Racism

Our Historic Stand Against the Bank Cabal's Coalition of Darkness

Richard Eskow — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 09:34:02 -0400

Perspective's hard to come by in the heat of the moment, but it's already clear that this week's election is profoundly important. The forces of small-"d" democracy are up against a cabal of ultra-powerful financiers who, in an unending quest for greater wealth and power, have drawn upon the ugliest impulses and most corrupt political forces in our society. This cabal and its allies make up a Coalition of the Billing, the Drilling, and of course the Killing - a nasty gang that's determined to seize control of our government at any cost. And they can afford it.

When it's finally viewed through the longer lens of history, this election may be remembered as a decisive battle - and we're on the front lines.

Moneyed interests have always fought to undermine the democratic process, of course, and they've had more than their share of successes. But there may never have been a time in American history when the corporatist cabal has been so powerful, so cynical, and so closely allied with the Four Horsemen of political darkness: xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and fear. Isn't that reason enough to vote - and to get as many other people to the polls as possible?

When it comes to the naked exercise of power, the robber barons of the 19th and early 20th Centuries were pikers next to today's characters. After all, back then a young and unelected President named Teddy Roosevelt was able to rebuff J. Pierpont Morgan and survive. Imagine what would happen if a Teddy Roosevelt moved to break up the big financial trusts today. The media frenzy would be relentless, with Fox News (and most of the "mainstream" news outlets, too) screaming "Socialism!" throughout their 24-hour news cycle. And under a Congress like the one we may get, it would probably lead to impeachment, too.

There's a school of thought which argues that the old-time robber barons - the guys who were usually drawn wearing a top hat and striped pants - provided social value by spurring the growth of industry and guiding the country toward a more efficient, organized economy. Whether or not you agree, no such defense can be plausibly made for today's Wall Street crowd. The new robber barons have built no railroads, no factories, no new towns or buildings. All they've left in their wake is chaos and unemployment. They've drained the economy instead of helping it grow.

If this isn't the time to get a little preachy or adamant with those around you, a time to raise the flag and sound the battle cry, then American history has never seen such a time. So at the risk of going all Winston Churchill on your friends and neighbors - "We will fight them on the airwaves! We will fight them in the polling places!" - why not rally them to get out and vote?

And for all of you who attended the Sanity Rally in Washington this week, please note that you can sound the battle cry serenely and sanely. Take me, for instance ... well, okay, bad example. But I'm actually quite sympathetic to Tea Party fears and concerns - enough so to have been chastised a couple of times for it lately in radio interviews like this one. Still, sympathy for the frightened and helpless is no reason to avoid the plain truth: We're in danger of seeing the electoral process hijacked by a massive coalition of the greedy, the cynical and the stupid - aided and abetted by the fearful, the angry, and the hate-filled.

Unless we stop it, this new Wall Street/Tea Party axis will seize enough power tomorrow to paralyze Washington. The resulting gridlock will cause our democratic and government institutions to atrophy and wither - which is the point, of course. A paralyzed government can't restrict the predatory actions of bankers and other corporations, which is why job #1 for a cabal-controlled Congress would be to de-fund Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

My colleague Zach Carter has done excellent work detailing the Wall Street/Tea Party connection (see here and here , for example - and I particularly enjoyed reading about Tea Party leaders riding corporate jets to their "grassroots" rallies). It's been remarkable and absurd to see Tea Partiers - people who are genuinely furious over government aid to wealthy bankers -- wave signs for politicians whose servility to those bankers would embarrass any self-respecting valet. It's like Spartacus speaking at a Roman Legion rally, or galley slaves demonstrating on behalf of oar manufacturers.

Corrupt? Sure they are. Merriam-Webster first definition of "corruption" is "an impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle." Check. Another definition reads: "A departure from the original or what is pure and correct," which pretty much suits today's political process. As for the third definition - "inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery)" - there's plenty of that going around, too.

