Obama or Clinton? Caucasian woman or African-American man? I've heard these questions a lot over the last year.
The New York Times published an interesting
Op-Ed by Gloria Steinem as to why she is voting for Clinton (not
just because she's a woman). She makes a few points worth discussing.
"So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what...
...But what worries me is that he [Obama] is seen as unifying by his race while she [Clinton] is seen as divisive by her sex."
