawyer married to another lawyer and to suggest that, for example, Hillary  
Clinton represents some kind of sort of breakthrough in questions of gender, I  
think that ignores an entire history in which white women have in fact been in 
 the White House. They’ve been there as an attachment to white male 
patriarchal  power. It’s the same way that Hillary Clinton is now making a claim 
towards  experience. It’s not her experience. It’s her experience married to, 
connected  to, climbing up on white male patriarchy. This is exactly the ways in 
which this  kind of system actually silences questions of gender that are more 
complicated  than simply sort of putting white women in positions of power and 
then claiming  women’s issues are cared for. 
Now, what I know from the work that I’ve done on the Obama campaign is that  
there are tens of thousands of extremely hard-working white men and women, as  
well as black men and women, as well as actually a huge multiracial and  
interethnic coalition of people working for Barack Obama. And so, for Steinem to  
sort of make this very clear race and gender dichotomy that she does in that  
New York Times op-ed piece, I think it’s the very worst of second-wave  
feminism. 
AMY GOODMAN: Gloria Steinem? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, it’s very painful to hear her say that, because  what I 
meant was the opposite, you know, was to bring into the discussion the  equal 
treatment of these kinds of questions, because—I mean, I didn’t want to  
write this. I was sitting there trying to do my own work and not do this, but I  
got so alarmed at the way that Hillary Clinton was being treated almost  porno-
–not just almost—pornographically, in ways that you can’t even mention in  
the New York Times. 
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, you know, that there were—there is pornography  on the—
you know, about her. There’s nutcrackers and with her legs as  nutcrackers. 
There’s all kinds of—Chris Matthews saying, you know, if she hadn’t  got the 
sympathy vote because of her husband’s affairs, she could never be in  the US 
Senate. There’s people yelling in the crowd that—you know, “Iron my  shirt!” 
or “Marry me!” or whatever it is. 
And, you know, if we’re going to unleash the talents that we so desperately  
need in all of the country and do away with the system we have now, which has  
produced George Bush, who would be selling used cars if he didn’t have a 
famous  father, if he weren’t white, if he weren’t rich—maybe not even selling 
used  cars—we need to enlarge the talent pool in every direction. So my plea was 
 really directed at the press to take all forms of discrimination seriously. 
And  I’m very sorry if the parallel, you know, was not—didn’t make that clear 
in the  beginning. 
AMY GOODMAN: Melissa Harris-Lacewell? 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yeah, I absolutely agree that electing  another 
president whose path to the White House is basically through either  parental or 
familial connection is an absolute travesty for our democracy. Our  democracy 
should not read—I don’t want my daughter, who’s six now, to go off to  high 
school and read, you know, a story that says Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush,  
Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Clinton. I actually  absolutely 
agree that we have to have a deeper bench in American democracy. And  that’s 
part of the reason that I’m a strong supporter of Barack Obama. 
This is not, I think, the moment to suggest that one is owed the presidency,  
that there is kind of a natural line of succession. I think that’s exactly 
what  we don’t want in this country. What we need is a real conversation with 
people  who are willing to be honest about sort of all of the elements of who we 
are as  people: our citizenship, our race, our gender. 
And I will say that I am really offended by the ways in which the Hillary  
Clinton campaign has not taken the high road on this. They’ve consistently used  
ways of thinking about her as Bill Clinton’s wife. You cannot have it both 
ways.  You cannot both claim this sort of role as independent woman making a 
stand on  questions of feminism and claim that your experience begins as First 
Lady of  Arkansas. You know, you simply have to stand on your own or not. There 
are  dozens of white women in this country who I would be a huge supporter of 
for the  American presidency. The president of my own university would be at 
the top of  that list, but not someone who is making this claim towards being 
president as  her right as a result of a relationship with a former president. 
I think that’s  exactly what we don’t need in third-wave feminism. 
AMY GOODMAN: Gloria Steinem? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, I do think that we need to be able to understand  the 
value of all experience, including that experience which has been limited  too 
much by race or by gender. And, for instance, there is a move at a populist  
level to attribute an economic value to the work of care giving, which is 90%  
done by women, but by some men, at replacement value and make that deductible 
if  you pay taxes and, you know, refundable if you don’t, to understand the 
value of  two-thirds of the work in the country, which is care-giving work. So 
just  because it is a female role or just because it is a role that has been 
limited  by race does not mean it was not a valuable—we need to be able to value 
that, as  well. 