Wall Street's bought-and-paid-for minions are leading the right-wing charge on the political front, which is why conservative politicians decry bank bailouts even as they slavishly advance the banks' agenda at every turn. ("I am Spartacus!" cried the Centurions.) Conservatives, bankers, and their media subordinates are the core cadres of the New American Falange, a politico/corporate syndicate dedicated to channeling public resources for private enrichment. Forget the talk about reducing government power. Their goal is to increase that power so they can put it to use in the service of corporations,clamping down on individual rights as they mouth the rhetoric of freedom.

That much is pretty well known. But less attention's been paid to the fact that Wall Street is now funding and promoting a shocking level of rhetorical brutality in support of its agenda. While bankers adopt a superficial air of civility, their money and influence is subsidizing an ugliness of discourse that's unprecedented in recent political speech. They're pushing a multimedia and multisensory hatefest, aided and abetted at every step by the leaders and shapers of professional "journalism."

Case in point: Right-wing fraud Andrew Breitbart didn't hesitate to promote a false "expose" of ACORN - an organization that enrolls minority voters - with a falsified video that included a white "reporter" dressed up as the stereotype of a black pimp. That's a level of racism worthy of the bigoted and violent white Southerners who fought the civil rights movement of the 1960's. Back in those days the news media rightfully condemned the bigots. But, oh, how times have changed. This year Breitbart will be providing election night commentary for ABC, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Nobody with a proven record of deception and bigotry gets that level of access without the support and encouragement of some very wealthy and powerful people.

The Disney Company's editorial decision isn't the only Mickey Mouse move on behalf of hate we've seen this year. There's also the racist Sharron Angle campaign ad that contrasts scary Hispanic gangsters with pure and innocent white children in much the same way that Bible Belt politicians used to speak of protecting the flower of young Southern womanhood from the "colored." Tea Party signs that read "Obama's Plan: White Slavery" are the direct descendants of the "Negro Rule" cartoon used to inflame race hatred during the 1898 race riots in Wilmington, North Carolina. The newspaper that published that cartoon eventually apologized for helping to provoke the white violence that claimed as many as 100 lives - but it took more than a century to get around to it.

Here's hoping that more such apologies to the relatives of the deceased won't be needed anytime soon.

And speaking of ugliness: Let's not forget that "Citizens United," the Supreme Court decision which gave corporations unlimited financial influence over our elections, is named after the four-letter word for a woman's genitalia. Had you forgotten? The "c" and "u" were the first two letters of an acronym directed at Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton - "Citizens United Not Timid" - and corporatist judges used a lawsuit on its behalf to abolish limits on corporate campaign money. This foul alphabetical cesspool laid the cornerstone for the Darkness Coalition's latest triumph.

The misogynists' victory will be complete if the next Congress blocks any further attempts to restrict corporate influence over the electoral process. That's undoubtedly high on the American Falangists' "to-do" list. So is rolling back Social Security and the other social advances of the last 75 years.

Sure, we're not always being given the alternatives we'd like. With corporatists riding high, it would be great to see more tough-talking, rough ridin' Teddy Roosevelt types working to break up the trusts and restore the nation's financial integrity. We're not talking about extremists, either, any more than Roosevelt was an extremist. In fact, Roosevelt and Morgan were able to work together effective during the financial panic of 1907, long after their early run-in. But, as any good relationship counselor no doubt understands, sometimes a balanced partnership requires some healthy boundary-setting up front. A little trust-bustin' would go good right about now.

Politicians, even the best of them, are usually people who'll wait to see which way the wind is blowing. If it favors the corporatists this year, most of them will go along - even if their hearts aren't in it. But if there's enough voter resistance - even if it's just a glimmer - some of them will fight the corporate interests. Lead with your votes and some politicians will follow.

That's why we need to vote as if our lives, and the life of the Republic, depend on it. It's why we need to encourage others to vote by doing a Winston Churchill number on 'em. And for those of us who have a car - it doesn't matter if it's a VW or an Escalade, a Ford V-8 or a Rocket 88 - it's why we should drive people to the polls in it. But whatever you do, vote. If you want to "restore sanity," vote. Vote against the racism, the misogyny, and the xenophobia. Most of all, vote against the financial interests that are funding these hateful things. Stand up and show them the real Spartacus. Fight the cabal and its hatemongering associates, using the tool of suffrage that each and every one of us has been given.

