Guest Post by dnA
For Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the issue is not whether or not they will be the target of racist or sexist commentary, but when, and how they respond to it.
Back in November, the media narrative about Hillary Clinton’s dipping poll numbers centered around a weak debate performance in late October, and also a perception that the Senator had played the “gender card” as a response to criticism from Barack Obama and John Edwards.
Clinton’s advisers also believe Edwards, because he was so aggressive, risks turning off voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. They believe even more strongly that the spectacle of a group of men attacking the lone female candidate on the stage represents, in their words, “the politics of pile-on.”
Clinton’s numbers, particularly among men, fell at that point.
But in New Hampshire, the wall-to-wall coverage of Clinton’s “meltdown” (the kind of “meltdown” that has practically become a daily occurrence on the Romney campaign) may have provoked what Matthew Yglesias called a “gender backlash” in response to news coverage of Clinton that was plainly sexist.
What bothered them as much as the Iowa results, said several dozen women in states with coming primaries, was the gleeful reaction to her defeat and what seemed like unfair jabs in the final moments before the New Hampshire voting.
Likewise, the most common (backhanded) compliment given to Obama by conservatives, (other than acknowledgements of his ability as an orator) is that he is “not like Al Sharpton,” a statement which not only calls to mind old stereotypes about “good Negroes” and “bad Negroes,” but seems to hint at a dynamic that will define how Clinton and Obama will have to deal with issues of gender and race that are directed at them, which is simply by avoiding them, lest they alienate voters.
The kind of “compliments” Obama receives for his perceived unwillingness to play the “race card” could easily be reversed into criticisms that he is “just like the rest of them” should he ever address the issue of racism against himself more directly.
But the same is true of Clinton and gender. American voters seem to prefer that their candidates suffer in silence in response to slights directed at their race or gender, and they reward them for it. While Hillary Clinton seemed to dip in the polls after some accused her of playing the “gender card” in October, Democratic voters responded strongly to sexist coverage of Clinton’s non-meltdown in New Hampshire. Following that incident, Clinton did not say anything that could be perceived as playing the “gender card,” but voters were able to see for themselves how she was being treated in the press. Had she actually accused the press of being sexist herself, we might have seen a different outcome.
The problem is that the phenomenon seems to favor not addressing questions of either race or gender and how we respond to them as voters. Recent comments from the Clinton campaign have been perceived as racist among some in the black community (including, in many instances, myself) but that many whites have seen as innocuous.
This divide in perception about the role race and racism play in public and private life is reflected in a recent Pew poll of white and black Americans. Blacks are far more likely to say that discrimination is “widespread” among the four areas of public life measured than whites are. Likewise, in response to arguably the most explosive racial (or in the view of some, racialized) incident in recent history, Hurricane Katrina, whites and blacks had drastically different perceptions as to whether or not anti-black discrimination played a role in the Bush Administration’s response. I feel obligated to note that Obama agrees with most whites on this issue.
While I was unable to find similar surveys dealing with gender, but I wouldn’t be surprised if men were far less likely to see sexism as a factor in public and private life than women.
What this widespread disparity in perception says is that the country is in need of a constructive conversation on race and gender. Unfortunately, Clinton and Obama may have to avoid them entirely in order to get elected.