Voting Obama, But Defending Ferraro

I am donning my snazziest flame-retardant duds and stepping forward as perhaps the lone Obama supporter saying that I think what happened to Geraldine Ferraro sucks.

(And I'll table my "this whole party-divisive aspect of the primary sucks and is only going to hurt us later" rant for later.)

From what I've read and seen, I think her statement is correct: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position." Let me put a positive spin on this: There is excitement about Obama in part because he's black. (Which was her original statement.) In a good way. Am I racist for saying as much? Am I being divisive?

Aren't we in part looking forward to busting the Old White Man paradigm of presidential material? Aren't we excited that a youthful, vibrant, brilliant biracial candidate could create new opportunities for progress in this country?

I've seen as much said on this very blog.

To keep it in context, there is also excitement that Clinton is a woman. For my Mormon-in-laws, there was excitement that Romney was LDS. For New Yorkers, there was excitement that Guiliani was a New Yorker.

Well, at least among his four supporters.

For better or worse, these are often the details that get politicians ahead. We consider race, gender, religion, hometown, education, sexuality to help determine whether our values will be in sync with our candidate's. Wrongly? Maybe. But we do. This is exactly why liberals feel betrayed by a gay Republican. And conservatives feel betrayed by a Catholic liberal. And so here we are in primary season with Dems rallying around two Not Old White Men.

It's not a coincidence.

And let's be clear: Both Hillary and Barack leverage their Not Old White Men status whenever they can. Whenever it suits them.

I'm sorry that racial tensions are still such a factor in this country that we're so finely attuned to any inkling of divisiveness. I'm sorry that racial strife makes us quick to cry RACIST the second someone mentions race at all. I'm sorry that it's come to the point where a decent, devoted, progressive party stalwart is getting Ferraro'd.

I wish that there was a better way to settle these semantic squabbles and keep the media focused on the real issues in this country, which do not, last I checked, include debating whether or not Geraldine Ferraro is prejudicial against African-Americans. (I mean, come on.)

This is the reason good people leave politics. This is the reason that those actually worthy of leading will not rise to the occasion.

In the end we all lose.

-Liz is the voice of Mom-101 and calls NYC home. She's having a tough political week. Be nice to her.

Comments

[debbie - i obsess]

I keep trying to remember what you've pointed out, Liz, the idea that we're all fighting *the Republican candidate*, and I keep posting stuff about McCain that reveals his dearth of qualities necessary in a President, and also his proclivity to meanness and small-mindedness,

but this issue totally suckered me. I got suckered.

*hangs head*

[Mom101]

Me too Deb. Here I am posting about it too.

[PunditMom]

Thanks for writing this. Your flame-retardant suit must be stronger than mine!

[Stefania/CityMama]

With all due respect, I must disagree. It's easy for a white person to say "it's fact" or "your attacks are reverse racism." (I'm talking about Ferraro here.) As a person of mixed race, I guarantee you that no one on the Korean side of my family ever looked at a family member's success and said, "She got there because she was Korean." You want to talk reverse racism? Reverse racism is being told that I'm "lucky" my mom married a white guy so that I have a crease in my eye-lids. Or that "hapa" kids are cuter.

I was raised to pursue extra-curricular interests to have different experiences than my white peers to push myself further so that I would have an extra edge when it came to school, work, life. I don't think I'm alone.

And maybe it's because Barack Obama is from Hawaii and I am intimately familiar with the environment he grew up in having lived it myself that I have a hard time believing that the "he got here because he's black" statement is fact. In Hawaii people don't lump ethnicities together. If you are mixed-race, you are not "Asian," you are "Irish-Portuguese-Japanese-Filipino." And because it's such a melting pot, people are valued for their achievements, for being a good person, for their intelligence etc., not because of the color of their skin. If Barack Obama hadn't run this cycle and it were John Edwards standing next to Hillary, this wouldn't be an issue.

But maybe that was the point you were making and I totally missed it.

I will agree with you that we are being distracted. For two days now the focus has been completely off the candidates and on to two unfortunate cluster-fucks with Democrats at the center. Meanwhile, what do we think McCain has been doing?

Two days go by and we forget that Barack Obama is the front runner with the most pledged delegates and super-delegates, and yet he is being called to accept the VP position. If two more days go by maybe people will forget he is even in the race.

I want to believe that this is all unintentional coincidence, but the cynic in me thinks something more diabolical is at work. Yes we need to focus. Yes we need to rally around our candidate, which is why more than ever, Hillary needs to step aside. The front-runner shouldn't have to concede, the second place finisher is the one that needs to "let history blaze its trail."