Strike back against the haters and the greedheads who have formed an unholy alliance with the media mouthpieces and the political manservants. Don't let them win. They're powerful, but they're not unbeatable. Confront them and they will cower. Fight them and they will retreat.

Steve Earle wrote on the back of one of his albums, "If you don't vote, don't bitch." Personally, I choose to do both. Care to join me?

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This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project.

Harry Alford's Condescension

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:49:08 -0400

The right-wing blogosphere is abuzz over the supposed smackdown between Sen. Barbara Boxer and Harry C. Alford, who portrays himself as an "African American and a veteran" who is insulted at Boxer's alleged racism and calls her on it.

Well, as an African American I don't know what the hell Alford was upset about — other than the fact that Alford was shown that his shilling for the right is not appreciated in much of the community he claims to represent.

Alford is the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, an outfit he and his wife, Kay Debow Alford, run out of a small office in Washington. The Chamber took in about $880,000 in 2006, according to the most recent publicly available Form 990 filed with the IRS, most from membership dues and a $90,000 grant from AT&T (which may have something to do with Alford's opposition to "net neutrality," the idea that broadband providers such as AT&T should not have to right to limit what content people can receive via the Internet).

But what was at the core of Alford's outburst was the reason he was on Capitol Hill testifying before Boxer's Environment and Public Works committee to begin with: to oppose climate change legislation.

Alford's organization had already joined forces with carbon-based fuel interests and conservatives to torpedo the Waxman-Markey climate change bill in the House. It released a study in May from CRA International that asserted that by 2030 Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $350 billion in lost gross domestic product and 2.5 million jobs. The National Resources Defense Council has a detailed dissection of the study's flaws and the disclosure that the NBCC has received $275,000 from ExxonMobil.

In fact, Greenpeace has a page of global-warming-denial comments that Alford has made over the years, which is why ExxonMobil has been so generous with its funding of this relatively obscure organization.

Alford is also an ardent opponent of the Employee Free Choice Act—no surprise, since he also sits on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading EFCA opponent. He's been claiming that EFCA would harm African-American-owned businesses. His April op-ed for Roll Call on the issue of enabling workers to form unions is an example of how he is willing to use race to push an anti-labor agenda:

The Employee Free Choice Act would eliminate one of the most fundamental tenets of our democracy: the secret ballot. By eliminating the right to vote in private, workers would not only be deprived of the right to vote their conscience, but would also be more vulnerable to the intimidation and coercion tactics known to be used by
union organizers. ... African-Americans, in particular, have bitter memories of voter intimidation and have a responsibility to stand up against any proposition that will take away their democratic voting rights.

For a man who compares seeking to organize a union through a person-to-person card-check drive to the efforts of Southern segregationists to violently suppress the black vote, a complaint that Boxer citing a resolution by the NAACP on climate change in a climate change hearing is somehow "racial" and something that would "explode" is certainly audacious. Condescending, though, is more apt.

So let's be clear: Harry Alford does not speak for the African-American community. He does not speak for me. He speaks for a cabal of conservative obstructionists who are hell-bent on protecting the old order of oil companies being unaccountable to the environment, employers being unaccountable to their workers—and of African Americans who won't pimp for the interests of corporate America being kept in their place.

Lee Gaylord

Lee Gaylord — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:56:37 -0400

A few years ago I started in The Injustice System. I studied the injustice in our justice system and realized that it was worse than I imagined.

The US has the highest prison population in the world (2.3 million) Of those 15 to 20 percent are innocent.

We are supposed to be a civilized country and yet this country murders people for revenge, many of whom are innocent.

Almost everything that this country complains about it does. In other words our country still speaks with a forked tongue.

I love this country and that is why I am fighting to change it.

What The Right, And The Left, Doesn't Get About Race

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:10:55 -0400

A New York Times/CBS News poll this week suggests the nation's racial climate has been dramatically changed by the election of America's first biracial president, with an apparently record high 66 percent of Americans saying race relations are good. But don't think that because people are feeling more positive about race relations that we are entering an era where we can begin to treat race is irrelevant.

