If Obama Is a Woman, and I Vote For Clinton, Am I a Man?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


One would think Maureen Dowd had cornered the market on silly-beyond-belief gendered nonsense about Sens. Clinton and Obama. One would be wrong; Newsweek wants to vie for that crown:

It has been a rarity in modern political life: a wide-open race for the nomination of both parties. But whatever happens from here on out, this campaign will always be remembered for the emergence of the first serious woman candidate for president: Barack Obama.

Obama is a female candidate for president in the same way that Bill Clinton was the first black president.

Yes. The same tediously stupid way.

You have to listen to comedian/civil rights activist Dick Gregory “apologize” to Bill for black people making him think he was black if you’re having trouble putting the latter bit of twaddle to rest, but what of the new twaddle?

This—Obama is a ‘woman’ cuz he’s all nice and stuff—seems like yet another example of how Obama isn’t ‘really’ black. (He can’t be. He isn’t scary.) That makes him acceptable to whites since ‘black’ men are dangerous and uncooperative and, to put it mildly, not team players. The hardest kind of racism to combat is the kind that pats the ‘good’ Negroes on the head and sets them up in opposition to the black masses, signaling that ‘they’ (the black masses) may remain safely marginalized. Pretty obvious wink-and-nod from one white to the other. And you wonder why ‘we’ still feel discriminated against and despised. Kaleaph Luis, at GenderYouth.org sums up this feeling with sad succinctness in a recent post. He’s right to be sick to death of the requirement that black men be hard, gangsta, and oppositional to be considered men.

“In fact, most of the young black men with whom I have deep, personal relationships that exhibit the very same “female” characteristics that Newsweek attributes to Obama: they take an inclusive approach to problem solving, are generally optimistic about life, are modest about having all the answers, and are comfortable with teamwork.

For us, Obama is not a new phenomenon. He’s not a “female” one either. He’s us. Alas, we are used to our real selves being erased by the gangsta masculinity that society too often seems to expect of young black men, or by the surprise it exhibits when we break the mold.

With all the familiar statistics about young black men about academic underachievement, incarceration, and underemployment, it may be hard for mainstream culture to believe that we, in Sen. Joe Biden’s immortal prose, actually are “articulate and bright and clean.” Let me assure you, we’re already here. Calling Obama the female candidate just recycles the same tired, old stereotypes of masculinity that deny us—and him—a precious opportunity to redefine and expand definitions of manhood for young men.”

Likely, Newsweek was just trying to be cute, like Dowd does in most of her columns—playing word games while our society slowly implodes. But the reality underlying this type of thinking is far from ephemeral in its effects on black lives; the masses of black men, not being wunderkinds, are dangerous. Uncivilized. Justifiably marginalized.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate