A recent article from the Christian Science Monitor, “How Clinton and Obama Boost Feminism, Civil Rights,”  seeks to understand how the primary season may have helped to advance these “historical causes.”

The Christian Science Monitor writes,

“The race between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton may be over, but its effects on the broader movements for racial and sexual equality in America are likely to be felt – and debated – well past the fall.”

“Senator Obama’s victory roused blacks who never thought they would see an African-American this close to the presidency, not in a country with a shameful history of slavery. Senator Clinton embodied the aspirations of millions of women, many of whom saw in her defeat a culture still rife with sexism.”

But they did consult a sociologist…

“Some critics say it was less voters than the news media, obsessed with firsts, that reduced Obama to his race and Clinton to her gender. ‘It’s an element that got inflamed in the course of the campaign because of the premium on differentiation,’ says Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at Columbia University and an expert on social movements. ‘It didn’t start out that way. When this campaign started, Hillary was the favorite of black voters.'”