Quite the contrary, says john a powell, the director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, who warns in an interview with me that progressives as well as conservatives are badly misreading the racial landscape that the country has entered in the age of President Obama.

powell is leading a new organization, Americans for American Values, that will look at the nation's continuing racial disparities from a different angle from how it has been frequently addressed. While much of the debate around race has focused on conscious attitudes (which is what was being measured by the Times/CBS poll) and behavior, Americans for American Values will focus on unconscious bias and how that bias affects our educational, economic and social institutions.

"The research shows that unconscious bias is actually fairly high throughout the whole population. And it can be manipulated, or influenced, by the showing of images, telling of stories, hearing certain buzzwords," powell says in the interview. This bias affects individual behavior and, from a public policy perspective, leads us to embrace and adopt policies and programs that end up having a racially disparate effect, even if that effect was unintended. "We need to be aware that we can be biased and that can affect our behavior even when we don't want to be," powell says.

powell calls the "practices, cultural norms, and institutional arrangements" that grow out of this bias "racialization," and wrote about its implications in detail in an article published in the Denver University Law Review. He uses the term, he wrote in the article, because "the language of race and racism is understood in a way that is too limited and specific to help us acquire greater insight into the important questions posed" by today's racial realities in America.

Progressives, powell says, are as susceptible to accepting racialization as conservatives. "The failure to actually embrace race in a constructive, much more sophisticated way is one of the great failures of the progressive movement," he says.

It is not enough to pursue "race-neutral" policies or to use proxies for race, such as poverty, powell says. For example, in the absence of structural changes in patterns and practices that leave African Americans and women underrepresented in construction trades, the money in the economic recovery bill that is now being poured into infrastructure projects will invariably end up benefiting whites and males more than African Americans and females, powell says.

Americans for American Values will operate under the auspices of the Institute for America's Future and will conduct research into how racialization influences policy and how policies can be changed so that they are more fair and address continuing racial inequities. The project is supported by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

powell will be a speaker at the America's Future Now! conference in Washington June 1-3.

"What we want to do is help America to understand how race continues to operate—in interesting ways and in measurable ways—and undermine our values" of "a racially fair and racially inclusive society," powell says.

Sexism, Racism: What Lies Beneath

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:53:34 -0400

I could've told them there'd be days like this.

Michael Kwiatkowski — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:34:49 -0400

MSNBC reports.

Volunteering on Frank Jackson's campaign for mayor of Cleveland in 2005, I was not surprised to hear a very unpleasant and vulgar word beginning with the letter 'n' used two different times. Still irritated, to be sure, but not surprised. Cleveland is a prime example of a town where racism still flourishes. This is why Obama's tossing of his former pastor under the proverbial bus did absolutely no good, and may have even hurt his campaign in the long run. Obama cannot separate himself from his African roots no matter how hard he tries, no matter how white and nonthreatening he tries to make himself to white people. Obama was never going to get the bigot vote. Yet he thought he could simply by making a few speeches.

It saddens, but doesn't surprise me that some of his followers are shocked to see racism alive and well on the campaign trail. No, their candidate cannot work miracles, cannot simply talk his way past hatred or heal racial divides by dissing his own as angry old relics. But why are these folk shocked? The other night I was having a political argument with my friend and mentor about Jeremiah Wright. He thinks Wright is a racist because the preacher believes AIDS may have been an invention of the white man to use against Blacks. While I disagree, and don't think that is the case (no one would be crazy enough to create a virus that destroys the human immune system and think it wouldn't affect everyone instead of just one group), I can see -- given our history of experimentation with contagions and upon humans -- why Wright and others like him might not think it such a far-fetched theory. And that appears to be the only thing my friend thinks makes Wright a racist. Never mind that false preachers such as Hagee, Falwell, and Robertson have actually blamed America for things such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and other major disasters -- all for imagined crimes of immorality.

The point is that just because Barack Obama waves his oratorical magic wand and declares an end to racism in politics doesn't mean his snake oil pitch has worked, and no one should be expressing any surprise over this.