But here’s my idea. There are good feminists, I think, you know, and good  
people inside all three campaigns, and that is a first, you know, because all of 
 the candidates are—you know, we have differences, big differences, with all 
of  them—or at least I do—but they are pretty good people. Their heads and 
their  hearts are connected, and the issues are not too bad. So, you know, I’m 
hoping  that because there are good feminists inside all three campaigns, we 
can join  together and keep them from attacking each other. 
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to go to break, and then we’re going to  come 
back. Our guest here in New York in the firehouse studio, Gloria Steinem;  
and at Princeton University, joining us is Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell.  
She’s associate professor of politics and African American studies. This is  
Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. And we’d like  to 
know how you feel. You can email us at mail at democracynow.org. Stay with us.  
[break] 
AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about race and gender in presidential  politics, our 
guests: in Princeton University, Melissa Harris-Lacewell,  associate professor 
of politics and African American studies at Princeton; and  joining us in our 
firehouse studio is Gloria Steinem, who wrote a New York  Times op-ed piece. 
And just for the record, the beginning of that piece read—let me just bring  
it up right here so I correctly quote it. It says, "The woman in question 
became  a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate 
lawyer  and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the 
daughter of a  white American mother and a black African father — in this 
race-conscious  country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for 
eight  years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity. 
“Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be  
elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you  
believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on  earth?” 
That’s the beginning of that quote. 
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, as we were ending right before the segment close,  
you wanted to say something. 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, only that, I mean, I am an unmarried  working 
mother. I certainly understand, in a very intimate way, you know, the  power 
and the value of domestic and caretaking work. But I also know very  clearly a 
history that I believe Steinem’s piece attempted to distort, and that  is that 
as white women moved into the workforce, much of that caretaking work  did 
not go to white men who sort of took up and helped out, but it fell on women  of 
color—African American women, immigrant women—who stepped in to do much of  
the domestic labor and childcare provision, so that white women could in fact  
become a part of the workforce. So to, for example, make an argument like 
black  men had the right to vote long before white women is to ignore that black 
men  were then lynched regularly for any attempt to actually exercise that 
right.  
I just feel that we have got to get clear about the fact that race and gender 
 are not these clear dichotomies in which, you know, you’re a woman or you’
re  black. I’m sitting here in my black womanhood body, knowing that it is more 
 complicated than that. African American men have been complicit in the  
oppression of African American women. White women have been complicit in the  
oppression of black men and black women. Those things are true. And so, to  
pretend that we can somehow take them out of the conversation when a white woman  
runs against a black man, when she tears up at being sort of beat up by him,  
when her husband can come in and rally around her and suggest that we need to  
sort of support her because she’s having difficulties, while Barack Obama is  
getting death threats, basically lynching threats on him and his family, these  
are—for a second-wave feminist with an understanding of the complexity of  
American race and gender to take this kind of position in the New York  Times 
struck me as, again, the very worst of what that feminism can offer—in  other 
words, division. 
AMY GOODMAN: Gloria Steinem? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, I was trying to be, and I think, from the  response I’
ve been getting, I was mainly taken as, unifying. And the whole—the  end of the 
piece, the context of the piece is that we need to take all kinds of  
restrictions seriously. So, you know, and I think the—I wish the rest of the  
paragraph about the black man getting the vote first had been there, because, in  
fact, as Sojourner Truth pointed out, if the coalition had remained together and  
white and black women had remained part of the drive for universal adult  
suffrage, it’s possible that there would have been less violence faced at the  
polls, because there would have been white women and black women coming to the  
polls together, if the coalition had stayed together. So, you know, my 
argument  is for coalition and staying together. 
And I must say, for conversations like these—I mean, you know, I think, you  
know, we’re conversing through a screen here, but I felt there was some more  
understanding now than there was when we started out, you know? And we need to 
 have more of this conversation. And since I really believe the historical  
pattern is going to obtain and Obama is going to be the candidate, in fact— 
AMY GOODMAN: You do think that? 
GLORIA STEINEM: I do think that, yeah. I mean, who knows? 
AMY GOODMAN: What makes you think that? 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: What historical pattern? 
GLORIA STEINEM: I think the historical pattern of, you know, military  
leadership in the White House, for instance, which usually has been men, and,  you 
know, all of those things. So we’re going to end up working in coalition.  And 
this is, in any case, the first election of the twenty-first century, which  
is a positive thing to me. 