Yes, in the end we WILL all lose. This entire country will LOSE. So, enough with the bullshit.

[Mom101]

I guess Stefania, I feel that for so long for people of color, their race was considered a detriment. Now it's being touted as an asset. Am I off the mark in thinking that's great progress?

I also don't think that anyone is voting for him - or claiming that anyone is voting for him - without acknowledging his achievements, his platform, his abilities, his charisma. If it was only about race, heck, Sharpton would be president now right?

I'm with you on moving on. We need a candidate nowwwwwwww. I can't wait to get this back to the issues. Like how the Republicans feel about having a doddering old idiot as their candidate.

[Stefania/CityMama]

Liz, totally get what you are saying, but when it comes from a nasty...curmudgeon like Geraldine Ferraro, it sounds like people are voting for him ONLY because he is black--as if none of the other qualities matter. So from her is doesn't sound like a positive. And I really don't think she meant it to be.

Back to the doddering old idiot!

[jaelithe]

I think she dug her own grave here, honestly.

Her original statement was ambiguous. Your interpretation, Liz, is certainly a plausible one, and one I also considered, before Ferraro began to gave more interviews on the subject. But, when I read her subsequent statement, in response to the first rumblings of controversy:

"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up. Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

I thought what she said here was really out of line. I do not believe the Obama campaign has been calling everyone who criticizes the campaign a racist. It seems to me the Obama campaign has mostly tried to focus on policy distinctions, stylistic distinctions, and philosophical distinctions between the campaigns when responding to criticism. The Obama campaign HAS pointed it out when Clinton supporters have said some undeniably racist things, but that is because some undeniably racist things have actually been said by some Clinton supporters. (The Clinton campaign, I would note, has also not shied away from calling a spade a spade when it comes to sexism in the media.)

And Ferraro saying that people are attacking her because she's white seriously just sounds like whining to me. She could have found a much more eloquent and less simplistic way to state that she felt she was being treated unfairly.

(Not to mention the fact that she said "Racism works in two different directions" indicates to me that, in her mind, the only model for racism is White People v. Everyone Else. This sort of simplistic view of racism, which can ONLY be held from a position of white privilege, indicates to me that she is not aware of the extent of her own bias. What about black people who are racist toward Asian people? Asian people who are racist toward Hispanics? Pacific Islanders who are racist toward blacks? Racism is racism no matter where it's coming from. There is no such thing as "Reverse Racism," and racism cannot go two ways.)

And I just saw an interview on Nightly News, as I mentioned in a comment on another post here, where she appeared to lie outright about where her original statement had come from, in an attempt to make it appear she had been misquoted. Unless she just forgot that she gave an interview to the reporter who broke the story, or the reporter made up his assertion that he interviewed her, she was lying. And that shocked me. And then not long after that, she demanded that the Obama campaign apologize to HER. Which will certainly not win her any favors from people who were genuinely offended by her comments. Even if those people who were offended misinterpreted what she said, when someone is offended by something you say, the respectful thing to do is to apologize for the confusion and attempt to clarify your remarks, not to demand an apology yourself.

Trust me, I am a die-hard feminist, and Ferraro has been one of my heroes since I was a little girl. I was raised by my feminist mother on stories of how Ferraro had been martyred by the media, who attacked her with scurrilous rumors during her run for V.P. But I really think her commentary on this subject has been at best tone-deaf, and at worst, deliberately divisive. I have been really disappointed to see it.

Of course, I agree with both you and Debbie entirely that excessive, sensationalized media coverage of gaffes like this only serves to fan the already dangerous flames between the Clinton supporters and the Obama supporters. And I think someone in the DNC forgot to install a fire extinguisher. This is getting really, really bad for the party.

(BTW I think your flame-retardant suit looks hawt.)

[jaelithe]

Well, okay, I suppose there IS reverse racism in the way Stefania describes. Like my half-Native grandpa happily letting my grandpa dye my aunt's Cherokee-black hair blonde and make her sleep in curlers. *Shudder*

(Makes me almost ashamed to be actually blonde sometimes. It really does.)

[cynematic]

I started out blithely bi-candidate (as Margaret Cho has called it), ready for an Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama ticket. But since Super Tuesday/Feb 6, I've seen Clinton adopt tactics that make her surprisingly Old White Mannish in spirit, even if she's Not Old White Man in body. (This comes from an Obama supporter who actually disagreed with those who said Clinton should say goodbye after 11 straight losses, and I've pointed out that she could still legitimately gain delegates during various states' state conventions--instead of gaming the system with Superdelegate manipulation.)

