Clinton and Obama: Who’s Been More Oppressed?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

I dislike the politics of “comparative victimology,” in which different ethnic, racial, gender, and sexual groups vie to demonstrate that they have been more oppressed than others.

The contest for the Democratic nomination for presidency of the United States has brought this to the fore. Supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama square off, each trying to make the case that a victory for their candidate would be a radical departure from the bad old days for America. Both groups are, of course, correct. But which has the better argument?

All discrimination and prejudice is abhorrent, be it against aboriginal peoples, blacks, gays, Jews, Latinos, Muslims, women, or any other groups that have been stigmatized for one or another reason. But if we really wish to compare the way African Americans and women have been treated, historically, in the U.S., it’s really no contest.

Clinton is indeed the first viable female candidate for president – forget for a moment that she’s been riding on her husband’s coat tails for decades – and women have had to fight hard to reach this point. Her victory would definitely transform American politics – but not as much as a win by Obama.

Yes, women have had to contend with career roadblocks and the “glass ceiling,” but how many have been lynched from actual ceilings, as were thousands of American blacks? How many white women were terrorized by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan? How many were not able to vote, in many American states, within living memory?

How many women were refused entry, not just to exclusive all-male clubs run by reactionary buffoons, but to ordinary hotels, restaurants, indeed entire neighbourhoods, because of their gender? How many were in the recent past not allowed to enroll in ordinary state colleges and universities? How many couldn’t even drink from a water fountain reserved for whites?

If Hillary Clinton were a man, her candidacy would elicit little more than a polite yawn – she’s a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an upper middle class Chicagoan from an affluent suburb who attended elite colleges and had little trouble becoming a successful lawyer.

She is little different, in fact, from male Democratic counterparts such as former vice-president Al Gore, Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia – or for that matter, George W. Bush. In fact she comes from a far more privileged background than does her own husband Bill.

If Clinton goes on to win, it would make history, sure – but many other places have already been there, done that.

We’ve seen women leaders elected in Germany (Angela Merkel), Great Britain (Margaret Thatcher), India (Indira Gandhi), Israel (Golda Meir), the Philippines (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo), and many other places. Our own PEI had premier Catherine Callbeck. But all of these people were products of their own majority cultures.

Obama, on the other hand, had a Kenyan father and a white mother. His parents were ostracized by many people, including some in their respective families, for the “sin” of intermarriage. He has had to chart his own remarkable path in America. No one has paved his way.

His spouse Michelle is an African American woman born in the black “ghetto” on the south side of Chicago. She comes from a working class home – her father was a blue-collar city water plant employee and her mother a secretary.

Unlike the privileged Hillary, she couldn’t count on the same sort of “cultural capital” when growing up. Yet she managed to graduate from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She too is a trail-blazer.

The United States had to suffer through a bloody civil war in order to abolish chattel slavery, and years of upheaval until blacks acquired full civil rights. If an African American is elected president, it will astound the world.