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Harris-Lacewell? 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, again, you know, this is a bizarre  reading of 
history, this notion of sort of African American men somehow standing  over 
and above white women. I’m just not sure exactly what history is being  claimed 
here, particularly in electoral history. We know that there are far more  
white women in both the House of Representatives and in the US Senate than there  
are African Americans, either men or women. So it’s an odd sort of claim to 
make  that Barack Obama’s gender is this kind of clear straight line. 
What I do agree with is that we ought to be in coalition. But I think we’ve  
got to be in coalition on fair grounds. Part of what, again, has been sort of 
an  anxiety for African American women feminists like myself is that we’re 
often  asked to join up with white women’s feminism, but only on their own terms, 
as  long as we sort of remain silent about the ways in which our gender, our 
class,  our sexual identity doesn’t intersect, as long as we can be quiet 
about those  things and join onto a single agenda. So, yes, I absolutely agree, we 
must be in  coalition, but it must be a fair coalition of equals. 
And it’s one of the things that’s exciting about Barack Obama’s campaign,  
working on it in New Hampshire, seeing it at work in Iowa, being a part of  
meetings here in New Jersey, is in fact that you cannot pick what an Obama  
supporter looks like. Obama supporters are young and old, black and white, male  
and female. And it is, in fact, the most sort of nurturing and  
coalition-building space I’ve ever had an opportunity to do political work in.  
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, then that’s all the more reason that it deserves  and 
probably will, you know, take the nomination. But I do think that to say—to  
give the women’s movement to white women is not historically accurate, you know, 
 to give the second wave to it, because in my experience, the women of the  
National Welfare Rights Organization, you know, many individual women, were in  
the leadership of the women’s movement always. So— 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Absolutely. I mean, I think women of color  have 
been pushing back and challenging. But, I mean, to suggest that it was  always 
just sort of about this clear sisterhood that didn’t have all of these  
anxieties would, I mean, be to ignore again sort of the best historiographies  out 
there, as well as kind of the personal stories of women who were part of  SNCC, 
the Black Panther Party, NOW. Again, not that black women are not a big  part 
of thinking about reproductive rights, about thinking about voting rights,  but 
it’s also been true that thinking about those issues has often required a  
silence—in the same ways, by the way, the civil rights movement has often asked  
African American women to silence their gendered positions in order to be in  
solidarity with the race. 
I’m just suggesting that maybe if we look through the prism of black women’s 
 experience and not just to try to use black women’s experience as a kind of, 
you  know, look at how much harder it is for women, but instead to really try 
to  understand that intersectional experience, I think we’d come to a clearer 
 perspective. 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, I wasn’t making Barack Obama into a European  American 
person. I was assuming that he would be in this hypothetical, which is  a lead 
into an article to, you know— 
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask— 
GLORIA STEINEM: —that obviously he would be at this intersection—he  would 
be both a female human being and an African American human being—and to  
consider that. 
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you the question about war and peace. I mean,  the 
earliest community in this country, population, African Americans, the  largest 
group who were opposed to the war from the very beginning and also iced  out 
of the corporate media. Do you think that plays a big role here? I wanted to  
play this clip of Senator Clinton. She voted for the war in Iraq in 2002. This  
is some of what she said on the Senate floor at that time. 
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: So it is with conviction that I support this  
resolution as being in the best interest of our nation, and it is a vote that  says 
clearly to Saddam Hussein, “This is your last chance. Disarm our be  disarmed.” 

AMY GOODMAN: Now I’ll play a short exchange about Senator Clinton’s  Iraq 
vote in yesterday, Sunday morning’s interview with Tim Russert on Meet  the 
Press. 
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: It is absolutely unfair to say that the vote,  as Chuck 
Hagel, who was one of the architects of the resolution, has said, was  a vote 
for war. It was a vote to use the threat of force against Saddam  Hussein, 
who never did anything without being made to do so. 
TIM RUSSERT: The title of the act was the Authorization for Use of  Military 
Force Against Iraq Resolution.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Tim Russert questioning Hillary Clinton. Your  
response, Gloria? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, she said, “arm or be disarmed.” I mean, this is  a 
conundrum. I utterly disagree with her vote, 100% disagree with her vote. If  we 
had been in that position, being shown all this false information and so on,  
I don’t exactly know how we would have voted, but I certainly disagree with 
her  vote. 