But this Ferraro flap is one more piece of the negative campaigning we've seen from Clinton since Super Tuesday. While Ferraro left some ambiguity in her original statement, her followup statements have been far more inflammatory; Clinton's renunciations of the entire business squishy and slow.

Ferraro's being discriminated against because she's white? This started off about how the media mistreats Clinton, then became about Obama and how he gets a free ride because of "who he is", and now it's about Ferraro being persecuted for her comments on racial grounds. Whoa.

(Trust people of color when they say the slyest dig of all is the backhanded praise that implies "affirmative action/PC magic carpet ride to the top.")

I just can't get aboard that crazy train. And when Not Old White Men start sounding and acting like Old White Men ("I'm a victim of reverse discrimination!"), I start getting the sense that the New Boss we'd get in Clinton might be suspiciously like the Old Boss. Not sure why she allowed the Ferraro fiasco to stick to her as long she did.

I'd really like to ask Clinton herself: Do you think you're gaining voters this way, with all this divisiveness? You have liberal urban supporters you could lose and who might be mutually exclusive to the "Reagan Democrats" who are said to go for this kind of thing.

Truth be told, I don't see the motivation for front-runner Obama to stir the pot in the way Clinton has. Don't know if you'd agree with me at all on that, but it's definitely a blog posting for another day.

[Karoli]

If Barack Obama were a white man he would be sailing away with this nomination. Is he lucky? Sure, he's lucky to have been gifted with intellect and a sense of humor and a remarkably even temperament and a gift for oratory and a sense of fairness. He's lucky just like we're all lucky. But there is no way that Ferraro can say the things she said and expect everyone to sit back and nod and ignore the obvious racial undertones.

However, she has at least identified the elephant on the table, which was sure to rise sooner or later. That, perhaps, is a good thing.

[Motherhood Uncensored]

I'll stick my neck out when it comes to Mississippi and say point blank that it is totally possible people voted for Obama based SOLELY on his race.

Same goes for Hillary.

There might even be a few that would say they voted for Hillary because she's a woman. And that's all.

I mean, we could poll the Southern Whites and Blacks and ask them about both candidate's policies. I'm curious to see what they'd say. I bet you'd actually get a few people that would say "I voted for Obama because he's black."

Honestly, that's a way better reason than how some people vote (based on attractiveness? -- Cripes).

And honestly, I'm surprised more of these statements have not come to light considering the total lack of criticism of Obama and his camp. He's not perfect!

But as a Hillary supporter, it gets annoying. In fact, I can see why these outspoken women ARE PISSED OFF. Maybe a better choice of words might have been better, but the sentiment that was expressed (in my opinion) is a fair one.

[Mom101]

Cynematic, I think you make excellent points in terms of everything new being old (white man) again. there is a lot reminiscent of the old guard in her camp which is part why I support Obama.

That said (and here I'm just a white chick sticking my neck out, as MU said above - although she's actually Asian too) I think Ferraro is not being discriminated against because she's white - I think she's being attacked back because she can be attacked as a white person. Does that make sense? One of the positive things about an Obama candidacy is that McCain will need to tiptoe around him in a lot of ways so as not to be accused of racism. Can we agree on that? It's just so much more offensive to be racist than to be sexist these days.

I also think that yes, the media narrative is very much in Obama's favor and that Clinton can hardly get a break. Again...voted for Obama. Just trying to be dispassionate and objective here, and it's very much what I see. I don't think he gets a free ride, but I don't think he's been vetted. And in fact I fear a bit what will happen when Rove & Co get the chance.

I can't say that Ferraro's comments came out entirely right and as a lifelong politician she should know better. But I guess I could put myself in her shoes, trying to speak my truth and feeling I can do it under the protective cloak of good progressive liberalism for a lifetime...and then getting reamed for it. Ouch.

[Kellyology]

When people are considered as candidates, everything about that person is taken into account. And yes, that includes race. My objection with Ms. Ferraro's statement was the timing of it.

(Oh you silly Democrats, when are you going to ever remember that the other party is far more crafty with their marketing abilities? When are you going to get that crafty and stop making me crazy???)

But was her statement racist? Maybe. The woman who told my father at a business meeting that she wasn't going to vote for Obama no matter what because "he's just too black," well to me, that's a definitely.

But pointing out that a man today might have more or less marketability because of certain personal characteristics...I don't know. Seems pretty smart to me. For people in the Republican party from my part of the country couldn't get past Romney's religion to see his platform. Is race any different than religion? They both provide a candidate with a unique outlook on life. And those unique outlooks are what create the man or woman who is the candidate.

So really, was her comment racist? Maybe. Maybe not.