Recognizing the Race Chasm

David Sirota — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:52:56 -0400

The issue of race makes a lot of folks uncomfortable - and that's especially true right now when the nation is closer than ever to electing the first black President of the United States. As my new newspaper column this week shows, many Serious People who dominate our political debate have reacted to this historic election and their own queasiness about race by exposing their prejudices.

On one side, you have the ostriches - the political "thinkers" like Reihan Salam and Michael Lind who look at the Race Chasm and pretend it doesn't exist. These people look at a racially polarized election map, and explain it away with either flippant fact-free stories about Hillary Clinton's "waitress-mom sensibility," or wild theories about Northern European migration trends from a century ago. They expect us to forget that most often the simplest explanation is the most obvious - especially when it comes to a black-white racial divide that has been a defining characteristic of American culture since our country's inception.

On the other side you have the minstrel show producers - the media and politicians who are more than thrilled to exploit race and treat African Americans as less than human. My column offers up all sorts of specific examples of this, but I think Keith Woods of the Poynter Institute summed it up best. Appearing on PBS this week, he said:

"You see a full vocabulary for talking about white Americans in this debate, from blue-collar, a euphemism for white blue-collar workers. We talk about lunch-bucket Democrats. We talk about the soccer mom and the NASCAR dad, all of which are euphemisms in the national discourse for white Americans. And then we talk about black people, as though they are all the same, with pretty much all the same views."

Each side is expressing a form of bigotry. In denying the racial divide exists, the ostriches are telling African Americans that racism is just their imagination. In other words, the whitewashing (no pun intended) legitimizes racism by pretending it doesn't exist.

The minstrel show producers are more honest than the ostriches - they are overtly telling African Americans that they are unimportant, even though that's positively false in both the human and political sense.

The silver lining in all of this is the fact that - despite the ostriches - we may start to have a much-needed national conversation about race, to the great consternation of wealthy white pundits like Bill Kristol. As all of this racism oozes out of the political Establishment for all to see, we can recognize just how bigoted American culture is - and recognition is the first step towards addressing a problem.

You can read the whole column at the San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Ft. Collins Coloradoan, In These Times, TruthDig, Credo Action, or Creators. The column relies on grassroots support, so if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.

A Trip Down Memory Lane In North Carolina

Cliff Schecter — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:19:07 -0400

One would have to strain to be shocked that a racist ad is finding its way out of the bowels of conservativism in North Carolina. For political observers from the 1980s will remember that Senator Jesse Helms--an early sign of the shift of racially conservative whites in the South from their ancestral home in the Democratic Party to the GOP--was a master of using divisive tactics to undermine his African-American opponent for the U.S. Senate, Mayor of Charlotte North Carolina (not to mention white opponents such as Governor Jim Hunt, too).

Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, recalled this unsavory record upon Helms' retirement in 2002:

Hurrah. Jesse Helms has been a vicious racist politician since he defeated the Greek N.C. Rep. Nick Galifanakis with the slogan "Elect one of us" in his first Senate race in 1972. In his 1992 race with Harvey Gannt, the African-American mayor of Charlotte, N.C., he ran an advertisement showing a black hand snatching away a job from a white hand, harking back to Jim Crow politics. He has been against everything good, decent and positive for America.

Yet, it did not go away wiith Helms' retirement from politics, or conservative claims to have gotten beyond their racial animus in North Carolina or the rest of the country. With an African American likely becoming the Democratic nominee for President this year, the old playbook has come in handy. And once again, as in the past when other conservatives sat ildy by and claimed Jesse was just being Jesse, now Republican nominee John McCain throws his hands up in the air as if there is nothing he can do:

ABC NEWS’ Bret Hovell and Russell Goldman report: Sen. John McCain said Thursday that if elected president -- and becomes the de facto head of the GOP -- he would not demand a change in the leadership of the North Carolina Republican Party despite condemning its plan to air an ad attacking Sen. Barack Obama, D- Ill, and his controversial minister.

In my book, The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him And Why Independents Shouldn't, I recount McCain's questionable past on issues of race. From the many years he rejected a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to his serial flip-flops on the Confederate Flag (not to mention his association with a known white supremacist, Richard Quinn) .

John McCain and his conservative friends: Much closer to "pandering" than "straight-talk" on race.