AMY GOODMAN: And that issue playing in here in the race between Obama  and 
Clinton, that Obama came out early opposed to war. 
GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah. I think that that’s a great advantage for Obama,  in 
fact. He wasn’t being asked to vote under the same circumstances. And in some  
sense, we need to compare votes that took place under the same circumstances in 
 the time in which they overlapped on the Senate—in the Senate. But he was  
speaking out, and that’s very important. And it’s, you know, part of the 
reason  that all this time when people said to me, “Are supporting Hillary Clinton 
or  Barack Obama?” I always said yes. 
AMY GOODMAN: Melissa Harris-Lacewell, you were in New Hampshire. We  spoke to 
you right before the vote came in. At that time, the polls were saying  
Barack Obama was going to win. Your thoughts now? 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, not only was I in New Hampshire, I was  also 
in Illinois. I taught at the University of Chicago for years before coming  to 
Princeton. So Barack Obama was my state senator. He was my US senator. So  
every time I hear people say he doesn’t have much experience, I find it  
extremely irritating, because it means that somehow representing me in my  government 
meant very little experience. So I actually was there in Chicago and  in 
Illinois when Senator Obama took those stands against the war, and I can tell  you, 
it was not an easy thing to do. So I’m appreciative of having been  
represented by someone like him who had those kinds of positions. 
I mean, what happened in New Hampshire, clearly Barack Obama brought in the  
percentage in the polls that he was expected to bring in. But a whole new 
group  of voters showed up to vote for Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t look as though  
Barack Obama’s poll voters actually abandoned him. It looked as though they  
actually came and sincerely voted their interest, which I think is a great 
sign  for the capacity of this campaign to move forward. But there was a whole 
new  group of voters, mostly women of Hillary Clinton’s own generation, white 
women  of Hillary Clinton’s own generation, who did show up at the polls and vote
—cast  a vote for Hillary Clinton. And that’s what put her over the top. 
And I do believe that much of that had to do with this intersection of race  
and gender, the ways in which Hillary Clinton became discernible, 
understandable  and recognizable to these voters in her moment of anxiety and stress, in a 
way  that Barack Obama, as an African American man, remains alien to many 
white  women. In other words, it’s just very difficult for them to see themselves 
in  him. But again, 36% of that vote who claimed that they were going to vote 
for  Barack did in fact show up and do so. So I think it’s good news for the 
Obama  campaign, although it does continue to indicate the ways in which white 
women’s  particular race and gender position can be of major benefit to them 
when running  against an African American man. 
AMY GOODMAN: Your response? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, are white women being racist when they vote for  
Hillary Clinton? I do not know. We’d have to look into the heart of every person  who
’s voting. 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: That’s not what I said. 
GLORIA STEINEM: Alright, good, but— 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yeah, I—in fact, I’ve regularly said that I  don’t 
think that naked racism explains this. He could not have gotten the kind  of 
support that he got in New Hampshire. Again, what I’m suggesting—and this  
goes again to this question of complexity—is that our understanding and  
expectation of who white women are and how we respond to their suffering is  quite 
different historically than how we respond to the suffering, anxiety and  stress 
of African American men and women. So the people who said they were going  to 
vote for Barack Obama apparently voted for him, that 36% . But a whole new  
group felt motivated to come out and vote for Hillary Clinton, and that seems to 
 be related to her particular sort of performance on the Monday before the  
election. And that does seem to me to be indicated in questions of race and  
gender, without saying that these people are naked racists. 
I’m incredibly impressed by the voters of New Hampshire, who take very  
seriously the trust in which the rest of us as citizens put into them to make a  
decision, because so often we are disenfranchised from the process, because the  
early primary system allows just a few voters to make these critical choices. 
 And over and over again, the people of New Hampshire were very serious in 
how  they were trying to gather information and make decisions. I would not 
disparage  them by claiming they are racist. I would, however, say they’re part of 
the  American historical system that responds to white women suffering in 
very  particular ways, and it cannot see African American suffering in the same 
ways.  
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Professor Lacewell, I spoke to you  on 
Jesse Jackson’s show, on Keep Hope Alive, when you were in New  Hampshire. And 
afterwards, I spoke with Reverend Jackson about while—though he’s  supporting 
Obama, he’s not out on the campaign trail for him. It was, of course,  right 
before the New Hampshire primary. We were in New York. And he said  basically 
that Obama was keeping him at arm’s length, and he was respecting  that. Your 
thoughts? 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, again, there’s a long Chicago history  that 
goes way back here with these two gentlemen and sort of their relationship  to 
Chicago politics. And we have to remember that as being just sort of the  
strategy of politics in general. 
But the other part of it is, there’s no question that the Obama campaign has  
run as much as possible a non-racialized campaign. They are not running for  
president of black America; they are running for the president of the United  
States of America. And they, I think, have a recognition, from David Axelrod 
on  down, the ways in which race can be polarizing. 
I mean, I’m very glad that Ms. Steinem got such positive responses to her  
op-ed piece. I wrote a piece which hit _Slate_ 
(http://www.slate.com/id/2181782/nav/ais/) , in which I sort of  made the similar arguments I made here, and I 
received death threats to myself,  to my daughter. I was called a racist, even 
though I spend most of my hours, you  know, working with privileged white 
students, who I love and adore and work very  hard for here at Princeton. 
So I have to say that the ways in which race, the moment it shows up,  
explodes campaigns is part of why the Obama race has sort of kept race at an  arm’s 
distance. And so, many of us who are supporters but not part of the  campaign 
are the ones who end up bringing up race, because the campaign itself  does 
not do so. 
GLORIA STEINEM: You know, it’s interesting to me, you know, also, what  
Melissa is saying, that—I haven’t looked at these polls in a couple of months,  
but it seems that African American voters are more likely than European—than  
white voters to think that Obama can’t win and that females, white females, are  
more likely to think that Clinton can’t win. So, you know, I suspect we’re 
each  responding, or those groups are responding to their individual life 
experiences,  so, you know—which supports what she’s saying. 
AMY GOODMAN: Though—I mean, I don’t want to bring up any polls now,  because 
we know how wrong they can be. Though when you look at this new ABC poll  in 
South Carolina, it is shifted dramatically, the African American population,  
from being, when polled, supposedly— 
GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah, because now it seems possible. 
AMY GOODMAN: —well over 60% . 
GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah. Now it seems more possible. So, in the absence  of 
evidence, you know, now it’s changed. 
AMY GOODMAN: Sam Husseini in Washington, D.C. raised an interesting  question 
about pollsters asking the question, not who do you think will be  president, 
but who do you want to see president— 
GLORIA STEINEM: Mm-hmm. 
AMY GOODMAN: —which would be—could be a very different answer. 
GLORIA STEINEM: Yes. No, that would be very good. And I do wish we had  
preferential voting, too. I think a lot of Americans do at this moment in time.  
AMY GOODMAN: And you mean by that? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, I mean so that you could vote one, two and  three. You 
don’t just have to bullet-vote one person, which contributes to this  
hierarchical nature, and so on. 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, there was a person who put that out as  a 
possibility, and that was Lonnie Guinier, who talked about all the ways— 
GLORIA STEINEM: Yes, right. 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: —in which we’d have a more fair and  democratic 
system. And the Clintons walked away from her. 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, as an appointee, yes, they walked away. And I  disagree 
with that, too. You know, I refuse to be—you know, we have to win this  
election, and we have to win our humanity, in addition and along the way. And  I—
you know, I refuse to be divided on this, you know? It seems to me that  when—
fundamentally, when we have to keep talking and keep honoring each other’s  
opinions and move against the forces that Nader just described. 
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Lacewell, that shift we are now seeing in South  
Carolina, if in fact the polls are correct? 
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yeah, it’s probably two things. One, when the  early 
polling was demonstrating among African Americans that Hillary Clinton was  
leading Barack Obama, a great deal of that had to do with name recognition. As  
Barack Obama has become increasingly a household name, a visible candidate, he
’s  moved up on everyone’s list. 
The other piece of it is, unquestionably, sort of, I think, two dynamics  
around race in American politics. One is that as the voters of Iowa and New  
Hampshire have demonstrated a willingness to vote for a black candidate, it’s  
made African Americans more likely to be optimistic about his ability to win and  
therefore not to be throwing their vote away. There’s a lot of anxiety that 
you  don’t throw your vote away; you have to back a winner. Now it looks like 
Barack  Obama can be a winner. So you see more strategic voting on the part of 
African  Americans. 
The other part is that African Americans, early on, had a great deal of  
anxiety about Barack, because he had almost too much white support. In other  
words, he was getting so few questions about race that I think it raised some  
anxieties for African American voters, who were sort of asking, well, if there  
are all of these people in the media, if there are all of these white voters 
who  are interested in you, does that mean that you’re not with us, that you do 
not  share our interests, because historically, people who have been supported 
by  these large coalitions have not been for the interests of African 
Americans?  
