Below The Beltway

Brendan Loy makes this point about Geraldine Ferraro’s recent comments about Barack Obama:

[I]t has no real substantive purpose. It’s an accurate statement, yes, but it’s also a non-sequitur, with no underlying point except the racial one. Yeah, Obama wouldn’t be where he is if he were white, but who cares? What purpose is served by saying that, other than to annoy people?

Pretty much everybody at the highest levels of American politics has something unrelated to their political resumé that allows them to get there, whether it’s a particular race or gender or marriage or last name or inherited wealth or good looks or what-have-you. Like it or not, our political scene is not a pure meritocracy. Pointing out this obvious fact with regard to one particular candidate accomplishes nothing except to make the campaign needlessly personal and bitter.

And yet the comment was made, and, even though Ferraro has left the Clinton campaign, we’re still talking about it, partly because it underscores the unfortunate but true racial subtext that has been a part of the Clinton-Obama rivalry since January. The Clinton’s started the fire in South Carolina and it’s never really gone out.

What’s going on here ?

Vivian Paige offers an explanation:

We all know that white women have been the largest group to benefit from affirmative action. They would like us black women to think it was women that made those strides but the real truth is that black women remain at the bottom of the totem poll. We are last to get anything, almost invisible.

When white women were making strides, they left us behind. Look around you. See more than the token black woman in a position of authority? Name me one black female political commentator other than Donna Brazile. How many white women are there? The whole “sisterhood” thing of the women’s movement never embraced women of color, at least not in any large way. White women, particularly ones who came of age during that time, truly believe that they are #2. And they believe that being female is a whole lot worse than being black. Read Ferraro’s statement and tell me she’s not saying that.

Which brings me to playing the victim. I think it’s funny that white folk say that black folk play the victim all the time. Have they ever looked at how often white women play the victim? I daresay it happens more for them than it does for us. I don’t deny that misogyny is a major problem. But white women, as they have moved up the ladder, have gotten real power. Unfortunately, it is not power shared with their sisters of color, only with each other.

As for this election, for the very first time, black women matter. Early on, black women supported Hillary Clinton, some of them, no doubt, because she was a woman. Slowly but surely, through boneheaded missteps of this campaign, she has lost this important voter group. I suspect in many minds it was a pretty easy transition to make. Because, you see, I think black women think of themselves as black first – and women second. It is hard for us to see the injustices of being female when we are whacked over the head daily for being black.

And Ferraro and the rest of the Clintonites don’t seem to understand that. Instead, they continue to subtly play the race card, or let their surrogates do it for them; it’s all about plausible deniability, you know.

Vivian also offers some advice to the Clinton camp that I doubt they’ll take to heart:

As for Hillary – I think she needs to take a long, hard look at the women (and men) in her campaign. I still support her, because I think that she’s the best person for the job. But she’ll not have the opportunity to do the job if she keeps people like Ferraro around her.

Perhaps the reason she’s picking people like that to work for her, though, is because, in some sense, she agrees with them.