Pat Buchanan's Racist Rant

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:07:55 -0400

MSNBC has another Imus problem, and his name is Pat Buchanan.

In fact, the racist drivel that Buchanan has recently penned (posted on Human Events, among other places) is arguably more offensive than the insult Don Imus thoughtlessly tossed at the Rutgers University women's basketball team, which eventually led to the simulcast of his syndicated radio show being pulled from MSNBC. Imus, after all, conceded his off-the-cuff comment about "nappy-headed 'hos" was a tasteless joke and profusely apologized. Buchanan's comments are not the fruit of rapid-fire talk show banter but are deliberately chosen written words that read as if they were copied from a white supremacist polemic.

While it is not breaking news that Buchanan is trafficking in KKK talking points, his latest column ought to have rational people on both the left and the right saying enough is enough.

Buchanan writes in response to Sen. Barack Obama's speech on race last week that in the conversation about race, "White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to."

And what does "white America" have to say? According to Buchanan:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

... Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

He wraps up his column with a set of jaw-droppingly misleading statements about black-on-white crime and "hoaxes" perpetrated by a "Rev. Al" — presumably the Rev. Al Sharpton, who apparently no more merits the courtesy of having his full name published than Sen. Barack Obama, who Buchanan referred to as "Barack."

In Buchanan's world, being an elected United States senator and a presidential candidate does not entitle you the basic courtesy of being called by your first and last name if you fall under the one-drop rule.

AgentX on the African American Opinion blog wrote that "I don't have all night to debunk this entire sack of crap" but his blog has made a start at it. But, more importantly, he publishes the e-mail address of the president of NBC News, State Capus: steve.capus@nbc.com.

"Here's hoping this dinosaur gets put out to pasture," Agent X writes.

In fact, we need to do more than hope for it. We need to insist on it.

Hat tip to Monroe Anderson for his alert on this.

Gender vs. Race in Campaign 2008

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:13:03 -0500

Recently in the New York Times, Gloria Steinem argued that if Barack Obama was a woman, he wouldn’t be elected. That’s probably true. Ms. Steinem then concludes that gender “is probably the most restricting force in American life.” That’s definitely false. Or, rather, a false choice. The reality is that racism and sexism are both profound and pervasive throughout our society. Ranking different forms of oppression is a ridiculous waste of time. We should be working to eradicate all forms of oppression, not deciding which one takes precedence.

In other words, just because Senator Obama was (at the time of Ms. Steinem’s op-ed) surging above Hillary Clinton doesn’t mean that racism has taken a back seat to sexism in the American body politic. Voter preferences may actually have to do with perceived differences on the candidate’s positions. Or they may have to do with how each candidate USES their identity: Senator Clinton highlighting her uniqueness as a woman in appealing to women voters, Senator Obama emphasizing how his experiences as an African American give him a more universal insight on unity and solidarity that applies across race. It’s not to say one approach is right or wrong but merely different TAKES on their marginalized identities not merely different identities between these two candidates.

Nonetheless, it’s probably true that if Barack Obama were a bi-racial and a woman, he might not be where he is today. But Ms. Steinem neglected to note that if Hillary Clinton were an African American woman, she probably wouldn’t be either. It goes to show not that one form of oppression is more persistent than the other but that both run deep and strong in our country, as witnessed most powerfully where they intersect.

Strict gender roles and norms still pervade our society. Glass ceilings and double standards are all still too common. And racial profiling and lack of meaningful access to equal opportunity in education, jobs, lending and more still plagues African American communities. These are real problems, and I hope that whomever we elect — white or black, male or female --- they can use their own experience of privilege in life — or lack thereof — to breakdown the barriers of discrimination and create an America that truly values all of us. That deeply American ideal of community values, that all people are inherently equal and interconnected, is what we need to be reminded of, regardless of the messenger.

The roots of racism and sexism are the same — the desire to maintain power and privilege for some at the expense of everyone else. Our only hope of addressing EITHER racism or sexism is to address them BOTH together. Rooting racism AND sexism from every facet of our social, economic and political institutions and practices to create a better America is far more worthwhile than debating which form of oppression is faring worse.