So I think, increasingly, actually as sort of the racial attack machine shows 
 up against Obama, I think this, in certain ways, is supportive of a black 
vote,  who says, “Oh, I see. Actually, they’re not completely for you. They’ll 
send out  people like Bob Johnson of BET to suggest, you know, terrible things 
about you  and to disparage you personally.” And when that sort of attack 
occurs, I think  it actually supports—increases the amount of support among most 
African  Americans, although the key here is to remember, African Americans, 
like white  women, are not a monolithic voting group. They do not make all 
decisions  together. We don’t have a straw vote first and then decide who we’re 
going to  support. We’re independent individual citizens making choices. And I’
m excited  that African Americans have a choice like this in this election. 
AMY GOODMAN: Final word, Gloria Steinem? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, I just think we have to be able to call each  other up. 
You know, I mean, my friends who are working in the Obama campaign  called me 
up and said someone, not Hillary Clinton, but someone for Hillary  Clinton, 
an organization, was saying that Obama—was distorting Obama’s record on  safe 
and legal abortion. And so, you know, if we can—backstage—and, you know, so  
I called up and tried to do my best to eliminate that distortion, to make sure 
 it wasn’t happening. And I hope that having that on your television show 
now, we  can call each other up, and when—you know, I can’t promise, and 
probably nobody  can promise, to control a campaign, but at least if we have a kind 
of network  inside the three campaigns—the three campaigns—we can call each 
other up when  there are distortions, when there are things that are attacks 
that seem unfair.  
AMY GOODMAN: The third campaign, you’re referring to Edwards? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Pardon? 
AMY GOODMAN: The third campaign? 
GLORIA STEINEM: Is Edwards, right. And, you know, I think that’s  important, 
because there are all these political consultants doing the opposite.  You 
know, they’re trying to push them apart and trying to make them more  aggressive. 
So I really would like to see a kind of third force of all of us who  
obviously share issues inside these three campaigns, who essentially say, if you  don’
t cut this out, you know, to the consultants, we’ll quit in public or do  
whatever we need to do to try to make it a campaign on the issues, more accuracy  
without false accusations. 
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there, and I thank you very  much—
leave it there for today, but continue this very important discussion.  
Gloria Steinem has been our guest in studio, well known for her pioneering work  in 
writing, in feminism. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor at Princeton  
University, associate professor of politics and African American studies, she  just 
returned from New Hampshire, where she was leading students in looking at  the 
US democratic process.  
____________________________________
  
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January 8, 2008 The New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor
Women Are Never Front-Runners 
By GLORIA  STEINEM
 
Correction Appended 
THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community  
organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls,  ages 9 
and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black  African 
father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she  served 
as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice  for 
national unity. 
Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected 
 to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe 
she  could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?  
If you answered no to either question, you’re not alone. Gender is probably  
the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must 
be  in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way 
down the  list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it 
polarizes  gender roles more than the average democracy.  
That’s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making  
change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race  
were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of  
power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible  
exception of obedient family members in the latter).  
If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say,  
Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long 
ago.  Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama’s public 
style  — or Bill Clinton’s either — without being considered too emotional by 
 Washington pundits.  
So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The  
reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused  
with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as 
 more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human 
 race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) 
so  men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing 
with a  powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine”
 for so  long that some white men find their presence to be 
masculinity-affirming (as  long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still 
no “right”  way to be a woman in public power without being considered a 
you-know-what.  
I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems  
of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s 
why  Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate 
turn  into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a 
coalition  of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage 
movements  progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should 
remember that.  
I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community  
organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an  
unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no  masculinity 
to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s  talent by 
her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I’m  not 
opposing Mr. Obama; if he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look  at 
votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more  
than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President  
Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.  
But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is  
seen as divisive by her sex.  
What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when  
citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights  
confrontations.  
What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when  
supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and  
disloyal if they didn’t.  
What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — 
 for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while 
not  challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the 
Washington  status quo.  
What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to  
deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who  
disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are 
 the one group that grows more radical with age.  
This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool  
limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to  
take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’
m  supporting her because she’ll be a great president and  because she’s a 
woman.”  
 
Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Women’s Media  Center.












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